Tag: personal

Dear New York,

So this is it, huh? Six years and change– not a bad run. When I came, I knew that I I was going to be something. I wasn’t just another girl from the Midwest. And you know, you showed me that was true, but not in the way I expected. You didn’t prove I was destined for greatness. The city gave me space to lose the conceptions of who I had to be and it turns out, I was very different than the girl who lived in the Midwest. Gay. Butch. Kind, instead of angry. I left Michigan brilliant. As I leave you, I think people would say hardworking instead. Efficient. Witty, maybe. And I’m all the happier for it.

I’ve had my greatest triumphs and failures here. You’ll always be the rejection phone call from my dream job on the way to meet my grandparents at the airport, the man who spit at me when I was canvassing to try and make ends meet. You’re meeting the love of my life at a bar, and the first time I got a promotion, and getting contacted by an agent after reading a piece I wrote for school. You’re the slow disappointment of being unable to write more the agent liked. You’re the friends who will never be matched. The girls who turned me down. You’re losing my virginity with my socks on.

You’ll always be my first love. I remember the first time I saw it rain here. The streets became rivers and the city noise dulled down and you were more beautiful than even the movies made you look. That’s how I’ll think of you. Your skyline and all the millions of lights. To do that, I have to go. Right now all I can see is how tired I am, how hard I work to claim my place in this picture postcard of a city, how small I’ll have to live to stay in your heart. (It’s easy to think you won’t miss me. And maybe you won’t, but the guys from the deli will and the metro security guards will and the event regulars will and my coworkers will, and isn’t that the same thing?)

So here I say goodbye. Go well into the future, and take care of everyone I leave with you.

All the best,

Sam