i heart new york

I see the skyline of New York and my stomach does flips. I want that city. I crave that city. When I unexpectedly come across a picture of New York’s skyline, I take in the scene and then have to look away. I can’t look too long because the stomach flip will turn into an aching. So, I move on and begin to plan a trip back to Gotham.

I’ve only visited on short trips. Sometimes my visits were so brief they were merely a tease. A one-nighter for a private concert, a one-night lay over to the Dominican, and a lunch on Spring Street in January with snow falling while passing through town. No matter the time I’ve spent in NYC, the city is always with me.

This past December I told my friend shortly after we emerged from Penn Station that I just felt at home in the city. There is so much life in New York and this is what I love must about it. Of course there is life everywhere, but in NYC it is at its most vibrant. I love that there are people crashing into you on the sidewalks. I love that you can hear the streets and sirens at 4am on the 25thfloor of an apartment building. I love the subways and buses carrying strangers to a million different places. I love that there is a giant patch of green in the middle of the chaos to offer a reprieve and that inside that escape the skyline still impresses its buildings, gesturing to come back into the fray.

I consume as much media related to New York as I can. I watch every documentary I find, rent movies with that take place in New York, read books with NYC as the setting, and read blogs of NYC dwellers. Obsession would be a good word for it, but my fascination is more of a hobby. I think about moving there and then life goes on and I forget about it or convince myself that it’s not really what I want, that I need to cultivate the roots here and stay near my family whom I love. But, when I see a picture of New York’s skyline, my stomach tells me to go back to the obsessing, to get online and find a job and an apartment in the city, to forget the ties in Virginia and to make that leap. I know, I know. Why not? Well, I have no answer. All I can say is give me a year, we’ll see.