I’m In a Toxic Relationship With NEW YORK CITY
PC: @biancabiancak
My dearies, I’m excited to say that I’m finally in a healthy relationship. To be fair, it’s with the same man it’s always been, but after almost half a decade of fighting, miscommunications, and many painful moments, we’re finally out at the end of it, better than ever.
My other relationship, however, drags me face down on the pavement and for some reason, I don’t leave. I’m referring to my relationship with New York City. I grew up in Westchester, tucked under luscious greenery with the city only being 30 minutes away, and moved to Brooklyn almost five years ago now. It’s been thrilling, beautiful, but also exhausting and suffocating.
I think anyone that lives here can resonate with those feelings. On one hand, you’ve got endless amounts of opportunities at your fingertips. The skyscrapers are high but the possibilities even higher. The fashion, the food, the fire under everyone’s feet—there’s no place like it. Any sad feeling can promptly be dealt with with a cocktail at the Polo bar or a stroll through Central Park. If you struggled to find your “people” in other cities, high chance you’ll find your niche group of punk-rockers-who-knit, right here. You never have to go to the same café, bar, or restaurant twice, and the likelihood you’ll run into a bad ex is close to zero, mingled with the rest of the 8.3 million people.
I’ve been loving living in the hustle and bustle that is NYC. I love my job in the fashion industry, I love the friends I’ve made, and I still look at the skyline like it’s my very first time every time I cross the Manhattan bridge with the D train. I love seeing the beautiful people and I’m perpetually inspired by their outfits and attitudes. Simultaneously, every time I manage to get out of the city it’s like I can finally breathe again. And the oxygen is such a relief to my brain that it brings me the tears. And then I think “I’ve got to move out of the city”.
New York City is dripping with problems. I’ve been all around the world and this city is the most broken one out of them all. Everything we accept as “norm” here is what most would consider norm for a third world country. There is no proper system in place to house the homeless, to take care of the mentally unstable, to clean the trash that’s everywhere, to fight the rats, to protect packages from being stolen, to fix housing issues… so we let it all go crazy around us and just keep our heads down.
This week, my roommate and I were fighting bedbugs (luckily we caught it very early and therefore swiftly jumped into action). And so, we evacuated to her fiancés place where the ceiling had just been repaired from literally falling down onto their kitchen. I worked on my laptop as the toilet started pumping water out onto the floor all on its own for reasons unbeknownst to all of us. This is after an already exhausting few months for my roommate who had a thief steal her passport from our front door with the police doing nothing about it.
Of course, let’s not forget the insane cost of living here. It’s really no surprise people are embracing #eurosummer or moving to Europe all together for a softer lifestyle. It’s very tempting for myself as well—with a European passport and all my family abroad, it makes it far too tempting to dip out of here. So why do I stay?
Like I said. It’s a toxic relationship. It beats me black and blue, drains my money as if at gunpoint, and occasionally runs a rat over my foot, and still I adore this city. I can’t help it, it has everything I need. And sure, maybe one day I’ll move to quiet Germany and raise my kids there, but so long as it’s just me and my job, I think I'mma stick beside him.
