Is New York City (1) a place you stay in or leave or (2) something else?

How do we stay, how do we leave, how do we something else?

People ask me if I want to stay in New York City or if I’d leave. Yes. And yes.

I am here because I am here. I am here because I made choices that made living here feel good and right, and I am here because of luck and circumstance, things so far outside of my control and grasp I can’t even see them. I didn’t make this home. I made this home. I am here because it’s what’s happening right now. I am in relationship with New York City, with Brooklyn. 

Santa Fe is the cool girl I have a friend crush on, who I admire from afar. I have a hunch we like the same books. I’d love to talk to her. We might never really know each other. 

San Francisco is my childhood best friend whom I feel ambivalent about. I know her so well and I’m not sure if I miss our closeness. Sometimes I do. 

Southern New Hampshire is the friend I just made who came out of left fucking field, who’s teaching me to take big breaths, jump into quarries, and climb mountains. 

Brooklyn is the friend I found when I was finding myself. Brooklyn is the friend I made when my closest college friends moved, to Chicago, to Ireland, back to California, back to New Haven. Brooklyn is the friend who sat next to me on the couch while I sobbed, who tried the first bite of some weird dinner I made up and said, this is actually kind of good. With Brooklyn I play board games, with Brooklyn I get high and watch movies, with Brooklyn I go on walks, with Brooklyn I look at birds and at the lake. 

Sometimes talking about living in New York feels very different from actually living here. Sometimes talking about living in New York feels like talking about a movie starring New York, written by New York, and directed by New York. Sometimes it feels like talking about a movie written by a bunch of people who haven’t seen the movie. Sometimes it feels like reading comments on a long-form article, contextless and random and absolutely enthralling. 

Sometimes when people ask me if I think I’ll stay in New York, they’re asking, Do you want to raise a family in New York City? Sometimes they’re asking, Do you want to attempt to buy property in New York City? Sometimes they’re asking, Should I have tried to keep living in New York City? Would I be happier or sadder if I had stayed? Do you know how to unlock happiness, in relationship to or regardless of place? 

So many people leave New York. So many people stay. 

I dislike this binary because it implies that it covers all the options for how one can relate to a place. There is so much more, I think.

There are friendships that last only a few days, that I learn lessons from years later. There are friendships that last years, and then end, and then restart. There are friendships that fizzle out. There are friendships I forget about completely until I remember them. There are friendships that become family. There is family that becomes friends. 

When I was in college, I had this recurring joke with my friend where when I was in her dorm, when the night came to a close, I would hold out my arms like a zombie or a kid who wants to be picked up and say in a baby voice, take me home. In this case, home meant my dorm, a ten-minute walk away. For a little over a week in high school, Keur Sadaro in Senegal was home. Another time, many times, home was 219 Stanyan Street. One summer, home was my friend’s family’s basement on the Upper West Side. One Christmas, home was a room in a cottage in my friend’s family’s house in the middle of nowhere, England. I am quick to call places home. It has nothing to do with how long I’m there, or where there is. 

All these homes are on the mish mosh map folded inside or inscribed upon my heart. They stay. I stay, too. I leave, and I stay.