Goodbye to all that (NYC!)
On the impulsive and sort of surreal decision to leave New York City after 13 years
I was a teenager when I moved to New York, and I had the same rose-colored glasses on that anyone who watched Gossip Girl before they reached adulthood did.
At just 19, freshly enrolled at The New School, I was a walking, talking cliché of a 2010s NYC transplant, given my propensity for…
“Loving fashion” ✅
Williamsburg, specifically the Bedford Avenue region, which I thought was the coolest neighborhood in all of New York— besides Nolita! ✅
Smugly announcing that I lived in Bushwick when acquaintances at my job (my now best friend Emily) told me they lived in “lame” neighborhoods (Hell’s Kitchen) ✅✅✅✅✅
Like every other girl who moved to NYC that year, I wanted to grow up and be Andie Anderson or Jenna Rink— a fabulous, fashionable, hot writer who lives in NYC. (Wait, just realizing now—have I succeeded at some of that!?)
And in my twenties, I did it all, all the stuff you’re supposed to do if you are going to be rom-com fabulous in New York City. I worked hard in an office every day with the funniest, cleverest, coolest co-workers. I adored my demanding and very sexy job. I went out with friends at night…and nearly every night.
I dated! I dated nice boys who I didn’t like and then mean boys with cool jobs who I did like. I started my own sports team and took years of pottery and this avant-garde surfing class where you surf on dry land. I made friends, some who felt like best friends but slipped away and some who felt like best friends and still are. I made a neighborhood home and refused to leave.
Until one day, in a post-Covid and post-twenties universe where life started to look and feel really different— I started to look and feel really different— when I realized I did want to leave. Badly.
Did New York change? Yes! Did I change? Also yes!
Long-time readers have heard me bitch and moan about NYC openly and in coded language. You have nicely nodded along and endured soliloquies about leaving for the summer and coming back a changed woman. For years now, I have told the same story, repeated the same party line: we are ready to leave NYC. We just can’t agree on where to go yet.
Less than a week after getting back to NYC in September, I was on Zillow looking at apartments— as one does. Our building was broken into while we were away, and I had some things stolen. Nothing that would ruin my life, but enough to make me feel unsafe, unhappy, and like I wanted to crawl out my skin when the same thing happened again three weeks ago.
Our first weekend back, we made the trek to look at one of those apartments I had seen on Zillow. The timing was all wrong, and I wondered why I was dragging us to go do something so unlikely and sort of irrational.
But then the broker opened the door and let us in, and everything changed…
Well: we finally agreed on where to go!
And, perhaps more perversely…we have already moved there. 🫢