“I wanted to write poems on the fire escape of my New York apartment.”
It was the dream I lived and longed for. New York is the love of my life, and I used to say this with all the hippy drippy beliefs I carried in the universe. New York was the one heartbreak I willingly accepted, the red flag I refused to let go of, the one city I would have swallowed myself for.
Everyone in my life knew this about me. They knew that I loved New York. They knew that I belonged to New York.
But almost no one knew why.
No one knew why the city that never sleeps felt like my soulmate. Maybe it was because I never slept either.
Growing up, I had this lingering feeling that I did not belong to the place I was born in. It was a small town in nowhere, and I did not want to belong to nowhere. I had these big feelings that a small town could not hold. My feelings were loud, wide, uncontainable, and too big for a place that wanted everything small.
Then one afternoon, on our 14-inch Konka TV, I saw New York for the first time. I knew instantly that I was meant for that city. From that moment on, every obstacle felt temporary. I told myself I had to keep rising, because I had not met New York yet.
On September 3, 2025, I finally saw her as my flight descended into JFK. In the distance, the skyline appeared. It was the silhouette I had memorized from vision boards, cake toppers, TV shows, and movies that all smelled faintly of New York City. When I saw her, only her outline, not even touching her yet, it did not feel surreal. I did not feel the ecstasy I had always imagined.
Instead, I could not name what I felt.
I thought the feeling might come when I was walking the streets of Manhattan. If you look at my journal, I have planned everything. The places I would visit. How I would feel the Hudson River. How I would eat that pretzel in Washington Square. How I would do everything as a New Yorker but still a tourist.
But part of me wondered if it was ever about New York at all. Or did I simply want to escape. Because the feeling I always imagined I would have in New York was something I once experienced on a quiet evening while writing a poem. I will not talk about that at all. But the more open I became to being myself even in the small town, the more often I started having that feeling.
Maybe New York felt dreamy because she belonged to herself. She was allowed to be big, loud, complicated, and loved anyway. And maybe I was not longing for her. Maybe I was longing for that kind of belonging.
Was I afraid of oblivion, or was I simply searching for a place to fit.
I still do not know.
I still love New York with all of me. But even though she is only four hours away, or one hour if I take a plane, I feel whole without meeting her. One day we will meet. And even if there are no fireworks, I know I will belong there.
The same way I belong everywhere now.
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