New York City

There are few things I know for certain: one, if left to my own devices, I am a night owl, two, I could eat pizza every day of my life if it wouldn’t ultimately lead to some kind of health crisis, and three, I was a New Yorker in my past life. That is truly the only explanation I have for why I feel so at home in a city that I have never lived in.

I was about nine years old the first time I ever stepped foot in Manhattan, and I can still feel the magic of that first visit in my bones. My family drove in from somewhere else, and when we parked, I got out of the car and craned my neck to see the tallest of buildings I had ever seen. My jaw fell open in wonder, a near-silent gasp escaping my body. These giants, these skyscrapers, surrounded me in their magnificence and grandeur, sunlight shimmering from hundreds of windows like glitter. For you Twilight fans, it was as if The City imprinted on me in that moment, because I have never been the same since. Can a city be your first love? Your soulmate? Can a city change your genetic makeup and fill your body with a lifetime of longing? Because that is what New York City feels like to me, like it shifted my DNA, and lived in me before I took my first breath. Like I’ve known it for centuries and stepping foot in it at nine years old rekindled a flame I didn’t know existed.

I am 43 now, and NYC still calls to me, a beacon, reaching the center of my very being in a way I don’t understand and will never be able to convey in words. It feels like home. It feels like more than home. How is that possible? The only reasonable conclusion is that I lived there in a past life, or maybe a future one, because time, as we all know, is not linear. (Basic quantum physics, y’all.) It is the only way to explain what happens when I step off the airplane at La Guardia or JFK, how my body settles in as we cross the bridge into The City, moving though boroughs on the way, relaxing more with each mile. There is a calm and a comfort that courses through the deepest parts of me, a familiarity as I get closer, an urgency to return to your own bed like when you are almost home after a long trip. Like returning to your true self and everywhere else is Purgatory, even the places you grew up, even the places you found love, and even the places you found your voice. They all come together- all the parts of me finding each other- in me in New York City.

I’ve been here before, a part of it, a red blood cell in the heart of it all, beating with something that doesn’t exist anywhere else. That memory I can’t recall from another time. Another version of me. The City is me, and I am The City. I am the donuts and ping-pong at midnight. I am the Cuban restaurant on a Wednesday serving empanadas and dancing. I am the boy on the subway that takes a violin out of the case to play a song for the strangers. Every visit is a return. Every visit is magic and promise and excitement and timelessness and madness and lights and Central Park and pedicab drivers robbing you blind but not caring because the wind in your face and the music in your ears was worth the price of admission. Every visit is going home. It is why I asked my husband if we could get married there, and because he loves me and can see the Empire State Building aglow in my heart, he said yes. It is why I have asked him to just give me a year there, and he said OK. Maybe I will find remnants of the me that lived there before, or maybe I can plant little clues for my future self to discover. Because again, how can home be a place you’ve never lived? Unless I have, or I will, or all of the above.

But the thing I know for sure is that sometime, somewhere, I was a New Yorker and I know it the way a mother knows the scent of her child. It is true love. It is home. And it will wait for me for a thousand lifetimes because some things can’t be undone.

I love cities. I could write a whole essay on why I love cities. And I will. But today, I will only write about this one. The City. New York City.