If you asked me what I thought about New York City one year ago, I would have said that I hated it. If you asked me two years ago, I would have said it was my goal to move there after college. If you had asked me three years ago, I would have said I preferred Boston. As I reflect on this fluctuation in perspective, I consider the influence of my confidence and individuality on my perception of life in the city.
I grew up in the state of New York, three hours away from the city. In high school, my classmates were divided: half loved the city, and half hated it. For many of my peers, New York City was perceived as an image of success.
I live in a town on an island with a small local population that transforms into a tourist destination for the summer months. The tourists who visited our town in the summer were typically wealthy individuals who spent the rest of the year in NYC. However, among locals, there was an “Us vs. them” perspective, causing many working-class people to feel that those who spent their summers on the island were ignorant and inconsiderate.
As I matured, I understood that this mindset stemmed from insecurity. As I thought about my position in this dynamic, I felt connected to my home and the hardworking people who lived there year-round. However, I also felt connected to the ambitious and success-driven New Yorkers fortunate enough to spend the summer on our beautiful island.
Growing up in this small, isolated town, I felt underexposed to the world, and the visiting New Yorkers represented a small glimpse into the outside world. The awareness of the world beyond my island made me insecure. My lack of confidence and individuality reinforced a belief that I would be humiliated, overwhelmed and discouraged by the intensity of the city that never sleeps.
Upon moving to Boston for college, I found settling into an urban lifestyle extremely difficult. The constant stream of light, sound and stimulation put my nervous system into what felt like a never-ending fight-or-flight response. In the first years of Boston life, I swore I could never move to New York City. If Boston was too much for me, surely New York would never feel like home. For a long while, I was convinced I would never want to move to a city again. I held fast to the deep-rooted belief that I could only survive in smaller, quieter places. Instead, I discovered that I was simply uncertain where I fit into this city. I felt out of place in a big, bright environment because I was so used to quiet isolation.
As I came to terms with this feeling of nonconformity, I thought of an idea that author Emma Straub proposes in her novel “This Time Tomorrow” that New York City is a place for all the people who do not fit into the rest of the world. Straub’s description of the city stuck with me this past November when I went to New York City. With this new perspective in mind, I had a completely different experience than ever before.
I enjoyed New York, and I found myself daydreaming about life in the city. I could attribute this shift in opinion to staying in Brooklyn for the first time and the quiet of those streets compared to the perception of a Times Square-centric city I have in my head. I could suggest that my attitude change began when I finally stopped forcing myself to like shopping in SoHo and just accepted it for what it was: chaotic, overwhelming and temporary. Maybe the Magnolia Bakery banana pudding we ate on the steps of the train station really was life-changing. Could it have been Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler’s performance of Romeo and Juliet on Broadway that changed my mind?
While all these things were fun and undeniably entertaining, I can confidently disregard them as the reason for my change of opinion. What made this experience different was the company. Both the people I saw while I was there and the relationship shift within my sense of self were what changed my perspective.
I visited friends from my hometown who had moved to New York City and felt connected to my island in a beautifully unfamiliar way. I sat in a restaurant until 3 a.m., laughing with friends I had known since middle school. I walked the Brooklyn Bridge Promenade and laughed at tourists like I had once laughed at the city-goers who vacationed in my own town. I sat on a bench in Brooklyn and looked at the Manhattan skyline with my best friend, talking about the possibilities our future held. I finally felt the magic of New York.
I understood why they wrote books and made movies about the relationships formed both within and throughout the city. Most significantly, I found that — although I was not sure I belonged in that place either — I felt hopeful for a less limited future and confident about my individuality regardless of physical location. I felt dynamic as if I could effortlessly shape shift from city-goer to island local.
More importantly, I also saw that I did not have to choose to be one or the other. I had become both identities simultaneously. So, although my opinion of New York City has fluctuated relentlessly over my lifetime, I have come to know New York City as the place for the changing opinions of dynamic people, and I have decided I like that very much.