7 Years And 284 Days

I remember a little while after we moved here, maybe in late 2007, Kat was telling me that she had a five-year New York plan, after which she wanted to go somewhere else. At the time I couldn't see where she was coming from, at all. Even though I knew when I moved that New York was not going to be my forever place, and that at some point I was going to end up somewhere else, at that moment in 2007 in the midst of bars and restaurants and experiences and adventures I could not imagine setting an end date to my time there. I was carrying thousands of dollars of credit card debt, my bank account balance was often smaller than the amount of cash in my pocket, and I was paying an Ohio mortgage payment to share a shoebox and yet I couldn't get enough of it. In my view that astronomical rent that was half of my monthly salary was the price of admission, and it was wasted with every opportunity I let slip by and so I promised myself that whenever I was presented with an opportunity to not be in my apartment, to do anything different, I would say "yes" if I could.

$80 steak dinner at one of the most famous steakhouses in New York? Yes! Another beer at 1am on a Tuesday? Yes! Rooftop barbecue with these random people you just met at a bar? Yes! Not all of those yesses ended in interesting stories, but taken together they add up to a large portion of my adult life. Adult kickball leagues, and cookouts, and gallery hopping in Chelsea for the free booze, and insane 4th of July parties on a stranger's roof, and swilling champagne before a show on some stoop outside of Webster Hall, and a dice game in a bar back room, and dressing like Ryu on Halloween while watching the Get Up Kids tour on the tenth anniversary of Something to Write Home About. Trips to DC, Philly, and the eastern shore of Maryland.

Saying yes to these and a thousand other things was a fast and easy way to burn my money, but was the only way I could imagine to build my life in my 20s. Eight years of late nights, long afternoons, and liquid lunches. Eight exhausting, exhilarating years of scraping every inch of New York that I could afford, and several that I probably couldn't. And after those eight years the thing I will miss the most out of all of the bars and restaurants and clubs and rooftops and parks and stoops is the extended family that sprung up while I was working and living my way through New York. The foodies, the goofballs, the book nerds, the boozy comrades-in-arms that all of those yesses bought me.

When Joan Didion wrote on why she left new york forty-seven years ago she wrote the experience countless other New York transplants (including myself) would have in the years to come. One of the most striking passages is when she talks about going out for a hungover brunch with a friend of hers and she writes, "I was not then guilt-ridden about spending afternoons that way, because I still had all the afternoons in the world." This was my New York. We had forever, you all and I, for black tie dinners and for late-night diners; for iconic landmarks and holes in the wall. And it breaks my heart to know that our forever, at least in New York, has run its course.

I always knew that New York was not my forever place. Every moment I was here - even the stressful, headache-inducing moments at work - felt like Not Real Life. Like my time in New York was a gap year that I used to fill myself with experience and decide which ones I wanted to take with me into adulthood. It wasn't a place I could be serious, not really. It wasn't a place I could be focused at all. It was too much of everything, both aggravating and fantastic, which in the end was too much for me.

Eight years of memories in New York City, built in spite of and amid its frantic bustle, its claustrophobic closeness, its lack of private space, and its increasing dismissal of anyone not already rich. It's an easy place to hate and an easy place to love because if you can withstand the pressure and the grind it will show you almost anything that you want, and in all that time the best that the city ever showed me were all the people I went through it with.

I was very careful when I left to not say goodbye to anyone, because goodbye is an awful thing to say. I will see you all again. I can't picture my life otherwise. New York, the fantastic city that never felt like home, I can leave behind. All of you that brought me there and led me to stay for as long as I did, to all of you, I'll see you soon. Cheers.