If you aren’t following me on Twitter or friends with me on Facebook (and really why aren’t you?) then you might have missed the news. After 10 years, I have left the city that was the closest thing I could ever call home and moved back to my southern roots. I moved around every two to four years growing up (no, not a military brat), so New York is the longest I have either lived anywhere. I do feel a sense of accomplishment with the 10 years landmark in New York City. I think I can call myself a New Yorker now……and I have left. New York, NY to Austin, TX.
I have been in Austin for 9 days now and each day I love it more and more. I am shedding my NYC skin layered with grit, stress, and the buzz of continuous movement to a calmer, more silly, and playful me. In NY you work hard and play harder. After 9 years of doing such, I felt a change was needed. It took about a year to figure out what that change would be and I am so grateful to have to opportunity and ability to relocate.
At first I thought maybe in Austin unwashed hair, little make up, and out of it from moving stress was all that a woman needs to get hit on often and everywhere. But the more I spend time in the town, talking to shop clerks, people at bars and the like, the more that I am realizing the Austonians are not hitting on me, they are just welcoming and happy. Happy.
This is the change of life that I have been looking for. It’s not to say that New Yorkers are not welcoming and happy. The kindness and generosity of New Yorkers is more vast than the stereotype leads people to think. It’s more the city itself with it’s constant grind and non stop work ethic: one opens up pockets of time only to fill it with more activities — more work, more drinking, more running from one thing to the next. It gets exhausting and it takes work to unwind in New York, to find some solitude, a moment of peace, a moment to reflect. And that is what one can rely on, moments. What about an hour, a day, a week. After 10 years, the grind wore me down, but I do not begrudge any of my time in New York. I am proud to say I lived in New York for as long as I did and I am proud to say I am leaving before I became so weighted down by the city life that I grew to hate it.
New York City gave me so much. It is a city I will always be grateful to for allowing me to hide and be discovered at my choosing. I reinvented myself several times over the years, sometimes more domestic and suburban, sometimes more drunk and debaucherous. I had four different careers in New York, none of which would have been able to move in and out of without the community I built and the city’s transient and fluid nature.
I will always love New York.
My last months there I walked the streets thinking, “I no longer belong to New York and New York no longer belongs to me.” Now I realize New York and I will always belong to one another, I just needed to shed skins, this time, in another town.
One of the hardest things about leaving New York is managing people’s emotions about my departure. The wise bartender at my old local watering hole said that when he left NY, his friends refused to believe it until he was in the car with all his belongings boxed up and he was waving goodbye. It’s something about leaving a city that is so iconic that makes people question their position in it he said.
I encountered crossed arms and shaking heads of disappointment (no. you can’t leave.), to the envious, to the angered envious, to those who dismissed my move saying that I will miss New York too much, to those who spoke about me in terms of “running away” and “moving on.” To which all I can respond is that this move is by choice and it is one that was well thought out. The running away and moving on comments is harder for me to process because both have negative connotations. I am not running, but leaving. And the moving on phrase makes it sound like one has to leave NY in order to enter the next chapter. I feel strongly that for me, leaving NYC will lead me to better health, I will be a better partner, and at some point, a better parent. Nothing against anyone who manages to do it all in New York. Hats off to ya’ll. All I can say is that I am doing what is best for my partner and me.
I have made this big lifestyle change with my partner in crime, Nate. Since two Nates make appearances in the podcast and even though I worked hard to distinguish the two in podcast Episode #24 “Sex Reporter,” confusion still arises. So here we go.
I am with Nate:
aka the-one-I-lost-my-hetero-virginity-to-at-26, read Nerve piece.
who I lovingly refer to as Boo on Twitter and FB. (again, why aren’t you there?)
not introduced as “my sex party buddy,” but we do attend such events now.
the one who encouraged me to write about my sex party exploits and helped conceptualize the podcast.
the one who broke up with me and who, for many years, I wanted another chance with.
the one who when things were going down with Carmen starting to sniff around again and asked for another chance.
And so we have.
A new chapter has begun.
