I left many hearts in New York City, but only mine matters. I moved when I was twenty-four, and I left when I was the forty-something, who gave up on the luxury of having all the time in the world to seduce a city that had way too many distractions to ever pick me.
In the nineties, especially later in that decade, there was a romantic and almost fantastical theme about the city that tackles more than half the battle for homegrown filmmakers, who always score high when they use The Big Apple as their requited backdrop.
When I arrived in 1997, I wasn’t actually living in the city, but I convinced myself that I did each time the PATH train pulled into 33rd Street, merely blocks away from my day job at Gap. Jersey City was the best I could do in the early months, but that only lasted until the situation got precarious and I had to quickly find another roof over my head.
It’s amazing how the simple action of revisiting the place where you made the most sacrifices forces you to unearth just how long life really is. The days don’t actually go by fast, and you aren’t aging a mile a minute. Life is really a slow process of growth and re-growth, as the branches get thick enough to insulate you from what you might not want to remember.
In my case, I recall most things, the worst ones graphically, and the good ones are peppered with dramatics, so none of the memories are ever free from mental photoshopping.
But on my recent bus ride to Manhattan from Baltimore, I retrieve the emotions that overwhelmed on the bus ride two decades ago, as the Greyhound bounded from a rainy Cincinnati, to the destined location.
I had been advised not to go by a college friend, and I had been ordered by my mother to stay put in Kansas City and pursue my master’s degree, but all I could muster was my endearing obstinance in retaliation.
I was going to make the city of my dreams love me, and if I could’ve belted out that swinging number from Dreamgirls about the faith in a love so true, that it surpasses doubts and fears, I would’ve done so in my favor. But all I had was the means to make the journey, and a heart bloated with expectations and the youthful vigor that can sometimes be our undoing.
