Good-bye Manhattan.

Good-bye Manhattan. Three words I never thought I’d say. No one that lives on this crazy little island says “Manhattan.” We say “The City.” Simple, short and yet, infused with meaning. It’s the Magic City. It’s the Cruel City. It’s the city of dreams and garbage, car alarms and cabs. It’s the city that never sleeps and never lets us sleep. It’s the place I’ve always wanted to be. Well, not always but as long as I’ve been in this country. I used to see people coming out of high-rise residential towers, rushing out into the street, and think, do you know how lucky you are to live here. Do you even realize how amazingly, unbelievably lucky you are to live in the city…

I still remember the first time I took the green line and got out on 86th street on the east side. I was there with an art class, my first year in college. I lived downtown in the dorms and was out exploring the city and looking for the cheapest eateries on daily basis, but I’ve never been this far uptown. We were going to the Metropolitan Museum and for some reason, while I’ve forgotten so much, so many monumental and critical life events; the details of that day are etched into my memory. Getting out at Lexington Avenue, the walk to the Met, the hours spent there going through Northern European Galleries — the Early Renaissance, when Europe began waking up from the Dark Ages and started believing and hoping again, sparking new and exceptional art in modern day Germany, France, Netherlands and Austria. So many attachments, even obsessions, were formed that day. An obsession of living near 86th Street, an obsession with the vastness of the Met, an obsession with art and art history that would turn into a life-long passion.

That dream didn’t come true for many years but I’ve never quite forgotten it. And then there it was, I was walking out of the 86th street subway station to meet a real estate agent. My budget was by all means modest but I couldn’t be more excited as if she was showing me palaces. With every tiny room, I tried to imagine space-saving solutions, tried to picture covering holes and stains with art and decorations. I was determined to live on the Upper East Side.

I stayed in the neighborhood for 9 years. First on 83rd in a tiny railroad, then on 90th in a cute duplex with a spiral staircase I always loved and then right in the building next door, in an apartment with super high ceilings, lots of character, original oak floors and an incredible, quintessentially New York, brick wall. We even built a balcony looking out to the back garden. It was paradise, who could’ve wanted more….

And then the black plague came and wiped away our bliss. It was a year of loss, of pain and suffering, of hospitals and treatments, of awful side effects, lost friendships, depression, loneliness. I lost a baby. I lost a sense of self. I lost a baby doggie. I lost myself. I didn’t dream in color anymore. I didn’t see beauty and inspiration. I was haunted by what I wanted to be and was not; by what I should have been and was not, by what I was expected to become and did not. I was many things to many people but to me, I was just “NOT”. Not the career-driven woman I used to be, not the diligent hard-worker I’ve always been, not a wife my husband deserved, not a mother to children that were not to be… .a NOT.

I became cut off, trapped inside myself, spiraling down into the NOTs. With every iteration; there were more and more things I was NOT and it was more and more difficult to see things as they were. Our little upper east side pad turned into a dark and dank cave. All I wanted was to get out. To get the fck out of there.

And now we are leaving. The boxes are packed up, the chandelier taken down. I hang on to my last New Yorker self. I got the metro card in my wallet and a canvas bag for groceries. I run to the gym and then go to my favorite café to write this. What will I dream of now? Will it be in color?
 
 Good-bye Manhattan.