adventures of mascarah.

[Love:City] My City & Me

Most of my Texan friends still don’t understand exactly what I’m doing here. They all can “like totally see me living here” but don’t understand the stigma. Why or how I ended up in this place that some people find so hard to navigate.

I guess the truth is that I was having a hard time navigating my life UNTIL I got here. In Texas my life consisted of a crazy start up job with a man who serial-dated my friends (25 years his junior) and made me travel weekly to places like Champagne, Illinois and Norman, Oklahoma. When I wasn’t working I was out drinking like everyone else - listening to live music, on a lake, in a bar, in a field, and sometimes in a car. Life was an endless stream of boat parties and hangovers and djs and bands and breakfast tacos.

And I loved it. And I was in love. And he was a part of all of my best moments there, and at the root of my worst. He made me know what real love was like and he gave me my first true heart-break. The kind that makes you feel empty and lost and scared and a prisoner in your own body, unable to tell your heart to let go…

After him I went on a relationship binge -a  Real Worlder and a return to my would-be Bachelor and a sex toy mogul later, I ran away to NY.

I decided three weeks before I moved here on a boat in the middle of Lake Travis after a three day holiday weekend bender (Happy 4th of July!) that I was going to leave. And I left the way I came- without any real plan other than to go.

My company let me keep my job so I had an income and my (at the time) best friend had moved from Texas to NYC so she flew down with me and we made the long drive away from the longhorns and cacti and carefree humid Texas breeze above the Mason Dixon line, weaving through the deep south doing a BBQ tour eating brisket, pies, chicken wings, and sweet tea in the homes of complete strangers.

It was magical. I can still feel what it was like to run through the grass in Tennessee chasing dandelions. It was the first time in a long time I’d felt really happy.

When I got here I was lost, often. Even today, I still turn the wrong way down streets, get on heading uptown when I wish to go downtown. But I was only lost in the physical sense - my mind was wandering, and my heart was still mixed up, but I felt home, I felt found.

It’s been 2 years and 9 months and I still get excited when I see the NY skyline - a little internal squeel runs through my body and I just feel lucky to call this place home. Like many films and tv shows, NYC is not only the city in which I live, but it is an active character in my life.

We’re in it pretty deep, this city and I. Sometimes it kicks my ass. I haven’t been on a good date in 2009, I am broke more than I’m comfortable. It is loud and often manic. It has given me a bevy of first dates but few second - the men of Texas seemed to love me way more. I am so pale I’m almost clear. This city is increasingly unfriendly to dogs, has rents that make me cry each month around the first, and sometimes appears to have so many choices it is frustrating to settle on one.

We have our ups and downs - this city and me. But for every hurdle there’s a surprise, an adventure, a painting that I find myself staring at for hours wondering the stories it could tell, a wrong turn leads me to an amazing block with fantastic gelato, good food finds me at all hours, a random conversation with a stranger in an Irish dive bar results in a life long friendship…THE FOOD! The culture. The laughter. The life. The POSSIBILITY.

How can I blame this city of mine for giving me a rough go sometimes? For every bad moment he blows my mind. He continually teaches me that I can do it. That it will happen. And that all I have to do is try.

And resoundingly, repeatedly…I find myself saying….ONLY IN NY. My City.

[This is part of a weekly series on my blog where I am asking my friends, mentors, confidants, and strangers to share their city story. If you’re interested - email me]