Hispanic, yet white, middle class, yet broke as hell. Everyone in New York is a transplant with the words “Just Be” tattooed upon their hungry chests. I fit right in. It’s funny what minds choose to remember. In a society so intent on looking at the big picture, a world with such a small attention span that we went from TV to YouTube to Instagram video, it’s curious how what we remember isn’t big chunks of information at all. New York City’s constant sensory overload left me only with how warm the Nutella inside the crepe that I bought at that little place on Ludlow St was. It left me remembering the spice on my tongue on my first (ever) dinner out alone at that Indian place with the hundreds of Christmas lights strung along the ceiling and the bizarre twin restaurants next to it. The cold of the rail against my face on the stoop where I spent a night. The dull green of the water and the trees and the exact line where it met the gray of the bloated Central Park sky. The sign on the street that said “Don’t even THINK of parking here” and how hilarious it was because it was an official city sign and oh my god New Yorkers are the craziest. I remember the sparkling bloody knees of the girl at Union Square. Her roller skates looked brand new, baby pink with glitter stars, but she was quickly putting scratches on them—she kept falling and falling and falling. The black sequin skirt she was wearing was getting dusty, it had lost some of its shine. Her grandmother, an eccentric woman with bright platinum hair, really strong biceps, and orange sunglasses, would tirelessly pick her up after every single fall. She would smile encouragingly, dusting off the girl’s skirt with wrinkled hands, a bagful of Band-Aids in her pocket. Above all, New York made me remember the crazy girl, me, who sat on the steps outside a bar at too-many-tequilas a.m., on her 17th day in The City That Never Sleeps, sobbing uncontrollably because the insecurity rocks in her stomach apparently couldn’t be drowned. It wasn’t all perfect. But anyone who’s ever lived in New York will tell you this: tears aren’t as salty in that place. I spent the last two weeks sleeping on a deflating air mattress thrown across the kitchen of an over-prized, under-sized, underground studio apartment, compliments of a very generous family friend. I’ll say it again: Anyone willing to share their living space in Manhattan deserves a damn prize...or at least a diploma with smiley faces on it and unlimited frozen margaritas from Panchito’s in the Greenwich Village. Rodrigo, my host, was an absolute champ about letting me stay with him. After all, I was invading his bachelor pad. But before I knew it, it was August and my last night. New York had worked wonders—after four weeks of pizza and beer and gyros I was finally back to my normal weight. My baggage didn’t seem as heavy anymore; the hunt was almost over, the arrow cutting fast through soggy air. Bags were already packed inside and I sat on the cement stoop on 7th smoking a cigarette, drinking Arizona tea, sucking an orange dry (because hey, I thought it was poetic) and thinking about anxiety and summers and going back. The city’s spontaneity had saved my life and I was worried
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