As these things typically go, I’d dreaded our last week in New York inevitably being one of immeasurable sadness. Amid big changes I tend to panic slightly at the bigness of it all, and at the momentary paralysis of feeling stripped of control, of confidence in my own choices, and of the logic (“logic”) that led to them in the first place. But there was hardly any time to dwell—between securing a tenant to take over our apartment, wrapping things up at work, saying goodbye to friends, to coworkers, to our favorite walks, and navigating the madness in our decision to leave packing to the last day, I blinked and when I woke up it was the early hours of Sunday morning, and I was in a van headed toward Kennedy Airport.
I wrote this when I was up in the air, 36,000 feet higher, Los Angeles–bound, my first spare moment in a long, long time. I’d been wondering at the casualness with which I handled all the last-glance instances. I tried, of course, to over-sentimentalize everything in the familiar way I always tend to (this is my last subway ride! my last walk along Waverly! last Duane Reade errand!). But the truth is I began those farewells the moment I knew we had that New Zealand visa in hand, operating in finalities and an extra sentimental care in my interactions, intentional or not. And the larger truth is I was ready for this leaving almost since the day I arrived. New York was never going to be forever. And maybe that knowing was enough to keep me alert and suspect to the incredible highs and lows (and consequently a high concentration of exclaiming/complaining) that came with my life in New York.
It’s hard to leave something you love, but perhaps harder to leave something you loved and hated in near-automatic intervals, and in the end I’m not sure which prevailed. It’s probably this uncertainty that kills me quickest—wondering what little things I could have done so it tips in one direction over the other—and the question is a big one that lingers.
In any case, what I did leave behind was not quite the Sunday morning strolls or the Friday night smoke and lights or the summertime ice cream cones. It was, certainly, the significant and instrumental people, friends both new and old, who colored my days there. Their good cheer and we’re-all-in-this-together attitudes were why I surrounded myself with them in the first place, and what I’ll miss most.