Friday, December 14, 2018

no place like home

When I moved to DC in late August of 2009, I was not very excited to be back. (I lived in DC during high school and had never planned to return.) I drove down from New York in a rented truck with my soon-to-be-ex-roommate. She dropped me off at my apartment and helped me unload my paltry amount of stuff, and when she left I walked a couple blocks to the nearest Safeway, where I proceeded to wander through the aisles, crying. I was sad about leaving my roommate (she was moving to London) and my whole family (who were back in New York). But I think I was most sad about leaving New York itself—I loved New York like it was a person I couldn't live without.

I still love New York like it's a person I can't live without. (I tend towards melodrama occasionally.) When people find out I'm originally from there, the most common question they ask me is whether New York is better than DC. This is a dumb question, and the honest answer is no—there is objectively no better or worse, the two places are very different. The question people don't ask me, but should, is whether I personally like New York better than DC. The honest answer to that question is, unfortunately, yes. I admit that it doesn't make much sense: New York is an extremely difficult place to live. Loving New York is like loving an interesting but tragically high-maintenance person—the rewards may outweigh the hassle occassionally, but you need a lot of patience. Most people shouldn't sign up for that life.

Despite my tragic love for the place, I don't regret leaving New York. I like DC a lot, and it's been very good to me for the last 9.5ish years. I've made a lot of good friends, eaten a lot of good meals, and read a lot of good books. I met Josh here (still a mark in the "plus" column, in case you were wondering). I wouldn't trade my years in DC for anything. It would be very easy to stay here forever.

I realized a couple years ago that most people who have lived in a place for this long do decide to stay indefinitely. Friends who moved here when I did either left years ago or bought houses and put down roots. I could never quite picture putting down roots here—I'm sure I could have, but I realize now that I would have had to actually decide to do it. And it never happened. It's like I've been dating DC for 9.5 years and we're breaking up because I could never quite bring myself to propose.

Moving here for grad school turned out to be the right decision. I had no idea if it would turn out okay at the time—hence the crying in Safeway—but in retrospect, it really did. And now I'm leaving DC for a new town, for similarly worthwhile reasons, and I don't know if it will turn out okay this time, either. I may cry in another supermarket at some point, but I've come to realize there are worse things that can happen to a person. 

1 comment:

Alex said...

Safeway is a terrible store, and I often want to cry when I'm in there.

I remember when I was deciding between Columbia and Gtown for grad school, I cried when I thought I might go to NY, and then I cried when I decided to stay in DC because I wasn't going to NY.