In my experience, watching people flee this place, there seem to be only a few ways to leave NYC:
1. “The big fuck you.” When New York has skinned you alive. You leave filled with animosity for a city that is relentless and cruel. The New York you know is merciless, dark, dangerous, hateful. You leave broke and broken, forever changed by the darkness you felt.
2. The, “I’m done with you.” New York no longer fits your needs, or fulfills your lifestyle requirements. You’re not pissed, New York just doesn’t offer you what you need. Whether it’s a new school, new job, a small town, a change of scenery, a different pace of life–it’s not here, it’s somewhere else. You leave knowing that there’s something better out there for you but grateful for what you’ve learned from this sometimes wonderful, sometimes awful, city.
3. The “Nooooo!” exit where you leave kicking and screaming. Your partner gets a job elsewhere, you get into a school, but not in New York. You just CANNOT afford it. You are devastated to leave behind the most exciting and beautiful city in the world. You preemptively long for the skyscrapers, the beautiful brownstones, and late nights, the takeout and public transportation. You spend the next two years romanticizing life in the city, depressed, and forlorn, unable to move forward with your non-NYC life.
4. The “whatevs” ambivalent exit. I could stay I could go, easier to go. I’ll come back to visit. Not too many of these. The people in this category know they aren’t lifers. They come to experience the “energy” but are always talking about their plan to return to their small hometowns.
Where do I fit in? A little from column A, a little from column B. Throw in a little C and D just for kicks.
The thing about change is that it has big effects on your body and brain. Lots of mountainous highs, followed by riverbank lows. Storms of confidence followed by buckets of self-doubt.
Relationships are fascinating, right? Because, you never know if your perception of the thing is totally different from the other persons. It’s impossible to tell if the idea you have of a person (particularly those on the peripheral) is even remotely accurate. Or, maybe people and relationships are just far more fluid than I like to believe. Perhaps bonds are formed and broken and reshaped and remodeled more often than I am aware. Maybe I’ve just been living in a relationship bubble. Believing that the world is stationary, that people are mostly static.
Clearly they are not.
Boundaries shift and new ideas emerge.
This is all a very dramatic way of saying, I thought I had a great relationship with my landlord. For two years things have been better than perfect. No problems, no drama, nothing. Just pleasantries and professional transactions.
Now that we are moving, now that we are no longer his tenants, we no longer have this bond, this rapport, this ability to be cordial and friendly. Now, it’s just how much can I screw you over without you noticing? How much money can I get from you before you put up a fight.
And, here’s the thing. It’s never simple. It’s never cut & dry, like, screw him–he’s in the wrong! No, it’s taking all these various components into consideration and weighing the present circumstances (losing half a month’s rent) with future ones (losing a reference) and figuring out which one will be more costly in the end.
It also turns something that should have been simple and smooth into something ugly. Now, we have to seek legal advice and research tenant rights. Now we have to figure out if fighting or hoping for the best will ultimately be a better option for us–for our finances, for our emotional well being, for our egos.
I love so many, many things about New York City. But, one thing I will not miss for one tiny millisecond is the real estate bullshit. It is a racket. A seedy, disgusting bullshit of a situation. Where no one wins and everyone is miserable.
I guess a final fuck you from New York was inevitable. Let’s go out with a bang!
Last winter.
You may remember it as the polar vortex. The winter to end all winters. The winter that made me question whether or not I could continue to be a New Yorker, even after fifteen winters here.
I had a 6 month old at home. So, aside from all the new parent anxieties and hangups that come with the territory, I was also struggling through a horrendously frigid season with a brand new baby in a brand new apartment.
We stumbled upon the dream apartment through friends of friends when I was 7 1/2 months pregnant and decided to seize the magical, anomalous, Brooklyn real estate moment despite the obvious complications.
We’re talking exposed brick, high tin ceilings, giant windows, skylights, wooden floors, a balcony. Let me repeat. A balcony! A BALCONY. As in, viable outdoor space. Enough space for a BBQ, an herb garden, a large tomato plant and a few habaneros. I mean, the place was dreamy. That should have been our first tip off. Who gets to live in this apartment?
Well, we moved in. Because, how do you say no to that apartment? Even though, I was meggo preggo, even though we couldn’t really afford it, even though we loved our previous apartment and even though we weren’t really sure if we should stay in New York with a baby. Even though.
That winter we had no heat.
December passed and we were mostly out of town. Florida and California welcomed us with their temperate winter climates. January was filled with confused phone calls and repairmen who never came and hours and hours and days and days of waiting. We gave our landlord the benefit of the doubt time and time again. We assumed the best and tried to be patient.
February was all angry phone calls and pleas for help. A full month of exasperation and outrage on my end. I sat in my daughter’s tiny, closet-sized bedroom with a space heater running all day and all night long. We played in there, we ate in there, we lived in that room.
In late February we had a few days with no power. Which meant absolutely no heat. She slept in our bed with us. And, two months of sleep training went out the door.
By early March the mean temperature was 37 degrees. And, I was filled with disgust. I gave my slumlord an ultimatum. Get us heat or we call the city. You have one week.
Two weeks later and two weeks prior to the end of our one-year lease, he served us eviction papers. The city had come and written him up and we were out.
Now, had I been single and unencumbered and fearless…well, that would have been a different story. But, fighting the man who controls your heat and water when you have a baby just doesn’t feel smart or safe.
So, we found a place in two days, boxed up everything we owned and moved seven blocks north. Into a charming little duplex with sweet neighbors and a landlord who offered to put us up in a hotel when our shower didn’t work for 12 hours.
There are no exposed bricks with flaky white mold, no high ceilinged rooms to heat, no balcony filled with mosquitos and squirrels and no leaking tin roofs at 2am.
So, here we are.