This is a chapter from my third book called Love letters
I found this quote that sums it up for me, "Once you've lived in New York, even for a short time, it stays with you forever. It's like a love affair that never ends." These words are attributed to Joan Didion but this is possibly apocryphal. I spent a summer and one year after university working on Wall Street and living in New York. Before that I spent four years studying in Atlanta. For someone who came from a small island in the Caribbean big city life can feel dreamy. All these tall buildings and underground trains and crowded streets and big names. It does feel like they say, the concrete jungle where dreams come true.
Cost of living is high in New York and you do learn to appreciate the smallest of spaces. I lived in a small studio apartment in Brooklyn Heights that was close to train stations, restaurants, a cinema, a bookstore, a hardware store, Key Foods supermarket and Brooklyn Heights promenade. The promenade offers views of Manhattan and the Brooklyn bridge from across the river. Life was a real buzz and felt like living in the fast lane. I often would ride my bike over the bridge and through Manhattan and explore with the curiosity of a tourist. I reached as far as Staten Island carrying my bike over with the ferry. I once got a ticket for riding my bicycle on the pavement.
The new year I was there I tried to catch a view of the ball drop which does not make sense if you are not early and waiting for long hours. But like a never-see-come-see I still tried braving the wet and cold. During my internship we were taken to see the Blue Man Group perform and another time the Yankees play ball. With stories like these it is easy to see how easy it is to fall in love with the big apple. My friend Bard has told me of two theories of why New York is called the big apple. One is that the name originated in horse racing where the prize for winning was a silver apple. The other is that it originated in the jazz scene where the city was called the big apple. What I love about New York is the diversity of people and places. An amazing melting pot of peoples from all over the world.
My time in New York would have a sad ending as that was the beginning of my mental illness diagnosis. Life in the fast lane turned to a life of survival but fortunately and gratefully nurtured by the familiarity and comforts of island life that I call home. These days I am settled and content and I can look back with fondness at a place I once called home. A place that poets and writers have long written glowingly about. It is a city that has inspired and captured the imaginations of people from all over the world. New York was my old home and after twenty years can be considered an old love of mine.
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