{Personal Essay} The Manhattan Experience

The Manhattan Experience

My younger brother recently moved to New York City. He’s accepted a job at a big law firm there, and as of two weeks ago, he has moved into a one-bedroom apartment with his longtime girlfriend.

As expected, he’s already sent pictures of his place to the family—the tiny kitchen, the exposed-brick wall, the bathroom with literally zero storage for toiletries—and as expected, he loves it.

I lived in Manhattan for 2 glorious years after college, and because of this, I have mixed feelings about my brother’s move: I’m crazy jealous, I’m super happy for him, I want to move back right now and start a little Starr family colony in his East Village building, and at the same time, I want to tell him to run for the hills and move away immediately.

I look back on my time in New York with loads of nostalgia and rose-colored glasses. Although I truly loved living there, I believe that time has softened the edges of my memories...

Yes, I lived in a 250 square foot apartment in which my tiny Ikea couch abutted my bed, which abutted my fridge, but I lived in the East Village!

Yes, I was pretty broke and could only dream of owning the items in the windows of the stores that I passed by on my way to work in Soho, but I worked in Soho! [For a few months when I first arrived…]

Yes, when walking home I would often step over human feces or vomit on the sidewalk, get harassed by a young homeless teen holding a LIVE sewer rat, and/or have to sidestep around someone passed out on my front stoop, but I was a Manhattan girl!!!

Yes, there was a guy named Fridge who rode an electric bike around the neighborhood playing “Billie Jean” from a loudspeaker at 3am, but I knew his name and it was a great New York story!

I lived in the center of the world and I could feel it every time I stepped outside. Over the guy on the stoop. Out onto the trash-scented sidewalks.  

I was happy as a clam.

As anyone and everyone will tell you, and as you may have experienced yourself, there is just something about New York that cannot be replicated. It’s the energy, the people, the arts, the culture, the architecture, the concrete, the traffic, the noise, the everything. In many ways, it’s paradise.  

But, as I’ve thought about my brother living and working there now (and for the foreseeable future), I’ve started to reflect a bit more on my time in the city and how it affected me.

On the one hand, I was really independent and energized and inspired living there, but on the other, all of the people made me feel lonely sometimes, and I often felt like a failure and a fraud (especially when it came to my art, because isn’t everyone in New York and artist and isn’t everyone more talented than you are?).

The other thing—the thing that I’ve been ruminating on most often lately, is how materialistic I became when I lived in New York.

I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly materialistic person. I like to shop as much as the ‘typical’ girl; I love a cute dress, a fun pair of flats, a unique tote bag, but I’ve never been consumed with these things and until living in New York, I never felt that I needed certain things in order to become the 2.0 version of myself.

This may not happen to everyone who lives there, but I’m very sensitive to my surroundings (easily-influenced might be a better way to say it), and I found it difficult not to covet all of the items that were constantly on display as I lived my life.

I ogled the outfits that I saw on the subway--the watches, the purses, the jewelry--and I felt lesser than those who could afford them and pull them off. More than ever before, I wanted money—not so that I could be rich or live more comfortably (or heaven forbid, save for retirement or a down payment!?)—but so that I could buy a designer handbag and maybe a watch, one that would match the others that I saw on the crossed arms in my meetings.

In a way, I loved this part of New York. There was so much to look at, to see, to take in, to strive for! But there was also so much that made me feel like I needed more. 

My friends still make fun of me for something that I said to them when they planned their first trip to come visit. They asked what they should pack, and I specifically said, “Wear comfortable shoes to walk around in, but you know, not tennis shoes or anything, something stylish.”

Who did I think I was? What did New York do to me? Or rather, why did I allow New York to affect me like that?

Since moving from New York, I’ve noticed that my need for stuff  has been on a continual decline. Now that I live on Cape Cod, over an hour from the nearest city, I’m finding that I’m becoming the least materialistic version of myself that I’ve ever been.

I’ve noticed that when I don’t see stores, clothes, shoes, and bags all the time—when I don’t pass by them on the streets or see them on the billboards in the subway or on the sides of buses driving by, I don’t think about them.  I need very little, and in fact, I am often disgusted by how much I still do have, despite drastically curtailing my consumerism.

As I recently said to someone who is moving to a location outside of a big city for the first time in her adult life, I am learning that I am a better version of myself outside of the city. I don’t think everyone is as easily-influenced by the energy of the city as I am, but I think that even the most thick-skinned of people would find it hard to ignore all the stuff-related stimulation in New York.

When talking about the lessons I’ve learned thus far in life, I often share my favorite quote by Jon Kabat-Zinn, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

But, as I’ve reflected on the various places that I’ve lived and how they’ve shaped me, I’d like to add that sometimes, “Where you go can influence who you are." I can say this because I've experienced this phenomenon firsthand.

As I grow older and settle into my fourth state of residence as an adult, I’m learning that I want to live somewhere that makes me a more thoughtful, open, and less-materialistic person, and that for me, no matter how much I love the noise and art and colors and people, New York is not that place for me.

I can only hope that my little brother will be better able to resist all of the stuff-related pressure than I was when I lived in the city. 

But if he doesn’t, I hope he’ll throw a watch or handbag my way at some point in the future...hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?