I don’t know if I should blame this on my ovaries or just the overall softening of my personality in general, but every time I see a baby or an engagement ring, my knees go all weak, I get this knot in my throat, and I can’t help but totally WANT those things with every fiber of my being. I voraciously consume the NYT Weddings & Celebrations section: it’s the second section I read, just after Business. Those happy couples with their un-self-conscious smiles, so confident in their love for each other that they’re willing to trumpet it to the world, have it immortalized in black and white sheets pressed between folders in library archives. How badly I ache for that!
Somehow I have totally become everything I hated only one year ago. What can I blame this on? Aging? I’m 21, it’d be ridiculous for me to even consider wanting any of these things for at least another 10 years. Loneliness? Perhaps, but again, any relationship I’d enter at this young age would inevitably end without ever blossoming into marriage. So I’m going to blame it on the only other thing I know to blame things on: New York, of course.
A few years ago I wanted nothing to do with children or marriage. My parents got divorced when I was at the most malleable age- 13 – and the destruction it caused never quite lifted. Though things have calmed down dramatically over the years, I can’t help but think that Cyanide and Happiness cartoon I posted yesterday had some truth to it. A few years ago I proclaimed I would never get married because it would inevitably end in divorce, as a huge portion of marriages do these days do. Now, it’s not that I think I’ll be part of the minority percentage that sticks it out til death do us part, but instead I kind of still want to get married even though it’ll probably end in divorce. As Jenny Holzer put it, “Romantic love was invented to manipulate women.” I think I’m being manipulated here, but for once I don’t really care.
But back to New York. This place that was supposed to make me tough and unwilling to take any shit has completely done the opposite to me: I’m a total softy now. I’ve always been one deep down, but somehow I’ve shed my hard exterior and here I am admitting I want to get married (ugh, again, I can’t believe I’m doing this).
In my opinion, there are two ways living in NYC can impact you: it can either make you a stronger, harder person, and reinforce those walls you’ve always built, or it can totally fucking destroy those walls and reveal you for the vulnerable human you are. I wanted NYC to do #1 to me, but instead it did the latter. And now, of course, I’m too vulnerable to survive in this war zone of a city. Maybe the point is that I was never tough enough to begin with, and it took living here for three years to show me that. It takes a lot to admit defeat, and that’s kind of what this is: I’m admitting that I’m not the kind of person I thought I was, the savvy, sophisticated, strong person you have to be to live in New York. For a long time I thought I was, and a lot hinged on that: anyone outside of New York thinks of me in that way, whether because they believe that’s who I am, or because I’ve made them believe it.
But really I’m a hopeless romantic who likes nature and silence and books. I love cities, I just don’t think I’m fit to live in this one. It’s a little embarrassing to admit that I’m not strong enough to hack it here, but that’s what I’m admitting: I’d take a fiance, a good writing career, and people who are genuine over pretending I’m tough enough to survive in this place any day.
Of course, I still have at least one more year here. So talk to me in May 2010 when I’m graduating. Maybe I’ll be a lesbian in love with NYC by then or something.
August 21, 2009 at 12:27 pm |
1. You read the Business section of the Times?
2. Call me naive, but I think you can desire romance and marriage and all that while still being a “savvy, sophisticated, strong person.” After all, all I do is compare my life to Sex and the City, and wasn’t that juxtaposition the show’s central argument?
2b. Sex and the City is certainly an accurate representation of city life.
3. You could also blame this on the recession. I love blaming New York for my problems, but it works equally well with the economy. “I feel vulnerable because I have no money and my job prospects are less than zero—I want a husband!”
3b. I definitely totally feel that way. Sadly. Inevitably.
August 21, 2009 at 12:29 pm
1. Yes, because they lump all the interesting technology and internet news under “Business” for some reason.
2. This is true, but for me, I suppose the two feel at odds. I’m sure there are many women better than me who can balance the two successfully (Carrie Bradshaw, for example?).
3. LOL I blame everything on NYC, you blame everything on the recession. C’est la vie.
3b. With ya, as usual.
August 21, 2009 at 12:50 pm |
Well Carrie Bradshaw isn’t a real person, and she’s better than all of us. I like compare myself to her in the dumbest of ways, since I’m neither a sex columnist nor a woman. I’ll like eat a cupcake and feel frisky—”Ooh, so Carrie Bradshaw!” Then I like fart and blow my nose and there goes that illusion.
August 21, 2009 at 2:24 pm
LOL well there is that one ep where she farts in front of Big. Of course she spends the entire episode beating herself up over it, as if she’s somehow not supposed to be human around the person she loves, and instead is supposed to be this pretty poof of a thing who doesn’t possess typical bodily function.
August 21, 2009 at 2:35 pm |
I’m finding all your revelations this summer particularly interesting because I only “met” your internet personality last summer but I too see a very drastic change in you. Not a bad change, but a definite shift. What I think is most interesting to me is that your current shift is putting you more in the category I believe I always put myself: a softy, a romantic, someone who sees a baby and thinks GIVE ME THAT CHILD NOW, a lover of quiet and nature and all that good stuff…and yet recently I have been feeling MORE at home in the city. It’s very strange and I’m not sure that I can add all the odds up–that is to say, I don’t know what this all means. Maybe just that New York is a bitch and sometimes you love her and sometimes you hate her and the same person who can think she will never leave the city can have a very certain change of heart, or maybe that it takes all kinds to make up New York and it has less to do with what kind of person you ARE and rather has to focus on what kind of mindset you are currently IN…I’m not sure this is making sense. Do you see what I’m saying at all? I just think it’s strange/cool/interesting/worth talking about and exploring that last summer I sat at home in suburbia, not being terribly into the NYC scene, and I stumbled upon your blog and identified with everything you were saying 100%. Now we’re more real friends and I still agree with a lot of your ideas, and we’ve become more emotionally similar but also incredibly emotionally different, and I am pining for the city and you are getting ready to leave. I don’t know. Thoughts worthy of discussion IRL? I think so.
Can’t wait to get back to your stoop to discuss and watch you smoke <3
August 21, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Agreed re: discuss this IRL.
The other thing to consider is that maybe I’m just letting who I’ve really been sink into the blog moreso than I did before, when I had a more hardened exterior to ward off the unfriendliness I frequently encounter on the internet. Now that I’m more practiced in dealing with said unfriendliness, I’m more comfortable being myself online instead of this persona I’ve consistently developed. Whatever it is, it’s certainly a shift, and hopefully our readers don’t mind me being so whiny and revelatory this summer.
August 21, 2009 at 3:01 pm |
“Blame” it on Paris.
August 21, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I blame it on you being my roommate and all the times we stayed up late yakking about how we missed our “whatevers” from back home, hahah. Also we’re going to have matching engagement rings and I don’t know if that’s cute or sad(.com).
August 21, 2009 at 5:45 pm |
I think New York has done both #1 and #2 to me: the city life has made me tough(er?) on the outside, but the anonymity it offers has also allowed me to comfortably retain my soft side, revealing it only to those i care about. Oddly enough, i’ve been going gaga over babies too and wanting one (and a husband) very badly, and i think the loneliness we all feel in NYC definitely has a lot to do with that.
August 22, 2009 at 4:28 am |
Hi, so first of all I don’t know you other than through twitter – so hardly at all. This is the second post of yours that I’ve read, the first was the one about you deciding you’ve had it with NYC and that it’s no longer the city you imagined it to be (maybe there have been several of those?). Anyway, I think you’re a fantastic writer, so please keep that up, and I admire that you’re able write any of this and post it with your name attached – I think that takes a level of security that most people never achieve.
As for the way you’re feeling, I agree with Josh about it having to do with the recession, and NYC probably amplifies the effects with its inherent unforgivingness. I’ve been feeling the same lately and have told myself this: The desire for a companion doesn’t make you weak or less independent, it just means that you’ve grown as strong as you’d like to on your own and are now ready for a new stage of growth – one that involves a partner. The cliche being, “beside every strong man is a strong woman,” and vice versa.
So if that’s what you want, pursue it. Oh, and be sure to marry for love AND for money, in this economy it’d be stupid not to.
August 22, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Thanks for the kind words, that was very sweet of you. And your point about being in a new stage of growth is a very apt and interesting one. I will marry for love and love and love, and if money’s involved, then I’ll have nothing at all to complain(/blog) about.