Was it the wrong place or the wrong me?

Thoughts on the geographical cure

It’s eleven and the Great Blue Heron touches down in the same spot at about the same time I saw him two days ago. I’m pleased to see him again. The mother duck with her brood of four ducklings swims past. They’re bigger than they were last time, exploring more.

When I used to commute on the New York City subway I saw the same people most days—off by a few minutes here and there as we caught different trains. Even though our routines were similar, even though we were clearly neighbors, I never introduced myself to them. I can’t remember a smile or even an amicable nod.

It would have been so easy but, lonely as I was, I think I was more afraid of being seen. I lived in New York for eight years and never managed to make deep friendships much less that ephemeral thing called “community” people talk about so often now. I worked in a restaurant in my neighborhood for three years—the owners also ran the bar next door. Even that didn’t make me feel like I belonged to anyone.

Met Museum roof selfie in 2012.

Now, working at a restaurant in Portland for the last year and a half, I see a few of the regulars out and about and know them well enough to say hello and stop for a chat. It’s lovely knowing I might run into someone I know at the farmer’s market or at a literary reading, to grab impromptu drinks or a snack afterward. I go to a local coffee shop and a friend of mine shows up with her baby a few minutes later. The woman who used to watch my chickens when I went out of town waved at me when she drove past in her car. I realized I used to be scared of other people only when I noticed that I’m not anymore.

I keep wondering what changed. There are a few possibilities. One is that Portland, Oregon and New York City are very different places. Maybe it’s just easier to find a niche in a city of 630,000 than eight-million. Maybe I was just closed off. Most of the time I lived in New York, I remember feeling mildly anxious. My soul rattled with the energy of it. The constant noise and company and buildings looming over me. When I went for a walk or took the subway it was all I could do to carve out space for myself.

Going back to visit New York, I find the same energy intoxicating. I love the noise. I love the thump of the streets—knowing I’m only going to experience it for a few days or a week. I love watching so many people heading wherever it is they’re going. It’s like relaxing into a big wave when I know it will sweep me safely back to shore. I’m happy to visit this place I know so well and feel so comfortable in; I don’t think I want to live there again.

This is not an anti-NYC essay. There was one time when I fostered puppies and took them to an adoption event via the subway and everyone slowly circled around me, entranced by their puppy magic. It’s one of my all time favorite moments.

I wonder if I’m simply a better neighbor now than I was in my twenties. Maybe I’ve found so much community and friendship here in Portland because I’ve learned what it is to be a friend and to have a community. As an adult with responsibilities taking up so much time, relationships aren’t something you can take for granted the way you did in school. But my younger self is guilty of assuming I’d always fall into friendship.

I finally met a few people I consider friends in my last year of living in New York. Maybe it just takes that long to meet your people. I don’t know! I did try.

I fear I’ve gone in a circle.

I could keep listing all the cultural and physical differences between these places and between myself at ages 19-27 versus 27-35 for pages. It’s impossible, really, to figure out how the various factors contribute to the happier place I find myself in.

A friend recently got an astrological cartography reading—looking at how places on the map might influence her based on her birth chart. X might be a better city for love. Y could be better for creativity. Nothing good at all can come from Z! I wonder what someone would say about my relationship to both of these places: the only cities I’ve been an adult in.

There’s an idea I’ve thought of often: you can’t run away from your problems if the problem is you. No matter where you go, you follow. It’s made me skeptical of the geographic cure for what ails you. But it also seems true that we become different version of ourselves in different places. And, no fault of New York’s, but the person I was when I was there wasn’t very happy or centered not was she one I like much overall.

Perhaps everyone can look back at the place where they went to college and spent their twenties and say the same thing.

But I don’t think I would have gotten onto a first name basis with booksellers and librarians and baristas at the coffee shops I frequent if I’d stayed in New York. Or become the person who recognizes a Great Blue Heron or different groups of ducklings as my neighbors. Frankly it’s hard to imagine my New York self becoming someone who went to the park every day just to sit. Every time I landed at the airport after a vacation, anxiety washed over me as soon as I waited in the cab line to go home. I just wanted to stay in my apartment. To close up like a clam.

Here, flying over the mountains and river and parks and forests, I think “I’m home. I’m home” and the joy only grows as I get closer to my apartment. What a wonderful place full of wonderful people. How could I live anywhere else?

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Notes:

I’m off to New York City to go to my best friend’s wedding! I’m looking forward to what will be a hectic long weekend with a lot of people I love and don’t get to see very often. I assume my hair will immediately go insane with power and humidity and have packed one million bobby pins so I can do something reasonable with it for the wedding. The rest of the time, she will be free to cause maximum chaos.

If you have summer travel coming up and need a good book I’ve got to recommend Laura Leffler’s debut novel Tell Them You Lied. It’s a thriller/mystery about a toxic friendship. The characters are all in or want to be part of the art world. It scratched *so* many itches for me.

I’ve read some disappointing mysteries lately but this was so good I literally finished it in one day! I was supposed to be doing other things but could not put it down! (The book has a reference to a building called Highsmith and I can’t help but feel like it’s a reference to Patricia Highsmith who truly is an all time master of suspense.)

A few months ago I listened to a wonderful interview with adrienne maree brown on a favorite podcast,The Nature Of. I’ve been working my way through some of her books since then and found so much wisdom in Loving Corrections. Maybe it will also give you some guidance you need to hear right now.

Until next week,

Do you think the place you live has changed you?

-Tove

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