On Manhattan

I am one of those rare breeds of people who was actually born and raised on this island. Not that I really consider myself rare, as there are quite literally millions of other people who grew up here as well. However, I have come to find that evolving into a normal, functioning human being after having grown up in Manhattan seems to be considered an anomaly by most. It wasn’t until I got to college when I even realized there was anything particularly exceptional about growing up in New York City. However, after some surprisingly shocked reactions to stories about my upbringing, I realized that not many people were raised in such an environment.

I began to think that maybe it was, in fact, a bit unusual that my elementary school's playground was on the roof of a building, and that gym class was held in Central Park twice a week so that we had a chance to interact with "nature". However, in "nature" would a police officer come tell you and your friend, Jenny, that it is, in fact, illegal to build a tree house in your very favorite tree; even after you had dragged several pieces of plywood from Broadway, all the way down 92nd street, and into the middle of the park?

Maybe not every kid went trick-or-treating inside a building, or, for that matter, chose a friend based on the size of her building, and how much candy you could potentially collect if said friend happened to invite you over for Halloween. Perhaps it was a little strange that, each morning, it was my doorman, Benji, who vigilantly watched me walk the block to school to make sure I arrived there safely. And maybe not everyone was friends with a homeless man named Alan who lived on their block, who also happened to be the subject of one of their brother's college essays.

It was certainly hard to imagine that most people weren't half-raised by a Belizean woman named Geraldine, who would dangle you by your feet and drop you into a warm bath head-first, chase you around with a butcher knife when you acted up (all in good fun, of course), and later in life tell you that you needed to date a man with "some meat on them bones." These were all things I considered to be fairly standard until I began to spend some time outside of New York City, and realized that most people don't really grow up under such circumstances.

I have found there are two types of people who grow up in New York. There are the people who believe that New York is the absolute center of the world and could never imagine living anywhere else. Then there are the people who leave at their first opportunity to get out, and subsequently spend the rest of their lives trying to NOT live in New York. I belong to the second group. The problem is, no matter how many times I actually manage to leave, or how hard I try to stay away, I always end up right back where I started: Manhattan.

Don't get me wrong, I can see why people idolize this city. I can see why they think it's the center of the world, because it is in so many ways. I can see how the pizza alone would make a person never want to leave this little island. I can see how someone could feel like they were constantly missing out on the pulse of life by living anywhere else. I can even see how some people may find it exhilarating to know that there is a 67% chance they will be peed on, cursed at, or killed by a crazy cab driver, just by leaving the house! Yes, New York is undoubtedly an exciting world of possibility.

However, it’s all just too much for me. While possibilities and choices are obviously blessings in life, when provided with too many of them, these blessings can very quickly transform into a curse. Just figuring out where to eat dinner with three friends on a Tuesday night in New York can become an unbelievably stressful task unto itself. That is if you can even find that many people free in one night. Getting four people together for a meal in Manhattan generally takes months of planning. Then there’s the picking of the restaurant.

What kind of food? What neighborhood? Is that place expensive? You saw whom there? It’s called Sweat? Why would anyone name a restaurant Sweat? I’ve never heard of that chef. No, I don’t really feel like Bangladeshian food tonight, also, the F train is too far from my apartment. Can we just grab some pizza? Obviously not. It’s just too much!!!

I think it is this abundance of possibility that gives people the feeling they will be missing out on an entire lifetime if they leave Manhattan for even five minutes. However, with so many things to do, see, and eat at all hours of each day, I feel like I am constantly missing out on something anyway just by making a simple choice of which party to go to on a Friday night (generally I am invited to hundreds, as you may expect). It doesn’t matter where I go or what I do, there is always something better, more exciting, and, for sure, much cooler than what I am doing at any given moment. And, God forbid, I choose to stay in one night with a cup of tea and The Little Mermaid. That is pretty much considered suicide in Manhattan.

I fully understand that such a world of endless possibility can actually be incredibly exciting and creates an undeniable energy that buzzes through every inch of this city. However, the fact that it makes my head spin on a daily basis is exactly the reason I should not be living in Manhattan. There are many people who were built for such a place, and at one point in my life, I may have even been disguised as one of them. However, it’s time to admit it. It’s time to say the one thing you are never supposed to ever say in Manhattan.

I can’t keep up.