There’s only a couple more days left of me being woken up to the sound of my mother talking on the phone and the echoing thud of her footsteps strolling down our apartment hallway outside my bedroom door.
There’s only a couple more days left of waking up to the sound of birds chirping in the trees right outside my window screeching at one another in a Disney-like chorus. A couple more days of the sound of my ten year old AC cranking out crisp cool air that always leaves me with a sore throat in the morning if I forget to set a timer for it to turn off while I’m sleeping.
There’s only a couple more days of me walking the long blocks down to the train station because the bus isn’t coming. Sweating bullets because it’s humid as hell, but also because it’s impossible for me to walk slowly. Finally getting to the block of the train and passing the barber shops, beauty salons, dominican restaurant, another barbershop and all the bummy men who sit in front of it (they’re a new addition this summer).
Before my development was sold by NYCHA and bought by a private developer, we used to have a garden in front of our house. My neighbor, Carmen, took care of the garden. She was an elderly Puerto Rican lady who was small, pale, had short white hair and wore glasses. I remember getting home from school on half-days and seeing her big green hose snaking through the hallway on the first floor from the backyard out to the front supplying her plants with water. Her garden had a birdhouse, those plastic flowers that blow in the wind, and vibrant plants that I couldn’t name if I tried.
At school I quite literally live in a botanical garden, well technically an arboretum, surrounded by imported trees and quiet suburbia. The area is one of the wealthiest in the county. The college itself has workers dedicated to landscaping and making the campus this picture-esque nature scene. People hike in the woods, lay in the grass, take pictures of the trees, wave at the bunnies, scare off the deer, take long walks in nature.
For a while I refused to be enamored by the garden campus I lived in. Feeling like any feelings of ‘like’ or even ‘love’ towards that space was a betrayal to the city I had at home. I felt guilty.
Like I wrote in my latest blog post, I feel like two versions of myself — one I’ve grown at college and one that I've known all my life, have finally started to merge. Part of the disconnection I felt came from being in two very different environments.
Last semester, I did a meditation program called Awakened Awareness. When meditating I needed to create an anchor place, somewhere, real or imagined, that made me feel at peace. For me, that place was the view from the booth at the pizza shop in my neighborhood, seeing the skyline colored by the leaves of the trees on a cool sunny spring afternoon, waiting for my two slices of plain cheese pizza to come out of the oven while clutching a five dollar bill.
Throughout my school years, I’d get pizza every Friday after school with my mom. I’d run in and order while she waited in her silver Nissan altima. The man who worked behind the counter, who’s name I never knew, knew my order as soon as I walked in the door. He’d put up two fingers, the peace sign, which meant I wanted two slices. I’d smile, nod, and sit down at one of the booths.
At the beginning of the summer when it first set in that I’d be spending the summer without an internship to post on Linkedin, I went to a pier in Williamsburg and sat along the water. It’s one of my favorite places to go. I sat and recorded a video to my close friends story damn near on the verge of tears stressing about how I had no idea what I was doing for the summer, and honestly in the greater scheme of things, I was crying because I don’t know what I want to do with my life.
This summer I figured, let’s just go out and experience things for the plot. Let’s turn off the overthinking and let’s just try to be present. And I did just that.
Being a grown up in my city gives me a whole new lens that I’ve had fun trying out. Whether that be getting into my first 21+ club, going to a block party packed with Black people to find the niggas with the dreads, giggling all night with my friends in their summer Philly apartments, yapping over meals with friends, seeing Meg Thee Stallion preform, or gabbing to my mom for hours in various spots of our apartment, I’ve experienced so many small new things. I feel at home and all I wanna do is set down roots, which is something you aren’t really able to do the four years you’re in college. There’s constant moving, constant traveling, packing my life into duffle bags, never getting too comfortable because I know I’ll have to leave soon. Auntie is tired, y’all!
Summer is almost over and I go back to school at the end of this week. I have not listened to brat by Charli XCX or listened to Chappel Roan’s album either, and yes that does make me feel superior. (kidding). So while, no, this has not been a brat summer for me, it has been one of the best summer’s of my life.
I’ve gotten to see, and not just remember from childhood nostalgia, how beautiful my home is.
New York is ghetto, as fuck. But that is the first thing people say they miss once they leave New York. I love the unpolishedness of the places not yet destroyed by gentrification, I like seeing the characters who colored my childhood all around me--the store owner’s daughter who used to ride her bike in front of the store now sits behind the store’s counter; the pizza restaurant owner is still bald and old, but a little balder and a little older, always wearing his big white t-shirt and loose shorts; my second and first floor neighbors are now our UPS drivers (and also best friends) which is an interesting twist; and, I still fear the possibility of running into my childhood crush every time I pass his block even though that nigga is long gone as it seems.
I’m gonna miss having my mom shout “Kay-Kayyy” every two seconds as she knocks on my door for whatever various tasks or life updates. I’m gonna miss walking to the train and having my silver chariot take me wherever I so desire. I’m gonna miss how the sunlight pours into my room through my blinds on a sunny day and fills it with warmth and color. I’m gonna miss speculating if my crazy neighbors offed their mother because we haven’t seen her in a while or if she’s just on a trip to Puerto Rico (she’s alive, she popped up recently). I will not miss the sound of music playing until 4am in the backyard because the other people we share the back with are having their tenth barbeque of the summer on a random Tuesday night.
When I went away to college I was ready to leave. I didn’t like many people I went to high school with, I was so over public transportation, I felt so bored, and my friendships felt meh (at least in hindsight). I needed to go away to school, I needed to be in a different environment not only to grow as a person, but to see that maybe my home environment isn’t so bad.
It has been a beautiful experience, and at the same time, I’m ready to come back. Maybe once I’m back consistently with no option to return to suburbia in the fall, I’ll come to hate it again and want to leave. But no matter where I’ve gone this summer, nothing compares to the lifted weight I feel when I touch back down in my city and in my neighborhood. For right now, as fucking ghetto as it can be because I promise you people do too much, this is where I wanna be.
I’m not tethering myself to New York forever, but I also think I’m realizing it’s not terrible if I call it home forever. I mean my whole family has, so what’s the problem with that? I have no idea where I’ll end up. As I travel more I think I do start to understand how people can feel at home in places they didn’t originate from, so who knows if I’ll stay in New York. But I have such an appreciation for my home that I maybe wasn’t able to put into words until now.
So, what can a bougie environmentalist/writer get her hands into in her 20s in New York City? Well friends, I’m excited to find out…
P.S I kinda predicted all this in “i wanna be in the middle of nowhere” right before I went to college, so silly how life works.
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