Joke’s On Them. I’m Not From Anywhere.
By: Claire Manship
Tags: New York City, Pandemic, Love Story, NYC

I have fallen back in love with New York City. And not like in that Nora-Ephron-Magnolia-Bakery-I-See-Films-At-The-Angelika way (even if You’ve Got Mail is required viewing and I like those other things a lot, too). I am hopelessly and completely in love with New York.

To tell this romance adequately, I have to start at the beginning. My father was in the Air Force, and although we had longer stays in places than most military families, I never really had a hometown. We were lucky enough to put down roots in Northern Virginia before I started high school, but I never felt like it was my place. Living outside D.C. is fantastic, except for the whole living outside of D.C. thing.

When I moved to New York in the summer of 2011, I was essentially choosing my hometown, and didn’t even know it. My first home was a closet room on the top floor of a famous actor’s Chelsea brownstone, giving me unrealistic expectations about the finance-ruining leases and terrifying sublets to come. I spent my first night as a New Yorker too excited to sleep, staring up at the pink overcast sky and whispering, “I live here, now.”

It was love at first night. It was exactly how I had imagined it. It wasn’t Sex and The City, but it was mine. Not even stepping into a two-foot-deep sidewalk puddle in a snowstorm, or getting shit on by a one-legged pigeon could get me down!

For the first five years, I couldn’t pay my own bills, and took a number of month-to-month part time positions. One at Sur La Table. Another at a bar that has since been condemned. I cared for the children of wealthy Upper East Side families, and came home every night to two bottles of wine. I was single as hell. I struggled to get acting work, and watched my classmates debut on Broadway. In just a few years, I fell into the throws of alcoholism and crippling debt. I was also developing a number of anxiety disorders with well-known acronymic names.

My relationship with New York was sorely lacking. I had become resentful of how expensive my coffee habit was, and how unmanageable my two-transfer commute was. I would pick fights with tourists just to feel something. I moved apartments a seventh time, citing roommate difficulties again. It became clear that I was the one ruining my relationship with New York.

Don’t get me wrong. I would rather live an insufferable pit-of-despair existence in New York, than be happy anywhere else. I’ll take roaches in my cabinets over hiking The Canyon any day. But, there’s a point in every 20-something New York story where you are so depressed, so broke, and/or so lonely that you fall out of love with living here. This is typically the time when people move to Denver or L.A. or Philly, and have a wonderful life. They meet their one true love, and have a kid or two, and contribute to a 401K. Or, maybe that’s just how I’m imagining it. Regardless, this point of despair is a crossroads. Oprah or Frost. Take your pick.

After a couple failed attempts, I got sober and started putting my life back together. I made new friends, and traded the bars for the Lincoln Square AMC. My life was soon about getting my health under control and putting some happiness back in my cup. While pursuing sobriety and undergoing a double mastectomy (that’s a story for another time), I booked some theatre jobs, hosted brunches, and started riding around on CitiBikes. I was cautiously flirting with New York again.

Then, a pandemic.

It didn’t even occur to me to go elsewhere. Most people I knew left, but I would have been uncomfortable in any other place. I spent my days completely alone. I lost my job. I caught the virus. I left my apartment only to walk aimlessly around the neighborhood and wave at people from across the street. A neighbor screamed at me when I asked for six feet of distance to get into the front door of my building.

This couldn’t be the New York I first moved to. Where was the pink sky? Where was the sparkle? Where was the late night diner food? I kept thinking back to that first night in the famous guy’s house: You live here, now. It didn’t matter if this was the New York I once knew. It was the New York I knew now. And what a privilege. Even in her loneliest, scariest, deadliest days, she was still The Center of the Universe.

I made an effort to walk into a different corner of my neighborhood each day, taking note of a chipped façade, or a Black Lives Matter flag. It was quiet, except for the sound of sirens. I ambled past empty storefront after storefront, admiring businesses that no longer were. Conversations with neighbors moved past small talk for the first time in the nine years I had lived here. A new path was unveiled in the nearest park. I made homemade ice cream for my 75-year-old neighbor after she fell in our stairwell.

I was in love again. All-consuming love. Still single as hell, but in the most committed relationship I’ve ever been a part of.