girl-ish
Featuring Pauline Feo Disclaimer: This post may or may not shatter your dreams of coming to New York and having the job/ apartment/life you’ve always wished for and have so repetitively seen in movies and TV. But it may also give you some insight and realistic expectations in case you do decide to live here, so it might not be too bad to read it after all… I should start by saying I’m not a native New Yorker and in fact I haven’t actually lived here for too long, but my soul has belonged to this incomparable city for longer than I can remember. Growing up in Brazil, I’d always known I would end up in the Big Apple at some point in life, though I had no way of foreseeing the circumstances which would lead me here. As I’m sure it happens to just about anyone else on the planet, the idea of being “at the center of it all” was turned into this craving for a city where I could be anonymous, but still feel relevant to the rest of the world. Watching Friends, Sex & the City and reading Gossip Girl contributed to this idealistic view I had of New York and its people – I’ve always thought it to be a place where everyone could fit in and everything could happen – so when my mother moved here, over five years ago, I was finally able to get a glimpse of it with my own eyes. Don’t get me wrong, being a tourist in New York is – for the most part – fantastic. Riding the subway is an amazing experience, especially if you’re from a small town in a way less developed country; the weirdoes you see wandering the city are nothing but great photographic subjects; and all the dirty, smelly corners can be just a minor detail among your countless, amazing ‘big city’ stories that will make all your friends incredibly jealous. And then you decide to move here… Fresh out of college, carrying not much more than huge expectations and an even bigger fear of failure. That was me, about a year ago. I had a plan, I had ideas, and I had a will to make it work. But not everything happens in the way we want/need it to happen, so what can I say? I know there will be a hundred people who’ll agree with me and over a thousand who will swear I’m crazy or just plain bitter, but I stand my ground: New York is not a friendly place. I need to be clear that my problem with ‘The City’ doesn’t go too far from disappointment and hasn’t yet escalated to a point of “I want to get out of here right now”, though I have recently started looking for other options. So it’s not that it’s such a terrible thing to live here, of course it’s not, but no one dares admit it’s not that amazing either. Considering that you don’t have rich parents and/or at least three years of experience in your resume, your struggle here will likely not match those displayed in fictional stories and songs. After all, what’s so wrong with New York City, you might ask? Those great things we experience when we’re tourists and which make us want to live here, that’s right… Those are the exact reasons why people want to move out. The subway? It’s a constant, literal hot-mess and capable of giving you insane amounts of grief at unacceptable hours in both mornings and nights. Those cool weirdoes – people talking to themselves, and wearing all sorts of funky styles – you run into? They can sometimes chase you down the street and yell at you on the trains or worse, they can end up being your roommate or your boss, or who knows, even you could have a crazy side that might stand out in this place (trust me, I would know)… And all that trash and those awful smells, guess what? No, you don’t get used to it; it just gets worse and worse until you actually feel strange about walking around clean streets, while visiting other cities. I guess what it comes down to is this: once you’ve been here long enough to look at New York with a new, more realistic set of eyes, everything changes. The glamour’s gone, and that dazed state you once found yourself in starts to fade away; coming to your senses you realize you’re not ‘living The Dream’, you’re only drifting apart from your original plan, improvising or postponing ‘The Dream’, while distracted with surviving in ‘The City’ where Alicia Keys and Jay Z promised it would all come true. Oops, I guess I am a little (or very) bitter about New York after all. At the very least I can be sure that I’m still trying. I want to study more, I want to work more, I want to make more money, I want to travel more, I want to share more of my creativity and I want to be more. In that exact order. We’ve all been there, some of us succeed, some of us just need a little more time, and some just need a whole new plan. But if there’s one thing I understood while living in New York is this: ‘The City’ is not going to make all your dreams come true. Sure, you’ll often have a good time, you’ll be spoiled with the 24/7 stores and you’ll never have to look too far to find a good restaurant or bar. But most of the times New York will overcharge you for everything, it will reject you and every attempt to find ‘peace and quiet’, yes, it will make you stressed and it will often make you wonder “what the hell am I doing here?”, but at the bottom of everything New York will show you that it really doesn’t matter where you are, YOU are the only one who can chase those dreams until they all come true. So NYC taught me some tricks, but by now I’m getting used to the idea and feeling that it might not be the place for me – and maybe it’s not the place for you. So let’s try LA, DC, ATL, let’s try SanFran, CHI-Town, ATX, or even move into a small town or another country. Just, please, don’t count on a certain spot on the map to make things happen. Count on your own strength and determination, find a place with which you can fall in love, a place where you can work and grow, a place where you know you’ll be happy and then, just be. Pauline Feo is a 22 year old graduate of Pontifical Catholic University in Curitiba, Brazil. For the past year, she's called herself a New Yorker. Her interests include: writing for www.pedroandradetv.com, analog photography, and vinyls. Oh, and she loves cats. Well, let us tell you more about New York: The Grass Isn't Always Greener Travel Guide: NYC in 48 Hours Christmas in New York
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