This is the third time in six months that I’ve been in New York. I didn’t expect my love affair with this city to be so fast and furious. I was adamant that I would have the opposite reaction. The idea of seeing crowds everywhere really does not appeal to an extreme introvert.
But the cliché goes, opposites attract. I can’t put an exact finger on what had truly made me fallen so in love with this city, except that it is the epitome of life, diversity and dynamism.
Each time I am here, I am deeply moved. From the very first time she transformed me profoundly, to the deceptively mundane moments that induce tears in my eyes, to little frames of surprises that I capture –
New York has been teaching me love. That love, exist in ways that I would never comprehend, that it can appear in nooks and corners I least expect, that through loving New York I have found the capacity to find a source of love I never knew I had within myself.
They ask, “are you going to move here?”
And I respond in return – loving an entity, even with my entire heart, does not equate to needing her presence with me all the time.
It is having the self-awareness to understand that loving a city does not mean belonging to her, cherishing a landscape does not mean I fit in it and sometimes, being able to return out of conscious will, can be an extremely beautiful thing.
New York will probably never be home to me, and perhaps that is how I can always love her freely.