The Big Apple

That's me on the Brooklyn Bridge. Although you can't see my entire face, you can tell that I'm smiling. I was the happiest girl in the world that day, even though it was hot, my jeans were chafing, my feet had blisters, and my back hurt. I didn't care. I was in New York. I was on the Brooklyn Bridge! Everything was right in the world.

A friend said to me once that when you're in New York, it just feels right. That's the only way I can describe it. It felt like home. The week my boyfriend and I spent there was amazing. As much as I missed my own bed and my dogs, I cried when the plane took off from La Guardia. I felt like I was leaving home instead of going to it.

I'm not sure when my long distance love affair with the city began. It's been there for as long as I can remember... a longing for a place I had never been. When I was in 5th grade, one of my teachers had us start researching colleges. This was before the internet was everywhere, so if you wanted information, you had to write a letter. The first school I wrote to was New York University. For years and years they sent me info. Because I was all of 11-year-old, I had no concept of money. I remember taking one of the pamphlets to my parents and saying, "But it only costs $30,000 a year!" My dad gave me what my family has coined as "the idiot look". I was brushed off and sent back to my room, gripping the pamphlet with my wishful little hands.

I went through tons of phases in school about what I wanted to be when I grew up. An actress! A doctor! An MTV VJ! All of them resulted in me living in New York. It's always been the dream.

Cue me going to a mid-sized, conservative state university in Texas and ending up in a 7+ year long relationship that was destined to fail. New York was obviously nowhere in sight. But even after college I would tell people that one day I would live in New York City, as if (hello!) there was any other goal. Laughter has ensued more than once after making the announcement.

Years later, I'm still in Texas. In the city whose suburbs I lived as a kid. With a boyfriend, a house (rental!), 2 dogs, 2 cats, debt out the ass, and a sinking feeling that my NY dreams will never come true.

When I confessed that to my boyfriend recently, he questioned me. "Why? Why would you think it's never going to happen?" Honestly? I'm terrified. Of failure. Of having to slink home to a quiet (fine, from my family it probably wouldn't be so quiet) chorus of "told ya so". I'm afraid of the guilt that would haunt me from asking my boyfriend, who is perfectly content where we are, to give up the life he's built for himself and move thousands of miles away, just so I could fulfill some silly childhood dream.

Then my boyfriend said something to me that I didn't expect at all.

"You know, I'm envious of you."

"What are you talking about?"

"That you have this huge dream, this big goal. Something that you've always wanted to do and you aren't giving up on. I don't have anything like that."

Well, I suppose that's one way of looking at it. I do still have big dreams of living in New York. I remember the feeling of stepping out of the subway in Manhattan for the first time and wondering what the hell took me so long to get there? (I was 28 before I finally made a visit.) I can't help but feel the chances of the dream coming to fruition fade as I get older. But I'm still not letting go quite yet... I still want to call New York home one day.