New York City.
If you come in with the expectation that you have to “make it here” you are not going to have a good time. As soon as you get here, you belong to the city.
It’s not made to be conquered. It swallows you whole, strips you bare and leaves you to fend for yourself.
There is nothing romantic about forking out most of your pay check for a roof over your head, being scammed by Craigslist movers who prey on the naive, or making eye contact with a homeless man pissing his pants in the middle of the street.
But it’s when it spits you back out, that’s when you realise.
You realise you needed it.
You learn what you’re made of. What you’re capable of. And you come out knowing the kind of life you want to build.
It was when my local bodega guy knew my face and my order, that I realised I’d experienced what I needed to.
It was seven months for me. Seven months I called those streets home.
New York is a must-experience place, it’s true.
There is nowhere else like it, and to truly appreciate what it will do for you, your experience needs to go past being a tourist.
Growing up surrounded by natural beauty in New Zealand, I realised I was a forest dweller residing in a concrete jungle - I wasn’t made to live there.
New York City wasn’t the kind of wild I normally sought out, but it was the wild I needed.
