‘Story of Us’

Building on your 'Story of Self’ - how do you understand home related to a ‘Story of Us’. What does community mean to you? How has your idea of home evolved since you came to NYC?

Wearing sweatpants with holes by the knee to get a mucho cocoa mocha, without any odd stares. Bumping into an old friend who holds the door open for you at the grocery store. Laughing with strangers when their dog decides to lay down in the middle of the crosswalk. Saying Go Bills instead of Have a nice day to the cashier at the checkout line. Chasing someone down the block because you saw a $20 bill fall from their pocket. Community means familiarity, comfort, and a closeness between myself and my city, but it’s also a place where the same can be said of others. A shared familiarity with neighbors, streets, local shops, sports teams; a comfort in kind strangers who never judge; a closeness with people that also celebrate their different love for the same city. 

My ‘home’ has changed from a three-story to a three-bedroom and back again. Can’t say I have a preference for any house I’ve lived in but god do I love the feeling of ‘going home’. Whether by car, plane, or train —I love leaving. I think it’s the potential warmth, comfort, memories, even love that I yearn for when I’m away from home (wherever that may be) that romanticizes going back. I connect this back to a faction of my idea of community –that place or feeling or person that my bones ache for. The memories that cause my legs to jolt up and run towards them. But it always feels like some unreachable concept that hurls itself the other way down the interstate once I’m roughly a mile away. 

Moving to NYC has strengthened my love for leaving. But now it also serves as that incomprehensible daydream I’m always chasing –and it seems like everyone is as well. Different love for the same city.