7/8/24

There's nothing wrong with a little intimacy. The town I grew up in is small, the kind of small that earned it the title of "cutest small town in America" in 2013, and with that, comes a lot of community. Lititz is the kind of place that almost requires a certain amount of kindness and sensibility in order to really appreciate it; unfortunately, that is not something very commonly found in many of the other residents. I am fortunate enough to be able to view it from an outsider's perspective, both because I never lived in one place for my entire life, so Lititz was always somewhere I left and came back to, but also because of where I live with, only increasing my fondness for how truly midwestern it is. While I and many others, such as the high population of elders who chose this place as their place of retirement possess the neighborly-ness that towns like this need to enjoy them, just about everyone else acts as if it's Lititz's fault they never moved away. In contrast to Arizona, most people are significantly friendlier here, it was always the inhabitants of Lancaster County that made me so eager to depart from the place that raised me, and not the town itself. 

In all the different eras I've found myself, alternating between different passions and life goals, especially in my youth, I always end up wanting to live the same kind of lifestyle. While I can view places like Lititz, and the life I lived here with a great deal of compassion and love, the camping trips we used to take, the weeks at my family's hunting cabin, and the new-found knowledge that I need green wherever I end up if I want to enjoy being alive, I think a good deal of the passion derives from the fact that I no longer live here full time. I never resented Lancaster itself and frequently found myself enjoying the small moments in which I found myself romanticizing my life there, but being the kind of person I am requires more open-mindedness and a lot more acceptance than a small East Coast city was willing to offer. I, like many others in similar positions, found myself longing for a higher population. As much as I enjoy standing out a bit, fueling my ego to the point I actually start believing I'm an individual with unique thoughts, I needed to be somewhere that didn't put a target on my back. For the most part, I didn't have as many issues existing as I do, just the occasional second glance or even a glare now and again. But it was enough. The small comments made by people thought to be friends, the unwavering feelings of otherness, and the one time I got spit at from a moving car while their friend in the backseat called me a faggot, for some reason, began to make me feel like I wasn't very welcomed.

 Growing up, my favorite movie was Spiderman, my favorite show was How I Met Your Mother, and my favorite activities included going to the museum and taking long walks. It wasn't long before those thoughts began adding up, and I noted the one common denominator; New York City. Unlike Lancaster, New York offered the one thing no other place could, options. At first, my desire to be somewhere bigger was mostly reliant on what I wanted to do. My first career dream was an architect, and beyond the lead of the aforementioned show, How I Met Your Mother, being an architect in NYC, it was my own passion for architecture that led me to New York. The art deco of the Empire State Building the gothic seen in the cathedrals, everything about what I wanted to do belonged in New York City. Unfortunately, my intellect caught up to me, and I soon realized that architecture required more than a passion for cool-looking buildings. But with this newfound conclusion, one resulting in me living in NYC that was in no way reliant on my career choice, my desire to live there was unwavered by this realization. Though architecture, and furthermore, Ted Mosby allowed me to realize everything I wanted in my future place of residence could be found in The Empire State, I realized through that that it wasn't the architecture, it was the polarity in aesthetics and lifestyle in comparison to where I lived for the previous 20 years of my life that attracted me the most. 

While I attempted to let college be my way in, unlike Arizona State, NYC is significantly harder to budget with. I was fortunate to find a situation in which I could get instate and free travel; unfortunately, this offer only existed in Arizona. I applied to a few schools, both Pace and a Suny School in upstate New York, but my growing passion for fashion design and increasingly realistic view of money deterred me from taking the leap. And for a while, I was happy with my decision regardless. But I once again learned the hard way that my desire to live in NYC was not necessarily a desire to just live in the city. My previous experiences led me to think that, because what I wanted was an increase in people, thus an increase in diversity, thus, I could be gay in public without getting spit at by a two-door white jeep with a tan canvas top (I will never forget). However, I underestimated how complex people, and cultures, can be, especially when never having experienced anything like it before. While Arizona offered the city life I wanted, and objectively the diversity I longed for, the people were, in many ways, significantly worse than the ones in PA. Though I was no longer getting spit at, the plague that is LA transplants resulted in a large influx in ego-driven, fake tanned having, snooty and snobby bitches that I simply cannot get along with no matter how hard I try. 

Certain cities get specific reputations based on their population. Denver is full of stoners and hippies, LA is full of failing attempted actors, and San Francisco is very gay. These stereotypes make sense, for the most part, and often carry a bit of truth. Until I moved there, I had yet to hear an accurate or otherwise stereotype of Phoenix, so my opinion of it was an entirely clean slate, granted a clean slate that was quickly destroyed by the reality of who lives there. But it was this experience, living in Phoenix and realizing that more does in fact not mean better, that everything else started to make sense. These places gain their reputation for a reason, and more often than not, they are relatively accurate. Regarding NYC, the most repeated rhetoric I hear is the struggle. Everything is expensive, everyone is busy, the hustle is constant and those who can't handle it can't make it. It began to weigh on me that, if I couldn't handle Phoenix, I definitely couldn't handle New York. For about a year, maybe two, I put a pause on the most consistent dream I've had, the dream of living in New York City, to focus on more realistic endeavors. However, in December of 2023, the day after my birthday, I went to New York City for the first time since I was 16.

The first time I remember going to NYC I was in 6th grade, and stayed for a week for a school trip. I got a glimpse of NYC, from a tourist's perspective. Even with my passion for the city, I am someone who attempts his very hardest to view things realistically, and for the years that proceeded this actually life-perspective-altering field trip, I reminded myself that what I experienced was not the real life a New Yorker leads. But I couldn't shake the memories out of my mind, because as much as I loved it, it was never my trip that made me love it as much as I did. It was everyone else. It was the people on runs through Central Park, it was the local conversations I could eavesdrop on as I walked down 5th Ave., it was the pizza on 23rd. I fell in love with the life they got to lead and could feel the anxiety bubbling in my stomach, dying to be a part of it. For the next decade, I would visit NYC for a day once a year, a small glimpse into the life I was striving to live. But it wasn't until my trip to Manhattan in December that I finally made up my mind. For a few hours, I went off on my own, met up with a friend, and explored the city without a tour guide or my father to follow behind. It was the first time New York and I felt like we made sense together, and even worse than 6th grade, the feeling couldn't leave me. The second I returned to Arizona I realized how badly I didn't belong there, how much of myself I was denying by trying to make it work somewhere else. So I went back. Katie and I just spent an almost full 5 days from Central Park to East Village to Manhattan just exploring every corner we wanted to. Unlike anything else in my life, NYC made me fall in love with a vision of myself. 

I think a big part of my initial deterrence from NYC was the sheer amount of people wanting the same thing as me. It seems like every Gen Z kid with an inkling of passion for art or, especially, fashion, ends up moving to NYC at some point, and a lot of the time I hate those people and don't want to be associated with them. The gentrifiers of Brooklyn, the nepo babies of Manhattan, everyone my age in NYC is the exact same person. But this last trip with Katie, it struck me how much it makes sense for me. I grew up 3 hours from the city, visiting regularly. Unlike the fashion girlies in AZ with a rich lawyer father who pays for them to start magazines on flash drives you have to download onto your computer, my soul craves New York. I'm willing to struggle and do what I must to make it work.