Yesterday was my 4 year anniversary of moving to New York. I didn't even realize it until my friend A.B. reminded me.
He remembered because he drove out here with me from Chicago and being in the car with me for 16 hours is pretty
memorable. The trip wasn't actually as bad as I thought it would be considering my propensity for picking fights and
getting squirrely on long car rides.
So when A.B. and I arrived here in New York City, we were supposed to meet up with my new "roommate" A.A.
I put roommate in quotes because we were only going to be living together every other weekend.
A.A. was living with a guy named J.P. who was separated from his wife and had two little kids. The kids would
come and stay with J.P. every other weekend, and since he didn't want to confuse them by introducing them to
his new girlfriend so soon, he got A.A. her own apartment a few blocks away from the one they shared.
And since she was only going to need it 4 days a month, she found me to share it with her.
It was great because she split the rent with me and was hardly ever there. Except the one night that my boyfriend
from Chicago decided to show up unannounced and we had to stay in a hotel because she wouldn't leave.
But aside from that, it was a pretty good deal. However, it didn't start off so good.
When A.B. and I arrived, I called A.A. just like we planned, so I could get the key from her.
It was about 1:00am and A.B. and I had just been in the car for 16 hours and were really looking forward to being more
than 4 inches away from each other.
But A.A. didn't answer her phone. In fact, it went right to voice mail. Which meant that it was either turned off
or the battery was dead. Either way, it was a bad sign. I had called her from the road several times with updates,
so it was not as if our arrival was a surprise. After about a half hour of trying to get ahold of her with no luck and
starting to think that coming to New York was a terrible idea, I called my one other friend who lived in the
neighborhood, N.S. She was housesitting for some friends and told us we could come stay there. She was a lifesaver.
But there was still the matter of all of my belongings being prominently displayed in the windows of my Honda. I
knew there was no way I could sleep if I was worrying about all of the criminals in Greenpoint making off with my stuff.
So we unloaded most of my crap from the car and finally went to sleep at around 3:00am.
The next day A.A. called and explained how she fell asleep and her phone died and she was so sorry.
I wondered to myself what she could have been thinking to let her phone die AND fall asleep knowing that I was
on my way and needed to get into the apartment.
It turned out to be the perfect foreshadowing for what our friendship would eventually become. But for those first few months after I got over being furious with her, we had a lot of fun.
That next day happened to be Halloween. And not surprisingly, after the stress of the drive and the drama when we
arrived, I got incredibly sick. In fact, I completely lost my voice for the first time in my entire life. It was perfect timing, as I was meeting a bunch of new people and really wanted to be able to talk to them.
A.B. went with my new friends to a Halloween party that night and I stayed in my new apartment alone and voice-less
and wondered what the hell I had just done.
The following morning, A.B. left to catch his flight back to Chicago. After he left, I sat on the couch and completely
freaked out. I felt alone and terrified and feared I had just made a huge mistake.
The only thing that made me feel better was that I was only planning on staying in New York for 6 months.
I can't believe I'm still here.
