A Sense Of Place: On Belonging.
My first big meltdown when I moved to New York City two years ago wasn't upon touchdown or our first night in an empty apartment. It wasn't because someone was rude to me, or I lost my way, or I missed a subway stop or four.Nope. It was in the gym locker room.I remember that first week so clearly: the champagne buzz I felt from the newness, the novelty of being able to get anything.you.want.at.all. delivered to your apartment instead of having to lug it home in bags that cut off circulation in your fingertips. The way you could be walking, skipping, singing, sobbing down the street and people accepted you like whatever you were doing was a part of the flow. The waking up early just because we were so excited to experience the morning. I remember so clearly. It was love at first footstep.And then I lost it. I mean, I knew it was coming at some point - I definitely cried my second night, mostly out of sheer exhaustion - but I didn't expect that my anticipated feelings of shock, overwhelm, and longing would show their sad faces in the women's locker room on Greenwich Avenue after I made a corny joke to a stranger thrice my age and she genuinely giggled back.My gym had been my safe haven in LA, and LA had been my safe haven in my life. Having grown up visiting the City That Never Sleeps on a regular basis but living in the City That Sleeps In Then Goes On A Hike my entire life, I was very familiar with New York but not enveloped in her. It wasn't just my immediate neighborhood that I felt protected by in LA; it was EVERYTHING. The street signs, the off-ramps. The familiar faces and the predictable reactions. The sunrises, the sunsets, and the days the ocean-fog took over the whole sky so you couldn't tell when one finished and one began. I knew LA from birth. She WAS me.I tried my best to recognize this when I lived there, but just like so many things, there is always some little important bit of a-ha that happens when you no longer have that thing you loved. For me, that a-ha came in a locker room when I realized how alone and unfamiliar I felt within my surroundings. How, while I valued anonymity, I also valued (and took for granted) my ability to CHOOSE it.Humans are pack animals; we're tribal. We're not meant to wander the hills alone until we find a mate and then go back off again to raise and let go of our kin. Our brains are hard-wired for connection, and even the most introverted of us need to feel a sense of togetherness to truly thrive. It's been proven by sciency people who are book-smarter than I am: loneliness leads to depression and is a huge indicator of how long you will live.I've been watching and reading a lot of Brené Brown lately (you should be, too!), especially the interviews and articles surrounding her newest book, Braving The Wilderness. The book is all about belonging, and (no, this isn't a spoiler) how "fitting in" is actually the exact OPPOSITE of belonging. When I moved here, I wasn't looking to fit in - I wasn't interested in molding myself to fit the shape of someone or something else - but I was struck by how shaken my sense of belonging had become. And moreover, how much I tied my sense of belonging to other people RECEIVING me.That's why the older woman laughing at my lame-o offhand comment got me so choked up. That's why I started to panic as I became new eyes on centuries-old surroundings. I felt unfamiliar. I felt routine-less. And the smallest things like seeing the same parking lot attendant I only thank-you'd and have-a-nice-day'd and gym members I never even spoke to and just silently awkward-nodded to while we grabbed adjacent dumbbells were things I didn't expect to crave. I thought I was autonomous in LA and above all that neediness, but boy did I have myself fooled. I was dependent on other people to validate my experience.The last couple years have brought more change to me than I thought possible: two apartments, two neighborhoods, a new job, multiple events, brand new soul-friends, marriage. And as I contemplate where I go from here, as I head closer and closer toward my thirty-second year, which I have ALWAYS felt in my gut holds something major for me (micro- or macro- major, who knows at this point), I think about how my sense of belonging has changed too - or maybe how it hasn't. I am on the precipice of something big, but for the first time in a while I'm hesitant to take a much-needed step to fall and build my wings on the way down.Brené says that we belong everywhere when we belong to ourselves. So if I belong everywhere, then why is it that I'm so tied to THIS sense of place? Maybe it's for the same reason people stay in relationships that are fine but not GREAT, or stay in jobs that earn enough to live but don't add enough to LIFE. Because I "know" this sense of belonging is secure IF I just do all the right things, and check off all the to-do boxes, and it's a very external and define-able belonging. Predictability and ease. Mother-effers.[bctt tweet="Once you stop trying to fight your emerging identity - which is tough, because trying to fight it can sometimes FEEL like trying to find it - everything is magic." username="katiehorwitch"]When I moved here, I felt placeless. I remember telling my friend Sarra that I felt freaked out by the amount of places I could go where I knew no one and no thing (Soak it in while you can, she said). I belonged to no one and no thing. I was trying to see where I fit, and tried on a lot for size. I don't think I really knew how to belong to myself yet. That's the cool thing about New York, though: it FORCES your identity out of you. The people who try to fight the force are the ones who have it hardest in life, but especially life in this city. But once you stop trying to fight your emerging identity - which is tough, because trying to fight it can sometimes FEEL like trying to find it - everything is magic.I don't think everyone is able to belong - or rather, find a sense of belonging - in NYC. You've got to be a little wild, a little crazy, and very comfortable getting uncomfortable, to even catch the first glimmers of it. That process and this city will kick your ass before you realize that your recovery is a part of your becoming. It will spook you, but your challenge is to never let it SCARE you. You've got to be next-level brave to become and belong - everywhere, but especially in this city that could care less whether you walk around anonymously and disconnected or full and enmeshed.And now, I've found my way, and I've found my spaces. I have a "place." Of course, I know that's just a feeling and an illusion. And I wonder: is my newfound sense of place, coupled with my acute memory of what it's like to NOT have one, keeping me in a new loop that doesn't serve me? I think so; maybe. I've been here before, so I can recognize when I am here again.The great thing, though, is that I know that I am my own and no one else's, and that an external sense of place is fab but an internal one is fabber. If I know I'll be okay no matter what, and I know I will be mine no matter what, then maybe, just maybe, I can start to take those steps that lead me to places I don't know yet.Two years ago I woke up for the first time as an NYC resident. I know it’s only been two years but I honestly can’t imagine waking up anywhere else.Brené Brown says that true belonging only comes when you belong to yourself and yourself only, everywhere and nowhere.Living here, I finally feel like I’ve found where I belong.
"I wake up every morning and say to myself, ‘Well, I’m still in New York. Thank you, God." ― Ed Koch
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