Three Years in New York

(I took this picture of T Square earlier this summer.)

Three years ago today I moved to Manhattan. I’d only been to the city a handful of times—twice with my family, twice with my brothers, and a few random times with Henri when I lived in Montreal—but I knew this was where I wanted to be. I couldn’t explain why; I just knew I had to go. Maybe part of it is because I’m used to motion and newness and the freshness of moving somewhere new and the strange pangs of leaving home and learning more about myself than I ever would have and could have imagined.

I moved to that shithole apartment near Washington Square Park and lived with the three straight guys for two whole months before classes at NYU started. I met Natalie, my Girl Friday, a few days into my junior year of college. I met my boyfriend a few weeks later. By the next summer we were living together and my dog moved in with us, flown in from Madison where Mom and Dad still live.

Here I am. The bookstore where I work, the yoga studio I visit twice a week, the parks where I walk with my dog and my boyfriend, the group of friends that haunt the nearby bars and cafes with me, the lazy weekends, the trips home, the cards and letters and wedding invitations coming from friends in all the cities where I’ve lived.

This blog is dedicated to the family that I have scattered everywhere (the family I was born with and the family that I’m making, every day): to Natalie, to Nick and Henri in Montreal, to Paige in Wilmington, N.C., and to everybody back in my hometown of Madison. And, of course, to Dog and Boyfriend. You guys are my lobsters.

And to any of you that stumble upon this little trinket, come on in. Make yourself at home.