how it happened, more or less.

from the essay goodbye to all that by joan didion

Of course it might have been some other city, had circumstances been different and the time been different and had I been different, might have been Paris or Chicago or even San Francisco, but because I am talking about myself I am talking here about New York. That first night I opened my window on the bus into town and watched for the skyline, but all I could see were the wastes of Queens and big signs that said MIDTOWN TUNNEL THIS LANE and then a flood of summer rain (even that seemed remarkable and exotic, for I had come out of the West where there was no summer rain), and for the next three days I sat wrapped in blankets in a hotel room air conditioned to 35 degrees and tried to get over a cold and a high fever. It did not occur to me to call a doctor, because I knew none, and although it did occur to me to call the desk and ask that the air conditioner be turned off, I never called, because I did not know how much to tip whoever might come—was anyone ever so young? I am here to tell you that someone was. All I could do during those years was talk long-distance to the boy I already knew I would never marry in the spring. I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years.

sad, but happy, but strange

"'Thirdly and finally', he said, 'I wish to make an ANNOUNCEMENT'. He spoke this last word so loudly and suddenly that everyone sat up who still could. 'I regret to announce that - though, as I said, eleventy-one years is far too short a time to spend among you - this is the END. I am going. I am leaving NOW. GOOD-BYE!"

It's like breaking up with a boyfriend who you like a lot but just can't stay with. I know, logically, that I can move back to NYC whenever I want. I know that there will be other homes, other friends, other places to make mine. And I know that my hometown holds family and friends who will be so happy that I am back.

But it's hard to leave New York. There's this pull here, a current that is hard to escape and even harder to explain. And once you've invested the effort, the time, the money, the frustration - once you've become a True New Yorker, it is very hard to imagine going back.

Nevertheless. On Thursday morning I fly back to the city of my childhood in all it's glory.

Wish me luck.