My Great Love- New York City
Oh New York….The sights and sounds still make me pick up my pace — this energy gets my blood flowing. Planes above me, trains below me, yellow taxis all around me. I walk a little faster, a little more confident. Alert and alive. I have always been brave here. At first, broken, but braver as each day passed. You get gritty here.
New York is a love affair — a great, great love. And, like all of my great loves, it keeps me guessing. It’s a Heaven and a Hell. It breaks me, at times, but more often than not, it heals me. It restores my faith in my ability to push on. Down one street is danger and darkness, but round the corner and it’s all lights and energy.
New York, like all great loves is polarizing-you love it or you hate it-there are few who feel there is a happy medium, this is not a city of happy mediums. This is not the place for “all things in moderation.”
Whatever one thinks about this City that Never Sleeps, it is a well-known fact, New York is a city of survivors. New Yorkers are all grit, tenacity, and bravery. And..it’s contagious. We all remember where we were when we watched this City be tested — tested to its core. And we stood in horror….we cried and hurt and watched. We watched them, in shock and then in awe. This is a place where you see what you’re really made of — how you stand up to the tests.
Dig deep or go back home. Grieve for a minute, then, move on. Get up or get run over. Walk fast or be left behind. Keep your head up or miss your train. You have to hustle for your place on the sidewalk here.
New York, like all real loves, leaves you breathless, exasperated sometimes, invigorated most times. You never know if it will be safe, dangerous, calm or frenetic. Highs then lows, ups and downs, hot and cold, safe and dangerous — sometimes it’s tears and sometimes it’s laughter. Always, it’s mysterious.
And like all great lovers, The City leaves you exhausted, sated but wanting more. It’s that drug you know will keep you up — days turn into nights, nights turn into dawn. Sundown to sun up. The City that Never Sleeps.
