I'll always love you though, New York

So tonight was my last in New York as a Manhattan resident.

Here I sit in my boxed and packed up room, leaving on a flight back to Texas and the suburbs of my youth in less than 12 hours, thinking that this time last year I was planning and dreaming of my relocation up to the city.

I've been noticeably (or unnoticeably) quiet on the blog front recently, and that is because New York and I had to have a DTR about a month ago and things didn't go so well. I love this city, but I don't love living here. New York is an incredible place and I am so thankful for the time I have spent here and the people I have been fortunate enough to meet, but I have to do what is best for me, and that is to move back to Texas.

There is nothing I regret about my decision to move here, and I think I would have always wondered what life would have been like in another place had I not tried it for myself. Now I can move forward with the confidence of a person who tried and decided to go a different direction.

The part I don't like about the moving forward is not leaving the city, but leaving AV and KR. That's the hardest part, because I love living with them and the roommate dynamic we have developed over the past nine months. In breaking up with New York I leave them here, luckily together. I was more or less a basket case all of Memorial Day weekend in the Hamptons, and when I told them I wanted to go back to Texas, I was so humbled by their reactions. While I had already acknowledged in my own mind the fact that it would be a rough transition for all of us when I left, and while I knew how hard it would be for me to walk away from living with two of my favorite people; I was completely taken aback by them.

Did I think they would be equal parts upset/mad/confused/concerned about me leaving? Yes to all, that's what I assumed. I just couldn't believe how sad they were. This was something we had all set out to do together, and my leaving suddenly meant that it wouldn't be the same. Let me make it clear, if I haven't already, that I have the strongest and most wonderful friends and could not have dreamed of better people to talk to and see on a daily basis. It's common knowledge, among all of us, that we all feel this way. But sometimes you forget that other people feel that way about you in return, and thus talking things through with them that afternoon on the couch, and seeing how sad they were at the idea of not having me here everyday, was heart-wrenching.

To watch people you love mirror what you're feeling and understand you completely is one of the most painful and comforting things you can ever experience. My leaving has nothing to do with either of them, and at the same time it has everything to do with them because they have been my whole life for the past nine months and everything we do affects the other two.

I want what is best for the other girls, and what's best for them is to stay here now. I'm excited for them and I will surely always feel a pang of jealousy when I hear about a fun new restaurant they tried or new people they've met or that it's "snowing and freezing" in New York, while I'm rolling my eyes at the 60-degree Dallas winter.

I got to live and work in New York in my twenties. Regardless of income and status and all they can access in this city; everyone is jealous of the twentysomethings... especially the women in elevators who glare at my friends and I went we bemoan the idea of turning 25 in two short years and then watching life go downhill from there. Point being- I'm only 23. There's a lot I still want to accomplish and living away from home for nine months has been part of my growth process.

Strangely enough, the road back to Texas is one that I'm paving for myself. My decision to move back is one of the first novel ideas I have had about my own future since I graduated a year ago. I tried a new city, it was not a fit, and now I'm moving home; back with my parents for now, no less!

So to you, New York, I must offer my gratitude. Thanks for everything you have taught me about myself over the past nine months. I am a better person for having lived here, and while I'll miss my trips across Central Park to Bloomingdale's and the Met, I'm blessed to have been given the opportunity to learn from you and gain a different perspective.

Until we meet again, my friend.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt, Paris 1910