Little Boxes On the Hillside

No one moves to NY to find a man or get married. NYC is where you go to find your life, you career, yourself. You arrive bright eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to attack the city, get your bite on. And somehow along the way, as your climbing the rungs of the ladder, kicking ass, taking names, your friends back in Whereversville, USA are getting married, starting families, buying homes with multiple garages. And as it all shifts, you start to realize that their lives are so far removed from your's, it seems like an alternate reality. Who in their right mind wants kids yanking at your arms, shouting at the top of their lungs, while you try to make a meal that doesn't involve Mamwich? Who would trade that in for reservations at Nobu and brunches at Calle Ocho, draining bottomless mimosas for that?

I was watching a movie the other day, one where the leading character was married with children and lived in Milwaukee. There was hockey gear stacked in the mud room, dirty dishes in the sink, SUV's with juice spills, soccer practices to shout at, and a constant stream of clothing that needed to be washed. And yet at the end of each day, they seemed happy, content even. This seemed slightly foreign to me, someone who doesn't crave children or a house in the 'burbs, because that grass doesn't seem at all greener. It seems brown, and undesirable. And sometimes I don't get it, why do I all but look down on the same life that reared me? When I talked to some of my friends from back home, married, pregnant, bun already out of the oven in some cases, some of them definitely yearned to come up to the city to have a snapshot night at what Manhattan has to offer, and some were definitely happy where they are. Part of the reason my ex and I didn't work was because he was ready for the suburban life and I was running around New York without a second thought to a mortgage on a split-level (I hate split-level's btw).

They say the natural progression of things in NYC is that eventually, after success in your career, you get married and move out of the city, to Westchester or Connecticut, after all the city is for the bustling single twenty/thirty-somethings who are still chasing their dreams. But what if your dream is football games at the local bar with cheese blocks on your head instead of a wine bar with a cheese plate on your table? Is that possible? Is the grass ever not greener? Is the suburban life one that people really desire as much as New Yorkers desire a rent controlled apartment that's larger than a family size SUV?

I honestly don't know. I've had conversations with older couples, couples who once ran the streets of New York, but then found each other, got hitched, moved out of the city and had some kids. They bridge and tunnel it in for dinner or date night and I see the longing in their eyes. How life slipped passed them and now they're exactly what their "just-don't-get-it" parents were: boring. For all it's simplicity and stability, that life just seems so opposite of the one here. For all New York is, boring is absolutely never one of them.

That bitch stole my line,

xoxo

Blackie Collins