I Promise

I don’t have a happy place. I don’t wish I did, either. I have something better, at least I think so. I walk. I can start a sentence without the word ‘I’, too, I promise. Here goes. Expect clichés, and tangents galore.

All my childhood, I’ve been moving. Living in Morocco, then India, then a boarding school in the English countryside. For whatever time it was that I occupied them, they were home. Casablanca, where I was lucky to grow up in a “haunted” mansion. Mumbai, where my entire extended family lived within a mile of each other. Blandford Forum, voted the second-most boring town in England, and the site of Bryanston School, where I developed the personality that, unfortunately for some, still remains.

At Bryanston, the question of ‘where do you live?’ always bothered me. It seemed obvious. I live at school. Why else would I be sharing a room with five other pubescent teenagers? My parents, by that point, had long since separated. My mum stayed in India, and my dad moved around as he still does – a few years here and there. Home was the ground beneath my feet.

I swear, this does relate to New York. But I’m going to make you guys earn it.

So, when I would answer that well-worn question asking where home was, giving the less-than-satisfying reply of ‘here’, I would be prompted to elaborate. I don’t have a home, I would say. And not, I’ll clarify, in any self-pitying way, or in a manner that could be construed as my not appreciating how fortunate and lucky I’ve been in life – I know that, but just to simply explain, in as simple terms as I could manage, what it felt like. And it felt like – it feels like – I have no home.

How does one handle that? Great question. I’ll be honest: there’s only so much faith I can put even into my own words, given that these revelations I come to can only be reached after years of experience being studied at a macro level. Any patterns in behaviour or experiences that pop out are what I am now going to tell you, but I’m just as fallible as anyone else, and being both subject and examiner in this instance, I am exceedingly prone to interpretation.

The first of these apparent truths is that I’m a creature of habit. A common turn of phrase, perhaps, but I like to think I inhabit it more accurately than most. Distinct from a person who shows signs of determinism, I, that pitiable and self-effacing creature, am content to further wear down that plenty-worn path, to follow the same routine, day in, day out. It’s a comfort, translatable from place to place. It need not change as I do. It’s a consistency I can rely upon. It might be something I found the first time to be exciting, and which still retains a certain air of thrill when repeated. It might be listening to that one song. It might just be that I have to maintain my streak on Duolingo, because I’m on day 1486, and if you think I’m breaking that now, you’re crazy.

Over time, I’ve found the things I can reliably call upon to entertain me. I watch the same shows, watch any movie, and I walk. See it’s hard for me to nail down a happy place – there are certainly places and times I recall feeling happy – but if there’s one thing I associate happiness with the most, it’s walking. I do it wherever I go.

Partially – mostly – out of choice, I’m quite a solitary person, and I see a walk as the ultimate me time. It’s something I only really do alone, and something I have only been truly able to enjoy alone. That may speak to something larger at play within me that could see to some fixing, but for now, I’m quite happy with the way it is. Walking is my domain. I’m moving, always with a direction. I always keep a destination in mind, because it wouldn’t be nearly as comforting if I didn’t add some consistency.

I noticed in myself some time ago, that whenever I’m in one place for a few weeks or longer, I build up a bank of routes in my mind. And, our old friend, that creature that sits so happily in habit, only resolves my connection with each. I have droves of turns and side-streets and landmarks unique to the little part of my brain that manages my maps. And what special maps they are. In London, I can count a half a dozen I can enact whenever I need to. It’s like setting a program to start, once I have, I can just let it run, and worry about other things.

Also, with these walks, the longer the better. Part of it is some sense of achievement I feel I can claim if only to myself, bragging rights I secure without an audience. Even now, I can recall and pull up dates on my phone that offer silent proof of miles upon miles walked. Just this past Sunday, I walked sixteen miles, from Midtown to Brooklyn to Williamsburg to Midtown. I’ve been trying to sneak that number into conversation for the past five days, and I’m not going to stop any time soon. Sixteen miles. Brooklyn.

And suddenly, I know that walk. It’s the one instance in which my memory seems to itself remember that it’s supposed to actually do something. I couldn’t tell you what I had for breakfast this morning, but I can describe in too-much detail the walk down to the Brooklyn Bridge; how you have to turn onto Park, but only after Grand Central, how you have to do a quick beeline through Union Square. I can describe the lefts and rights to make, and the parks to walk past and the crossroads I’ll have to use because they’re doing construction outside the Barnes and Noble on the corner of Broadway and Worth Street.

I love New York for this. It is, in my opinion, the easiest town to walk in. I prefer London, but in all honesty, the endless streets named after centuries-old historical references and battles and royals does get a bit old. Here, the numbers just make sense. (Except with the jump in avenue numbers between third and fifth – but don’t get me started on that). I know that if I’m on the West side, and have absolutely no idea how to get back, I can follow the signs to 51st street and walk from there. There’s an undeniable comfort in that fact.

I do often find a strange beauty in being lost, in the simple act of not knowing, of relinquishing control for a second in an age where control is all we appear to have. But New York has no time for the lost. It serves as an almost aggressive regular reminder that you have no time to waste. It’s been oddly exciting to find myself among the ranks of hurried masses. Everyone plunged into a soundscape of their own design, everyone with places to go, with things to do, with people to be.

For eighteen years, I really thought I knew the person I was. One year after that measly existential crisis, and I’m just as lost as I expected I would be. But I feel something. It could be this course, or the people I’ve met, or a million other explainable, intangible things. But I like to think that it’s New York itself, coaxing some meaning into me, for no better reason than to make sure I can keep up with everyone else.

It pushes meaning whenever it can. Whether it’s when I’m walking to the AMC at Lincoln Square, just three blocks from where my parents lived in the nineties, or coming up with an idea for a story while walking across the Williamsburg bridge at sunset, or listening to the audiobook of ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ as I walk past the construction outside the Barnes and Noble on the corner of Broadway and Worth Street, the story I’m listening to describing a scene that supposedly took place 70 blocks uptown from where I stood exactly, seventy years ago.

I still have some way to go. I’m stubborn, extremely averse to change and New York has its work cut out for it if a deviation from routine is what it’s suggesting to me. So when that creature of habit in me rears its ugly head, I’m going to have to take a stand. Within and against my best interests, change is come for me. New York, as a city, just wants me to adapt – in any way, mind you – just to make sure I survive.

But I’m not going to survive. I’m going to thrive. I’m going to give myself no choice but to excel, just like this city wants me to. I’m home, for now. I’m walking. I’m finding meaning. I’m never going to start a sentence without the word ‘I’ again. I promise.