I H8 NY

It’s been 18 days since I put on my brown suede boots and boarded a plane, and I have come to a depressing conclusion: the city where I thought I’d see all my wildest dreams come true is, in fact, an overcrowded happiness vacuum where Southwestern kindness goes to die.

Since it’s only been 18 days out of the 365 that I plan to spend here, I realize I’m probably putting the cart before the poor unfortunate blinded Central Park horse, but… guys, my instinct is to hate this city with every fiber of my being. It’s like everybody gets out of bed every morning, puts their cranky pants on, and proceeds to spend the rest of the day shutting doors in other people’s faces and avoiding eye contact on the R train.

I came to New York with a vague sense of nausea that I was making a terrible, terrible decision. I don’t think I made a terrible, terrible decision by moving here; I could never have known that I would feel such a visceral hatred of this urban nightmare where you forget that there’s a sky until you make it to the outer boroughs. And as I always say, I’ll do anything for a good story, and I’m sure that at the end of a year, I’ll have enough stories about my fabulously miserable time in New York to fill a book of short stories.

And who knows? A year from now, I might be eating my words. I might fall in love with this city; I might forget my passion for small talk and relinquish the joy I feel from long conversations with strangers at the grocery store. I might… I might not. I can’t see myself feeling content here. I will keep myself busy, I will appreciate the time I get to spend with the people I love who live here, I will take advantage of all the things that can be free in spite of the dirty looks from the Yoga to the People teacher and the Met ticket-taker.

But for today, I hate New York. And that’s okay. Because seriously, there are way too many damn people in this city anyway and we could use a few more representatives out in the desert.

Also, after a year I’m totally going to be able to be like, “Oh, yeah, I lived in New York for awhile. What a shithole. I’m so worldly.”