It’s been 6 years.

I notice how much it matters to me to assert that I am a New Yorker and how much satisfaction I get from announcing it, not because New York’s a great place and therefore I associate myself to it, but because everytime I declare it, I get the pleasure of realizing how deep my love is for the city.

And I can’t, and won’t go to pains to paint my love for it for another’s eyes – it’s impossible to list out or convey in words. Kind of like trying to explain the deep love you feel for another person, for someone else’s judgements. Love for another is a reflection of yourself. The more you try to explain it, the more it becomes simply a display of who you are. Through my words, others will not be able to see New York, but see a display of my own passion.

The city is a reflection of my experiences there – the joy and freedom to explore myself in my early twenties; the highs of feeling extremely independent; the lows of being suffocatingly lonely. During each transition, each step, the city in my eyes took a different tone, a different shade. But through all the change, New York stayed with me – when I praised its beauty, or cursed its filth; when I loved its passion, or hated its coldness. Inevitably, as I grew, the city grew with me. I love my city as I do my best friend. I love it as I do myself.

And it takes a certain amount of time for you to develop this relationship; the city doesn’t reveal itself to you immediately, neither does it expect this from you. Living in here is a cleansing experience; here, you can’t fully hate this city until it has pushed you to your absolute lowest. By that same token, you can’t fully love it until it gives you no option but to fight yourself to climb back up. New York brings out the absolutely worst, weakest part of yourself to light, right in front of your eyes, but gives you that platform to understand it, and forces you to correct it.

I love watching New Yorkers try to explain their love for the city. They mention the little things, the inanimate things, the completely irrelevant things that paint a picture not of how New York looks to the objective eye, but of how much their passion for the city allows them to love every piece of minute detail. And you can sense that passion; it spills out from their words. And you can revel at the vibrant sense of life that the city brings out in them. An outsider would never be able to understand.