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I don’t know when, exactly, or what triggered the evolution of my feelings and perspective over the past four months.  I just know that it happened.  It’s something that I’ve waited 2.5 years for and finally decided wasn’t going to happen.  But, then it did…

I have fallen in LOVE with New York.  I have fallen in love in a big kind of way, head over heels.  I now love New York so much that I often think about how much I love it, which somehow must equal even more love.

For a long time, I wondered if I would ever feel this way.  I really worried about it after my first year of rocky starts.  Everyone I had met loved New York (or at least said they did), so naturally I had to love it too.  For a long time, I tried to force myself to love a place that I didn’t feel 100% a part of. 

Then, everything changed and evolved around April or May of this year.  And, by June, I cemented my love for this great city.  I finally felt truly happy and at peace both in my heart and at a conscious level.

It hit me when I was flying home from a wedding in June.  As I walked onto the plane I got an overwhelming yearn to go home.  That’s right… home. 

It was the first time in almost three years that I felt I was going home.  I was no longer going to an apartment in a city that served as a shell of what was supposed to be my home, but really wasn’t in my mind.  It no longer acted as a substitute for what I missed in Kentucky.  It was the real deal.

I had waited for so long for that. 

This past summer only intensified my love for New York.  The reasons of why I love New York piled up everywhere I looked or went.  I couldn’t cross a street or turn a corner without finding something that I loved.

My job, of course, is one of my number one reasons of why I’m so happy. I’ll stay in New York as long as I can to continue to work at my school.  It’s my haven.

My second number one reason (I guess that’s called a ‘tie’) is my group of friends.  New York is New York because of them.  They changed everything for me.

And, lastly (to round out a list that could go on and on and on)… correction, ironically, all of the reasons of why I like New York now were all of the reasons of why I disliked it in the beginning.    Many things that bugged me, frustrated me, and annoyed me before are now the very things that I find oddly endearing and sometimes comforting.  It’s weirdly true.

Don’t get me wrong… some of the same things still drive me crazy and always will.  I will always hate to walk home 5, 10, 15 blocks without an umbrella during an “unexpected” thunderstorm, pay a million dollars for a box of cereal, and faint during run-ins with rats and roaches.  But, overall, the good far outweighs the bad.  The good makes living here fun.  The good added together makes it feel like home.