Shahdaroba

Means the future is much better than the past.

Two years ago I arrived in Brooklyn in a dead summer heat. With one (1) suitcase of clothes and a couple of boxes.

I’ve been trying to write something about moving since, but everything I have to say about New York feels annoying and cliche and also, most of all, embarrassing. I am, for whatever reason, paralyzed by how in order to write about moving to New York, I must first admit that I’ve never wanted anything so bad in my whole life. When I finally moved it was this major life event. It had been my dream for the last 10 years. Honestly, it kind of felt like being born with the big salty tears included. Why is it so cringe to admit I see it that way? God forbid I be a cliche.

Decidedly, a cliche dream is still a dream worth having. Cringe all you’d like at me leaving my proverbial small town to go to the big city, but It’s still cool to me. More importantly - I’m done pretending not to want things, but more on that later.

My first apartment, despite its import, was far from dreamy. My room only fit my bed and a desk. I met my first roommate through Facebook. The oven only kind of worked. At Christmas, my mom mailed some gifts to me that were stolen from the lobby. My neighbor had his ankle broken in two places as the result of some road rage incident down the street. Once someone was stabbed outside my building and the blood stains stayed on the sidewalk for a week.

It did have a dishwasher, though. I lived there for a year and 8 months.

The apartment had sentimental value. I elbowed my way into adulthood there. The memories of being 22 in that apartment glow incandescent street-light-yellow. And, although my most recent roommate coined it a “crusty, dusty, polly pocket apartment”, to me, It was representative of a dream fulfilled.

In my first year in the city, I let the fulfillment of this New York dream usurp me completely. I made no sudden movements lest I wake up from the dream, and as a result my waking life had become stagnant and ultimately disappointing. I had what I wanted but I knew it couldn’t carry me. Still it felt greedy to want more. What does it mean to outgrow a dream? How do I cope with the fact that everything I have ever wanted is not everything I will ever want? If this isn’t what I hoped it would be, what else is there? Do I just move and If I do, did I fail?

Turns out I am paralyzed to write about moving to New York because I made a big stupid deal of it and then there were parts I didn’t like.

I shook awake from the dream sometime in the middle of last year. I knew there was more for me here, but I’d have to rescue myself from complacency. I had to decide what I want (and more complicatedly didn’t want) out of this season of life, and then pursue that with conviction.

As Carrie Bradshaw famously said, “In New York you’re always looking for a job, a boyfriend, or an apartment.” Occasionally, this happens all at once.

The first domino to fall last year was my long term relationship, followed by my first job, and finally the aforementioned polly-pocket apartment. This was all a lot scarier and more emotionally fraught than I need mention here. You may recall me considering a LA-style self-renovation and, of course, that whole thing with the Alamo.

I’m taken back to a dinner in Raleigh. I'm there eating a burger with Lucy and her friend who starts talking about manifestation and how, if you don’t have a strong vision of where you want to be in six months, you’re losing control of your life or something. It stuck with me because, I thought, shit, I have no strong vision of myself even into the next week, and yeah I’ve definitely lost control of my life. lol.

At the end of 2024, my knuckles white from hanging on, and with no other way out but through, I created a vision board of the things I shamelessly wanted to happen in 2025. I wanted a new job. I wanted to be with someone who appreciates me. I wanted to see a whale. I wanted to spend more time with my friends, and finally, desperately, I wanted my own place. I believed, even if it was delusional, that all of this would happen to me because I’d laid it all out there. (btw if you have never made a vision board let this be your sign)

By March, I was at Polo Bar with my close friends Hali and Reagan introducing them to my boyfriend, Jack. Over dinner we chat about how last weekend Cat, Amina, and Jack helped me move into my new one bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side, which I’m especially excited about because there is an extra room which I’m going to use as an art studio. I tell them how I’m teeming with excitement to start my new job at an agency on Madison Avenue next Monday. (I have yet to see a whale, that’s next.) I think to myself that I am exactly where I saw myself.

I’ll reiterate, I’m done pretending not to want things, or moreover, I’m done being a passive participant in my own life. Moving to New York was a feat in it’s own right, but, if it’s taught me anything it’s that you’ve gotta know whether you want to go uptown or downtown before you just get on a train, y’know?

Face the future, and forget about the past,

MP