Two years in New York

Two years ago I came to New York to attend grad school. I arrived with a lot of uncertainty. I didn't know anyone here. The closest family member was thousands of miles away. I had one semester of tuition saved up. No loan and no safety net. I'd spent years watching people do incredible things from afar, and despite my circumstances I wanted to be a part of the conversation. I wanted to be heard. I was adamant that I would figure it out so long as I just got here.

I left behind people who knew me without me having to explain myself. Family and friends who never needed to ask how I was doing. My mom, who always knew when I was struggling. When I wasn't sleeping well or when I was working more than I should. On bad days we’d go for walks in the evenings where her company was a silent comfort. She’d tell me to be kind and gentle to myself despite the hard times. There is no clean break when leaving a life where you were witnessed so intentionally.

And for a while, things were grueling. Between classes, being a TA, and working at a startup, there were months of seventeen and eighteen hour days. I remember being exhausted, late at night on my way back from work. Catching my breath in a mostly empty subway car. I used to scroll up and down on the same half loaded instagram reel just to keep my mind from drifting. I did not want to think. I wanted to be home. Asleep. Waking up to a warm breakfast. The voice in my head telling me this was a mistake. That I wouldn't be able to make the looming tuition payment. That even if I did, I wouldn't be able to stay and that I couldn't get a job. Doubt is loudest when you’re exhausted. I recalled my mom’s advice and mustered up the energy to talk back. "I can do this, I'm just tired. I made it this far, right?"

One night I got back around 1 AM. I hadn't eaten dinner. The apartment was dark and I was standing in the kitchen deciding if I had the energy to cook or whether I should order something when I noticed the dishes were done. Ryan, my roommate, had washed them. He never mentioned it. Not that night, not the dozens of nights after. On days I came home and fell into bed still wearing my shoes, he’d quietly take out the growing bags of trash.

The next morning I woke up to a message from my friend Michael.

“ Gm goat. How u feelin today?”

He'd sent one like it every morning since we met, never missing a day. Their gestures felt like home. And most days, that was enough to keep me going.

Michael texting me every morning for the last two years

The first year was mostly a swirl of self-doubt. I often wondered if my ideas were any good. If I had anything worth saying. Max and Sean, colleagues who have become close friends, pulled me through it. I'd bring them ideas that had nothing to do with our work and they'd pull up chairs and talk through them with me. Having friends who I admired endorse my curiosity really helped me learn to trust my instincts.

Birthdays were especially hard. Mine falls in the summer break, so growing up in boarding school I never had friends around to celebrate. I celebrated with my family and remember my mom counting down the days, being the most excited person in the room. Being alone in a city that does not pause for anyone is a quiet kind of ache. This year I wanted to celebrate and when I told Soren, a friend I met through writing online, that it was my birthday he immediately offered to take me to lunch. New York, despite being a city filled with people, can be an incredibly lonely place. Soren and many others like him have shown up for me in unexpected ways, and made this city feel a little less like it was rushing past me.

More than birthdays though, it was the distance. Every win, every loss, the people who mattered to me only heard about them after the fact. The people I was closest to had become an audience to a life they used to be in.

I felt the distance more acutely than I had in two years when my family couldn't make it to my graduation. But New York is full of people who recognize someone in the middle of their own crossing, and act reflexively when they witness it. Nazli was one of them. We'd met by chance in my first few months here, when she was the director of a museum I visited on a class trip, and we became friends. As an immigrant child, she knew what it meant to build a life far from the one you're familiar with. When I told her about my graduation situation, she offered to come. She sat where my family would have sat. If she hadn't, I honestly would have skipped it entirely and missed the chance to celebrate what had felt, for a very long time, like an impossible ordeal.

Nazli's photo from graduation

I called my mom today. I had good news to share. She listened to all of it and then asked if I was happy. If I was eating well. If I was sleeping enough. I said yes. She knows I only tell her the hard parts after they're over. The 18-hour days, the lingering doubt on the late night subway rides. It doesn't matter. She still knows when something is wrong before I say a word.

When she asked how I felt about being here for two years, whether I had accomplished what I set out to do. I could have told her that I found what I came looking for. That I was being heard and my ideas had found a place. That I was right to take the leap.

Presenting at Beyond Text Conference ( https://surya.website/beyond-text)

Instead I thought of the book “The Motorcycle Diaries”, and a letter Ernesto wrote to his mother in the middle of a crossing of his own.

"What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two: melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land."

I told her I thought the split would resolve. That eventually I would stop missing what I left behind, or that New York would replace it entirely. That hasn't really happened. I miss her. I miss our walks. And I love this city. I’m grateful for every person who made room for me in it. All of it is true at once. I think that's what Ernesto was trying to tell his mother too.