On Moving Away From Boston
"Living a serious, orderly life in what could very well be America’s most serious, orderly city."
May 29, 2018
Boston, Massachusetts
I was 24 years old
Did some tentative packing this morning but it was too beautiful outside to dedicate more than a couple hours to that endeavor. And what more appropriate way to ring in my final day in Boston than tanning on Harvard Med’s quad before shitting at Emmanuel College in that single stall bathroom on the third floor of the Admin building? It was a gorgeous day. 80 and sunny. Just stunning. And then topped it all off by meeting up at the Squealing Pig with Hilary Skov.
Disappointed though unsurprised that I haven’t mentioned her return to Boston yet. Two ships passing in the Boston night, she moved here at the beginning of May and I’d be gone by the end of it. I only saw her three times. But it was enough to feel sufficiently touched by an angel each and every time. More comfortable than ever sharing silence with her. She’s among my favorite people to be around. The perfect mix of grounded and cerebral. Spiritual without ever getting too woo-woo. Hilarious without ever getting obnoxious. The best listener and the best talker. No one asks better questions and I never walk away from a conversation with her without getting taught something about myself that felt like it had been just! there! on the tip of my tongue all this time.
The Squealing Pig was packed and that hot bartender who served me my first ever martini was working. I ordered a martini. Hil got vodka tonics. We both agreed that vodka feels lighter and cleaner than any other alternative. Had two martinis and ended up pretty crocked. We had a great conversation. About her weekend at Ruthie’s, visiting her in Northampton. About her Bachelorette-watching roommates. About the edible in their freezer she’s been surreptitiously nibbling on. And about this book that Patti Rissmeyer gave her around graduation about transitions—telling me how the book addresses this idea of a hallway that often exists between one door closing and another door opening. That existential limbo, that stasis between two things. And I told her that’s already how I’m feeling about Chicago, moving there this summer but only to move someplace else come fall. But she encouraged me to not rush away the summer with thoughts of “what’s next?” Of course, I will have to put out feelers for jobs and apartments in New York but she insisted I don’t treat Chicago as just some hallway. That I could end up totally loving it. I very well could.
We parted ways on Huntington Avenue. I don’t remember the specifics of our goodbye very clearly but I do remember the feeling. I love her. I walked home through Brookline instead of taking the bus and took a cold shower to sober up. Watched Orlando, that Tilda Swinton movie I’ve wanted to see forever. It wound up being so perfectly fitting. One individual’s journey through life, becoming themselves one century at a time. I’m about to botch the line here but it spoke to me nevertheless, something a character says right near the very end: “And ever since she let go of the past, she found her life to be just beginning.”
December 1, 2021
Brooklyn, New York
I am 28 years old
Heading home to our Allston apartment after a raucous 60 minutes on a GymIt elliptical machine, I was walking down Brighton Avenue one night when I realized I’d lived on my own in Boston longer than I’d ever lived with my parents in New Hampshire. And by “longer,” I mean maybe six months—a half a year very likely cancelled out by the summer breaks I spent living at my parents house. But still—a complicated revelation. Because, already, I’d swapped out Freehold for Gilford as my hometown, having lived away from my childhood’s New Jersey for long enough that it seemed time to reassess the matter. Setting aside years of hostility toward that Granite State of mine and accepting it, for the sake of simplicity, as home. Because when people ask where you’re from, what they want is a town and a state. A cocked head, furrowed brow, and wind through the willows “Well…” delivered on an exhale? I pity the fool. From time to time, I’d switch things up with a “...by way of New Jersey” but, otherwise, I had made my peace. I was from New Hampshire. Unless…
I loved Boston. Right up to the day I moved away, and every day since, I love Boston. And while I know and fear the Caucasian tribalism of that city well enough to avoid ever claiming it as my hometown out loud, I’ll claim it as my own, and bravely, in my heart. Because after the said hostility of my New Hampshire upbringing, a place that I resisted so desperately and for so long, Boston felt like the first real choice of my adult life. I knew nothing about that city, totally oblivious to its culture, its scene, the way everything is shades of brown and every person teems with rage. I’d been there twice in my life and one of those visits was just to see Emmanuel College, the school that would ultimately take me to Boston at all. But that’s where I wanted to go. And after four years in school, and then two years in flux, it’s where I wanted to stay.
For a city that’s changed so drastically—and so soullessly—since I first got there, there’s something about Boston that made it easy to feel like everything could stay blissfully still. Living with Emmanuel girls in a pistachio-green triple decker not all that far from the party houses of our undergrad past, it seemed like my life could be maintained at a pace as precisely glacial as I wanted. There was Shannon, laughing at all our same jokes from the other side of my bedroom wall. And there was Juliette, taking all the same zany pictures of me for a blog that picked up exactly where a certain college newspaper column left off. I was leading the same dogs down the same streets of the same neighborhood, walking something like 12 miles a day without ever actually getting anywhere. I wore a black pullover with black running pants and tall wool socks with Reebok Club C 85s, suffering rain and snow and comments from tenants of the Ink Block about how “dog walkers really should be using the service elevator, okay?” And I felt like a saint. Regimented and modest, living this serious, orderly life in what could very well be America’s most serious and orderly city. Boston and I were two of a kind, perfectly compatible, anxiously attached, yes, but fostering all the same exalted expectations of what a day in the cloistered life should entail. And so—I knew I had to leave.
Despite Hilary’s sound, sage advice, Chicago was only ever a hallway for me. Not that I gave it much of a chance, buying a round-trip ticket from the jump. It’s just that I closed the door on Boston with the express purpose of opening another in New York. Like Carrie fighting with Miranda over Paris, I knew I could stay in Boston and write about my life or I could go to New York and live my life. And considering I have that scene’s line readings committed exactly to memory, it’s not too far beyond the pale to consider it a directly contributing factor to my move. Boston coddled me, it indulged my severity, giving me all the peace and quiet and isolated sameness I longed for. I drew an outline of myself at some point and Boston ensured that I’d never need to color outside those lines. New York City, however. It blurred my perimeters and smeared the color from my face, erasing and contrasting and redefining, pushing me and prodding me into this twisted new shape that, somehow, I recognize completely. And thank God. Because sometimes I think about what I’d be like, had I never left Boston. I’d probably still be walking dogs. I’d definitely still be single. Almost all my friends have moved away so it's likely I’d be living with strangers. And I probably wouldn’t say much to them whenever we caught each other in the kitchen or outside the bathroom. I probably wouldn’t say much to anyone, so willfully lonesome day and night in the life I’d carved out for myself. Things would be staid and pleasant and pretty. And I wouldn’t be happy. But looking at the faces of passersby briefly golden under Allston street lights or passengers sullen in their seats on the 66 or all the dogs I fastened onto leashes whose entire world was a couple square blocks in any direction, maybe I’d see that I wasn’t quite so alone, here, all by myself, in Boston.
We learn something about ourselves with every transition. Here’s to lifelong learning😘
I admire all your adventures and wonderful memories you’ve made on your young journeys. But NY fits you perfectly!