City of Broken Hearts: How leaving NYC changes our perspective on its adversity
Graphic by Christina Hara
New York is a great place to live if you have a lot of money and you aren’t going through anything at all. Yet somehow, most of the people who live and work here are non-white immigrants who have to go through the most in order to live a stable life. And when COVID-19 ransacked NYC as its epicenter, the response from the government was not enough to prevent widespread death. It’s also indicative of who people in power prioritize during a crisis.
Americans know this, it’s not new information, and it isn’t unique to New York. The issue in particular with the “greatest city in the world” is that it is easier to mistreat people and leave them behind when there is such a great number of us and such an impenetrable reputation. The greatest city in the world is known for rents that increase as the wages stay the same.
My story is this: I have barely been through anything compared to what people with generations of family here have been through. And just a taste of that has reminded me that New York City is special because of the communities people have built here out of strife, and not any of the systems of power that colonizers established as the city’s foundation.
When my closest friend abandoned our apartment over a misunderstanding, I dealt first hand with a landlord that was counting on my near-homelessness to continue with his mistreatment of me. I sat alone in an overpriced Brooklyn 2-bedroom for weeks, waiting to be evicted, fighting off a roach infestation.
Every day that I went into work, I combated a boss who reached success simply by being a persistent white man, rather than someone who is excellent at his job and prepared to lead a team. He ridiculed everyone around me, overworked me for ridiculously low wages, and subjected me to microaggressions every day while preaching about tolerance.
The only reason I got out of these situations is because I have the privilege of a strong professional and personal community around me that was ready to help me when I needed it.
No one deserves these things. No one deserves to be last in line for rental assistance when there are no jobs to be had. No one deserves to go into debt because their basement apartment was flooded. No one deserves to be pushed in front of a train, or forced into prison because all they had was a sidewalk to lay on. And no one deserves to have to leave the city they were raised in because it decided not to care about them anymore.
So I asked my fellow young New Yorkers, why did we move here?
Beverly Danquah, 24, Journalist, Native New Yorker
Beverly’s family is from Akwatia, Ghana, and came to the Bronx to find work and raise their children.A native New Yorker is used to the bullshit of New York City so we're really good at tuning certain things out. You might hear someone say “Hey, did you see that homeless person doing a really weird thing on the corner?” And native New Yorkers like “Oh, yeah, business as usual, what's new?” Whereas a visitor might think that's very weird and not common. New Yorkers are also tough, aggressive, fast moving. A native New Yorker will find themselves in a very slow town, walking quickly, not realizing why they're racing everywhere.
I went to a high school for science and math that allowed us to go out to eat for lunch, which is incredibly unheard of in New York City because the assumption is you're going to leave and never come back. But my school allowed us to go out for lunch. And I remember getting a chopped cheese (New York’s signature hero sandwich) during lunch or a bagel with cream cheese and jelly on my way to school.
So you just grow up faster because there's so many things you need to be wary of like something that happened on the subway, someone on your block got shot. You know, there's a recall on avocados, there's this there's that, there's just so much happening. So you just need to keep up. You know, it's like if you don't keep up, you'll get eat up.
Beverly went to college in Queens, NY and then traveled to Ghana for the Princeton in Africa program.
It wasn't that I was the biggest fan of the stories that I was covering at the time. I felt like I wanted to apply my skill set into a role that better allowed me to have the impact that I wanted to have.
I got back in March. It was freezing rain. It was that kind of rain where you don't want the water to touch you because it’ll freeze on your body.
And as much as people in Ghana were worried about COVID, they weren't freaking out as much as people in New York. In Ghana, the belief was that the visitors who were coming into the country were bringing COVID so if we just stop all the traffic, then there's going to be no COVID. But in America we have them planes flying.
For a time I actually had a return ticket to Ghana. I thought I was going to go back. And then really quickly, I realized that Ghana wasn't opening its borders anytime soon. So there was no way I was going back to that country. And so I started looking for work.
Beverly ended up staying with her parents in the Bronx, and still lives there now. She watched the local government put every possible job and living situation she could have in jeopardy.
I'm not gonna say they did the best that they could; they could have handled this way better. Far better. Unfortunately, we have some leaders who are more focused on the economic success of our nation and our states than they are on our health and well being. So we saw that unfold.
The cost of living in New York City is outrageous. I live in the Bronx, and still, it's very expensive. But I mean, in comparison to Manhattan, it's better, but still city-living is expensive. Subways aren't as safe as they once were. And the prices keep going up. The City’s filthy.
I love a lot of things about being a New Yorker, and there are other things that I'm embarrassed about.
Beverly’s advice for young people looking to follow their dreams in NYC:
I would tell them like you're not wrong. If you want all the awards, this is definitely the place but maybe start somewhere where you can really get your footing, get the experience that you need. And then come here and build on that. You don't have to go straight for New York. Maybe you can take another way. New York is the best place to be if you are into media, if you're a creative, but there's more to New York than the professional advantages. It gives that to you and takes other things from you. So weigh the pros and cons and see what works best for you. But don't say I didn't warn you.
Bekah Ang, 32, Former New Yorker living in California, commercial real estate agent
Bekah’s family lives in Seattle. She went to bible college in Bellingham, Washington.
I was 24, almost 25 and sort of like the start of my adult life. New York was going to be a really big undertaking, but I was up for the challenge, along with the mission to build a church. It was just a lot of doors opened for me and I had friends moving around the same time. And they were like, “Hey, we'll get an apartment.”
They were married and fronted a lot of that cost to make it possible. So at the time, it felt like a really big God thing. I just fell in love with it. It was home. The pace and the energy I feel like it awoke a lot in me, and there's something about New York that allows anyone to be themselves.
I had my first panic attack ever in New York. I worked at Apple retail, and hated it. I think it was a combination of my life changing so quickly, and the intensity of the city. I think it was the adjustment period. It's like, this is how you live now. Everything is a fight. You have to fight to go grocery shopping.
I realized that at the same time I realized that I was in a dead-end job that I hated. I needed to figure out what to do with my life. This sort of launched me into a little bit of a spiral. So that was definitely a challenge, working through anxiety for the first time in my life.
Before I transitioned out of it, that was an acceptance that had to happen. I learned the lesson that hard things aren't to be escaped, but they're an opportunity to learn and to grow. For the first time in my adult life, that was a reality that was in front of me.
I think community was really the thing that made it possible to endure and to work my way through and come out the other side of it. I think when you move to a new city, there's a very real adjustment period where you don't know who your people are, you don't know what your places are. You have to give yourself the grace and the space to change and to adapt.
Bekah joined a church team that helped her feel fulfilled in her creative pursuits, and gave her a loving community to be part of.
I was thriving, I was doing my thing. That's my thought at least, but I was burning the candle from the middle and at the end. I was just going hard right before COVID hit. It was probably the height of my output, I'd say. I was leading the creative team, I was working full time. Outside of that, I was on the brink of getting more responsibility with the team and we were gearing up for a big season ahead.
It all just shut down, and over the course of I think two or three months in quarantine, all of the opportunities started to dissipate like, “We can't pay you anymore.”
[Unemployment] was fine for a little while. I was in quarantine in my two bedroom apartment with my roommate and her boyfriend for eight weeks and starting to go crazy.
Bekah went home to Seattle to help her mom raise a litter of puppies and take a break for about 10 weeks. She struggled with the idea of coming back to NYC.
How do I resign a lease without a job? So my dad was like, “I think it might be a wise thing for you to sell your things and move home.”
There’s a physical body shock when you leave the city, that feels a lot like depression. Because there isn't something that you're rushing to. There isn't this momentum around you that just hangs in the air. You walk outside and it sweeps you into it.
But I think rest is a skill. Learning to rest is actually something that you have to put effort towards.
Later on Bekah decided to move to California to be closer to her siblings and to her new job in real estate. A handful of her church team had moved out there, too.
I got down here and all the anxiety kept happening, but it got really bad. And I was like, “Is California even where I want to be? Is this thing that I care about enough to stay here?” But I can't go back to New York. I don't have a job if I quit this job. Then I got nothing to stand on when I'm in New York. New York has felt like a very closed door. So [I said] “Alright, I'm going to give myself one year” And I think that's a really powerful thing like giving yourself time and space to adjust to a new place.
She loved it, and is now in the process of purchasing a home there, with the help of her parents.
I'm forever indebted to them. I wouldn't be able to do any of this if it wasn't for my parents.
“Do I have any regrets? No, not a single one. I think this is, as silly as it sounds, exactly how it was supposed to work.”
Life in New York is not better than everywhere else. And that was something I truly believed when I lived there. The whole notion of, I can walk out my front door and have the best food anywhere in the country and cookies delivered at three am. There’s this whole idea that it’s better here than anywhere else, it's not. I think as a New Yorker you have to tell yourself that to survive it. But when you leave, you can actually live just as full of a life.
Do I miss anything? Of course I do. Central Park, it was my backyard when I was there, and it just felt like home and New York still feels like home. And when I go back, I don't feel like I don't belong. I think that's part of the beauty of New York, it will always be there for you. It's like riding a bike that will always exist.
What I would say to [20 somethings] who are trying to move to New York is, roll with the punches and know that you're going to spend a lot of money. If you can, have like five to ten thousand dollars saved before you go.