#nycdiary

2020: The Year of Standing in Line for EVERyThiNG

Thanks to everyone who waited in crazy-long lines to vote this year. NYC had early voting for the first time in history and many waited 4 to 5 hours just to cast their ballots this year. ⁣

It’s an unprecedented Election Day in the U.S. today. I saw musicians performing in front of polling sites to keep spirits up. ⁣⁣

In uncertain times: may there be equal parts hope. ⁣

As the train neared the station one of the gentlemen in the two, two-seater train seats that face one another stood and began to shuffle his things together. As he maneuvered his way past the other man, a perfect stranger, he said to him “take care, my brother.” I had been mulling over this way to address one another since I heard the same phrase on a different train earlier in the week. A disheveled person who seemed to have trouble standing was denied seating close to where he entered and after wading through the passengers in the train car, found a seat next to an older man. As he sat down next to him he said “thank you, my brother.” 

I think a lot about how New York City has affected my sense of self, my mannerisms, what I come to expect, and how I think about my fellow human. As someone who has dealt with some more insipid traumas in the past and thusly has very little trust for most people, I spend a lot of time feeling very small and very afraid in a city like this. Whether it’s because aggression at home was never ever demonstrated or tolerated unless it was an overreaction from my mother, or what I was taught in my Catholic catechism classes about politeness. I rarely feel compelled to assert myself and so in a city that only asserts itself, I can feel very helpless. 

We saw a production of Urine Town, a parody musical about eco terrorism and capitalism and revolution with a classic ingenue who is good and pure and sings about how every person has a heart and thusly she is unafraid. I like that idea, that because people are inherently human we can appeal to one another even in our darkest hours, but I don’t know how to necessarily put that into practice in a way that doesn’t leave me up a creek without a paddle. 

In a place where trying to see the good in people feels like exposing a crack in our self-installed security systems, how do we manage to recognize ourselves in one another? I don’t know, but I think part of it is letting in the good things. I feel like I deflect a lot of negativity throughout the day, but sometimes I throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think processing the good things is important. and processing the bad things only really seems to help when the thing is really really bad.