Day Nine: I Hate Them Fancy Railroad Cars and Subway Trains...

When most people in my location think of the city, they think of great nightlife and a wealth of history and culture. But when I think of the city, I’m not quite so optimistic. I think of smog, crazy people, angry, impossible driving, and lots of pigeons. After about twenty visits, I’ve determined that I really rather despise the city. Unfortunately, I love everything the city has to offer. Every concert I go to is in the city, and there’s a cornucopia of amazing restaurants and markets with every kind of taste I could ever want to enjoy. I can educate myself with hundreds of museums and educational centers, and there are countless quirky events I wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else. But I still hate the city. I’m the kind of person who enjoys her space. I hate walking, I hate driving in a gigantic, crowded, multi-directional grid of angry people, and I hate coming home feeling like I rolled around in farts and car exhaust. “So take the train!”, you might suggest. Oh no -- I hate public transportation, and I have a terrible fear that I’m always going to miss my stop and end up getting off in a dangerous and creepy area. And along with all the goodness in the city that draws me there every once and again, they are gems amongst a plethora of dirty, neglected, and frightening areas engulfed by crime and poverty. I feel immense sympathy for anyone who lives there, but I still want to be as far away from such places as physically possible. I grew up in the grassy suburbs, where every house had a lamp post and there was a cornfield down the block. Although I love my town and I loved my childhood, I’m not going to call it cultured in any regard. So it’s perfectly natural that I would feel slightly uncomfortable in an area quite opposite from what I’m used to. And the fun little magic that comes with the city is that one wrong turn and you can easily end up in one of these areas before you’ve even realized you’re on the wrong street. Since I’m twenty-four, 100 pounds, and about as street savvy as Little Bo-Peep, I think it’s understandable why the city and I don’t get along. I have a close friend who lived and thrived in the city for four years while she went to college in one of the most dangerous parts of the area. She walked everywhere, spontaneously took mural tours, and took the subway to anywhere it would go to anything from the Italian Market to an Indian Pride Festival. She even lived in a house with drug dealers at twenty-two (having never touched drugs or alcohol of any kind) and lived a happy existence in her room upstairs. What I realized she had that I did not was a sense of fearlessness. She could live and love the city because she wasn’t even the least bit afraid of anything about it. Sure, it has a ridiculously high crime rate, but she didn’t let it get in her way. So maybe one day I can learn to love the city if I become a little fearless, but that isn’t going to help me ignore the smog or the pigeons.