Unlearning yellow brick roads

It’s another 90-degree week in the city and I’m not sure my electricity bill can handle this heat anymore.

All month I’ve been working hard to implement my summer goals and make the most out of the last summer of my 20s but between thunderstorms every weekend and feeling like hell on earth every day, baby I haven’t been anywhere that can’t guarantee me access to fully functioning A/C!

This is my second summer back in Brooklyn since the pandemic and I wanted to go all in with the same energy I had the first summer I moved here 4 years ago. I wanted to harness that intern “good time, not a long time” energy. Because that’s how I felt about New York. It wasn’t meant to be something that lasted. Not this long at least.

But all of that changes this month because I have 180 days to become an official New York resident… and I’m not really sure how to feel about it.

THE STORY | insurance is a scam, okay?

I have a car in New York.

If you know anything about driving in any major city then you know that this is not a flex, it’s actually a cry for help. I never thought something so beautiful would mentally, emotionally, and financially wreck me. Is this why yall call your cars babies? Because I can see it now.

Anyway, I got this silver beauty about a year ago after my last car was ready to die on me. It was not the best decision (cough hypomania) but I figured that if I already had one car in New York and was fine-ish what was another car? I know, but I was still commuting back and forth between DC and New York to see family since the pandemic, it made grocery shopping easier, and truthfully I’d rather have a long walk to my car than to a bus stop or train station. And those things happened for a while, but I was trying too hard to balance the lifestyle I’d developed over the pandemic with my current situation and it was starting to rub against the realities of where I presently am – Brooklyn, New York. Not DC. Not Richmond. Brooklyn.

And although it took them a while, my insurance company would figure that out too.

Let me start by saying this: Nobody works harder than insurance investigators. If you need to find information on your man, just go ahead and call your insurance company because when I tell you they work harder, faster, and swifter than the FBI – I mean it. They come with receipts the size of Texas and they do not mess around. So when an email from my insurance company hit my inbox about switching my insurance to my new state it took me a minute to wrap my head around what was happening. When it did all I could think to myself was “another reason I hate this fucking city”.

After several back-and-forths on the phone with my friends and parents it was clear: I had no choice but to get New York Insurance. Which now meant I had to get a New York license in order to get New York registration. The first thing that came to my mind wasn’t the dollars leaving my pocket it was an overwhelming sense of grief at just how permanent this all was.

THE MOMENT | there’s no place like home

A few weeks ago I watched the Wiz for the first time in a few years. Staring at that screen and looking at my life, I was Dorothy. A Black woman with big dreams minding my business in a small city with my little dog and then BAM! a storm happens and somehow I end up on Nostrand Ave next to a man pretending to be a scarecrow. The only difference is she got to go back home. I, on the other hand, have to learn to adapt to this new place.

I always had ambitions of pursuing a career in advertising and to do that I needed to make some sacrifices. My disdain for major cities was one of them. But I sucked it up and did it for the plot. I got the job, I got the Brooklyn apartment, and I started trying to make New York my home.

But it’s been tough. Although my dream career brought me here, some days I feel ungrateful for not feeling the magic of this city that other people do. I wish the streets inspired me and made me feel full and alive. I want to feel connected to this place enough to establish a real community. To just lay roots, grow, and finally let the dust settle after years of chaos and unbalance. Four years later and I’m still trying to figure out not just how, but if, I can call this place home.

Next week, I will have no choice.

When I think of home, I think of a place where there’s love overflowing, I wish I was home, I wish I was back there with the things I been knowing. – Diana Ross, Home

THE UNLEARNING | permanent addresses

For my 25th birthday, I got my Nana’s house tattooed in her memory. I wanted a permanent reminder of the place I called home. I still remember how every weekend her house would be filled to capacity with sounds, smells, and touches of love and care. Now I spend my weekends in a city that has tested my patience, resilience, and the very little sanity I have left. But somewhere in between the emotional sidewalk breakdowns, habitual setbacks, and city hardships, it’s also taught me a lot of things about myself.

I don’t want to burst your bubble, but I’m not about to tell you that home is just a place that lives within and is always with you. Having a place to call home is a very real thing. Home is not some plastic card that you pop into your wallet. It’s not some mystical entity. Homes are built. They’re an external expression of a lot of intentional hard work. The courage to make the unfamiliar familiar, the openness to align your heart with the soul of a city, and the diligence to keep finding your place in the chaos that is life. Work that I’ve been avoiding because I felt it would make me feel less connected to where I was. That it was just too much to close the door on that chapter of my life. And maybe it’s time for me to unlearn that in this life I can only have one place to physically call home. Home is now my new permanent address, yes, but it’s also the hobbies I’ve been too afraid to try, the spaces that make me feel at ease, and the people that make me feel safe.

I too have been on a search for my yellow brick road. Not necessarily to take me back anywhere, but to find where I truly belong. The work might be hard, but every step brings me closer to building my dream home.

And who knows, Brooklyn might just be my Emerald City.