What Sticks

New York breaks your sense of scale. Everything is too loud, too close, everybody reaching for something that never quite fits. It should be unbearable. Mostly it just is.

I spent a few days crashing with friends, riding the subway at odd hours, sitting in their apartment with a cat and watching the light move across buildings outside. Nothing special about it. The quiet moments that don’t register for anyone but you, which is when they matter most in a place like that.

What gets to you is that nobody there is impressed anymore. The ambition, the constant sense that something important is happening—it all becomes just Tuesday morning, just another thing to survive until Wednesday. Most cities don’t teach you that kind of honesty.

I haven’t been back. Not from hate, but because it felt complete. You can’t do that place halfway. It demands everything and doesn’t care if you crack a little in the process.

What I remember most is the cat walking across my chest in the dark, the city outside the window, nobody looking at anybody on the train. The small real things. Those stuck longer than the idea ever could.