Disappearing Into New York

There’s something about New York that makes you think you can disappear into it and become someone else. Leave everyone who knows you, step off a bus, and suddenly you’re nobody. You get to decide who you are.

Brooklyn especially sells this. You walk around and see people doing it—working, dancing, kissing someone, drinking on a roof. They look like they’re actually living the lives they planned. Maybe they are.

The hard part is that you’ll probably never meet those people. You’ll live five minutes from them and never cross paths. Your story and theirs exist in the same neighborhood and never touch. But that’s part of the dream too, somehow. Everyone around you is living vividly, and you’ll never know them. It’s lonely and thrilling.

I don’t know if it actually works the way people think it does. The leaving is easy. The becoming is harder. But people keep trying anyway, and there’s something honest about that. They’re not waiting for permission. They’re just going.