How New York City Changed My Life

Before NY, I always felt like I was too fast, too frantic; in NY, I felt like I was perfectly in step.

New York is a universe unto itself, a world of extremes, where you have to cultivate an internal calm lest you explode into a trillion pieces. I lived in New York City for a decade, in both the West and East Village, and it is still one of my favorite places on the planet.

I can’t explain what called me to New York City. When people ask me why I moved there, I always say, “I really loved Ghostbusters!” which is the truth, but maybe not the whole truth. Whatever I saw portrayed in that movie was alluring to me, but it was more than that.

I think it was the perfect antidote to the small city where I grew up, Wellington, New Zealand, a place where a silent blanket settled over the city every night at about 6pm, and made me feel a deep emptiness inside. Wellington was so small that I was often the zaniest-dressed person on the street, and as a 13 year old goth, I felt I should have much more competition! Wellington made me feel like the only moves you could make were lateral ones. Wellington was a place where I felt like magic was out of reach.

The idea that you could leave your house in NYC at any time of the night and be surrounded by people felt electrifying to me. I craved that feeling of being alone, but with others at the same time. At 13 years old, I would sit in the Wellington public library, with a stack of travel books, writing down lists of all the places in New York that I wanted to see. I was obsessed with the idea of studying at NYU (although when my family found out how much that would cost, we laughed it off). I knew I would get there eventually.

My first visit happened in 2006. I was 22 years old, freshly transformed, on the other side of depression and an eating disorder. I had flown from Auckland to San Francisco with my boyfriend, attended Burning Man — where he had dropped acid and completely forgotten who he was — and New York was our final stop before we moved to Melbourne, Australia. (Yes, we went the very long way round!)

As soon as I arrived, I knew I was in the right place. When I stepped out of our cab in front of the Chelsea Hotel, I could feel the electricity of the city running up my legs. It was palpable, it was real: not just an abstract concept. It was the first place I had ever visited where the natural speed of it matched my own energy. Before NY, I always felt like I was too fast, too frantic; in NY, I felt like I was perfectly in step.

It worked out perfectly that I would be celebrating my 23rd birthday there. We arrived on the 12th of September, and at about 10pm, my boyfriend started walking me uptown, towards Times Square. At midnight, underneath all the neon lights, with taxis rushing to and fro, we celebrated at — where else?! — Coldstone Creamery, where people scooping ice-cream begrudgingly sang me happy birthday, and I bathed in the feelings, delirious and ecstatic, my tongue covered in chocolate chips!

I remember telling my boyfriend that I wanted to move there right away, and he cautioned me. “Some places it’s not so bad to not have a lot of money. New York is not one of them. Make some money and then come back.”

I knew that, as a Taurus who was also about 13 years older than me, he was probably right. But my heart couldn’t stand it.

A week later, we landed in Melbourne, Australia. It felt small, it was cold and smelled like wet grass, and within a year and a half, I had moved to New York City, alone, with two suitcases and — other than a heart loaded with magic and a fistful of blind optimism — absolutely no plan.

Some people would have been scared. I simply felt exhilarated. New York City just kept lifting me.

As soon as I got there, I was invited to a fashion blogger’s brunch hosted by Louis Vuitton. I was featured in Time Out New York as one of the most interesting singles in the city (and got two boyfriends out of it!). I walked in Betsey Johnson’s runway show at fashion week. I experimented with being single, got married, got divorced, and fell in love again. I learned how to grow my business and make money. I got rejected by publishers, decided to self-publish my book, and then got picked up by Hay House. I had love affairs with famous people. I lived through blizzards, hurricanes, days so hot it felt like my bones were melting, and bitter cold that ate through my clothes. My first apartment was a sublease that was almost perfect, except for the toilet in the hallway. My best friend and I threw a joint birthday party/wedding in Central Park and all the readers of our blogs attended. And every week it seemed like I would run into someone interstellar on the street: Patricia Field, Marc Jacobs, Alec Baldwin, Chris Noth, and countless other maniacs who made me believe that anything was possible.

That was my favorite thing about NYC. Not the yellow cabs, the people-watching, or even the incredible food. It was the possibility. I was high on it. The air was so thick with potential, you could cut it with a knife. Living in New York was like knowing that a winning lottery ticket was around the corner. It was dizzying, intoxicating. I was slurping off the spoon of life, and it felt so good.

The simplest moment — like saying yes to an invitation at a party — could turn into anything. One minute you were at a party in Bushwick, the next a magician was performing slight-of-hand while your friend ate escargot at 4am. You could be having a casual drink in the East Village, and before you knew it, your favorite musician was going down on you in an elevator at the W Hotel. One minute you were flirting with a girl at Soho House, the next she had invited you backstage at SNL because she was married to one of the cast. You could go from browsing a dating app at dusk to watching the sun rise with a man you would go on to marry (and, uh, later divorce).

There was no such thing as a dull day, because every time you stepped outside of the house, you were face-to-face with unfiltered humanity. It was raucous, clanging, a cacophony that could drive you mad… But it was punctuated with so much unexpected beauty that you’d always feel like you were “home” once you landed at JFK.

It was heartbreak that sent me packing. The city felt like it was oozing with my ex’s memory, and I felt so battered by our relationship that I couldn’t stand the idea of seeing him in the street. The night we broke up, I led a ritual on a rooftop for 100 women, where we lit candles and heard our screams echo across sky-scrapers. A few months later, I locked my apartment and moved to Los Angeles.

I am proud of the person that New York helped me become. New York City helped me figure out what I wanted, what turned me on, and what I couldn’t stand.

New York taught me that it was okay to go after what I wanted; that there was no such thing as “too much”; it cancelled any ideas I might have had about not deserving the things I desired; it taught me to speak up and to take chances; and most of all, it reaffirmed that the world was definitely big and broad enough to love me in my authentic weirdness. And that was a major gift.

To New York!

xo,

P.S. International Playgirl, my 3 month adventure club, is open right now, and it closes on Sunday night. If you know you live in the wrong place, if you want to get out of the house, or you want to expand both your inner and outer world, this was made for you! I’m so excited for you to join us!