Author: c.horvath

Staring off into the Boston skyline with limitless beads of salty perspiration flooding down my face into the faux grass rug underneath my foldable lawn chair; the music blasting, a beer in one hand and a Monica’s Deli Italian sub in the other. Our apartment rooftops were the closest thing we could get to soak up the summer sun in the city. After growing up on the beach this slightly crushed my soul to be sweating on a hot rooftop rather than dipping my toes in the crisp ocean water. But somewhere in mind I decided that living in a city was the way to go. I loved the busyness. Always people coming and going, never knowing who you could meet next. Ever since I was young I dreamt of living in New York City. The idea of it made me eager to grow up as fast as possible so that I could move out and be on my own in the awe inspiring ‘big city’. However, after graduating high school New York didn’t seem like the right place just yet. After visiting and applying to colleges all around the country I decided on Boston. It seemed like a reasonable stepping-stone from Catholic high-school beach life to big city madness. To me Boston felt like a hometown city with enough people to spark your interest but enough consistency to create a life.

As I sipped on my Sam Adams Summer Ale I remembered, my cousin Emily’s birthday. “I have to call her right now!” I alarmingly thought to myself, due to the fact that I almost always forget everyone’s birthday. It was a miracle that it even dawned on me in my dazed state of mind. “Hey Em! Happy Birthday!! I wish I was there to celebrate with you.” Emily responded, “I know I wish you could come out with us tonight! Its going to be so much fun.” In that moment I stopped and thought, “You know what, I will”. Immediately I hung up the phone and booked a train ticket to the big, beautiful New York City. There was something that happened in that moment when I decided to just go. I felt like this was going to be more than a weekend trip. This was going to be something bigger.

(This is going to be a journalistic piece about getting inside the mind of New Yorkers who are leading all different types of lives and looking at how they all come together )

“Mass hysteria is a terrible force, yet New Yorkers seem always to escape it by some tiny margin: they sit in stalled subways without claustrophobia, they extricate themselves from panic situations by some lucky wisecrack, they meet confusion and congestion with patience and grit–a sort of perpetual muddling through,” E.B White, Here is New York, 1948.

In White’s “Here is New York” he gathers that in this city, the connection and separation of two lives is found eighteen inches apart.
A lawyer, a supermodel, a college student, a musician, a mother of two and a homeless man all assemble tightly side by side at 8:00 am on the 6 train uptown. One head stares up in relief of making it on in the nick of time, one head down in distress of the day ahead, one pair of eyes closed, one set of headphones in, one book, and one big bag of God knows what. If they are lucky they could find these eighteen inches between them to relax their shoulders for just a few minutes before they march out into the streets and face the demands of the day.

Between these eighteen inches are endless stories of victories and tragedies. There are moments of breakdown and breakthrough. There is loneliness and fellowship. There is a constant influx of bright-eyed dreamers and the departure of beat-down visionaries.

Being a New Yorker comes with a different type of brain chemistry; in turn, a different way of handling life, or not handling life. Researchers led by Dr. Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, have found that growing up in the city doubles the risk of psychosis and other mental health issues later in life.

“I am so stressed out,” says Sabrina C., a student at Baruch College in Manhattan. “I have like 5 papers due this week and my sister is about to have a baby any minute. I have so much going on and my professors are giving us a whole book to read for each class on top of regular assignments that are due. It’s like they think we have nothing else to do except schoolwork. And on top of all that I have to work, too.”