I took the 2 train to Clark Street on Tuesday because it was my New York anniversary and I wanted to do something that felt like a scene from a movie I would never admit to loving.
The Brooklyn Heights Promenade at sunset is a cliche. I know this. Everyone and their engagement photographer knows this. I went anyway.
Exactly one year ago I landed at JFK with two suitcases, a portfolio I was too nervous to open, and a WhatsApp full of relatives asking if I had eaten.
I sat on a bench facing Lower Manhattan and watched the light go orange over the towers, and I let myself feel all of it. The whole ridiculous year.
The first month when I cried in a Duane Reade because they did not have the biscuits I wanted. The winter that nearly broke me. The friends I made who felt like they had known me for lifetimes, who now text me memes at 2AM.
There is a specific loneliness to your first year abroad. It is not sad exactly. It is more like being a guest in your own life. Watching yourself from a little distance, wondering when it will feel real.
But sitting on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade at sunset, something loosened in my chest. The skyline was not showing off for a tourist anymore. It was just my skyline. The place I live. The place I somehow, against all my doubt, made a life.
There is a line in a Bollywood film my dad loves, something about how home is not a place, it is a feeling you carry. I used to think that was greeting card nonsense.
Sitting there, missing Ahmedabad and loving New York in the exact same breath, I finally understood it. You can hold two homes at once. It does not tear you. It just makes you bigger.
The sun went down. The lights came up, all those windows full of strangers' lives. A man walked by with a golden retriever wearing a tiny bandana. I laughed out loud, alone, and did not feel alone at all.
One year. I am still here. I am still becoming.
Turns out the girl with two suitcases knew what she was doing.
Love,