I fell in love for the first time this past year. It was passionate and messy and blew up in my face. However, it yielded much needed self-reflection and realization that facilitated unprecedented growth within myself.

Shortly after my first semester began, I found myself in something that resembled a relationship with another NYU student. I was hungry for life when I arrived at college and he nourished my soul. We thought we could get away with not putting a label on ourselves, though. He had just gotten out of a five-year-long relationship and I had just gotten over a short, mediocre one. My mistake was thinking I could control my emotions. I thought I could spend my days with this boy and be embraced with his sweet kisses without getting too attached. I thought wrong. I fell for him much more quickly than I ever believed possible.

As soon as I got out of class, my first thought was when can I see him again? Even if it was for twenty minutes, I wanted to be in his presence. He brought calm into the normal chaos that was my daily life. He held me while I had panic attacks and made me say every single thing I was grateful about, from my little brother back home to the cheese and grape platter I always bought from Sidestein. When I was with him, I didn’t think about the pain brought by the loss of my father or the invalidation from my mother. I didn’t think about the nights I went to sleep for dinner. He even stopped the daily night terrors I would have about my mom’s boyfriend.

The thing about college, though, is that we often get much more freedom than we have ever been exposed to before. I didn’t have to wait until my uncle was at work for a boy to drive twenty minutes to pick me up. This boy literally lived right across the hall from me. Boundaries exist for a reason, but I broke them. It felt too good to be with someone that had also struggled, that understood much of my pain. He was hesitant about us, though. He would constantly have talks with me to make sure I wasn’t getting too attached. He had just gotten out of a long relationship and made it clear he wasn’t ready for a new one. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt me. So, I told him I wasn’t falling. I lied.

 I lied to myself for a long time. I told myself that I didn’t have deep feelings for him. That we were just casual and having fun, but deep down, I knew. I wrote a poem two months in that went:

a beautiful night

heart inflamed

my soul awakens

in the presence of you

i love you

but im not in love with you

i promise

i know you dont want that

you dont want to be limited again!

you shout from the rooftops

you shout so loud that windows shatter

i eat the glass

every night

you hold me

but when im not there

i cry

i cry because i know

i love you

but not like in love with you

i promise

As our not-relationship progressed, I became dependent. I expected him to constantly  long to see me as well and to not be with anyone else, even though we had never made that clear. When my expectations weren’t always met, I began feeling empty. So, I started overcompensating. I stopped going out of my way to see friends. I spent more money on him than I had to spare. I sacrificed sleep each night to drowsily stay up doing homework with him. These were my own conscious choices; he never asked for any of it.

Our days were often sweet and bright, but I knew we were running on borrowed time. The expiration date was closing in on us like the four white walls of loveless apartments I grew up in. Because of this, I never had sufficient time to brace myself for the fall.

It all exploded one night. I saw him check in another girl to our residence hall. My friends were trying to keep me away so I wouldn’t see, but the plan failed. He walked past without even looking at me. My eyes locked with the girl. My heart shattered.

I walked outside and the cool night air wrapped itself around my cold skin as I collapsed against the brick wall. I can’t do this anymore. The nights when he spun me around and called me his girl, when we sat in Washington Square Park eating pizza and he told me his dreams about helping low income communities, waking up to his soft kisses after he got back late from the library, it wasn’t enough anymore. This hurt more than I can ever put into words and my battered soul couldn’t bear another moment.

He was a mess after seeing me and made the girl leave. He begged me to come over but I told him it would just make things worse. I would yell. He said it didn’t matter. I stormed in and let myself go. I stopped trying to be what I thought he wanted. I had never yelled at anyone like that in my life. I trusted him. I loved him. I told him he was selfish. But I left out the part that I was, too. I cried; so did he. He said it was his first time in years. Big deal, I told him, I had been crying all week. That night we held the pieces of what was left of us in our tired hands and attempted to mend them back together. They didn’t fit anymore. He texted me at two in the morning and said he wished I was laying in his arms. His bed felt cold without me.

My heart broke repeatedly that week. The next morning was my Spanish final. I tried to tell my friend what happened before it started but I ended up running to the bathroom and breaking down all over again. I am a writer. I write about my pain. But this? This was something I couldn’t even think about without feeling sick to my stomach. He said he was practically writing an anthology. I couldn’t bring myself to reflect on it long enough without feeling like my knees were about to buckle and my lungs would give out. It made me physically ill.

I have endured exponentially more awful experiences in my life than heartbreak, but for some reason, this hurt the most.

By Jaelynn Grace Ortiz

Jaelynn is a rising sophomore at NYU majoring in Journalism and Social and Cultural Analysis with a focus in Latino studies and is minoring in Creative Writing. The list of her hobbies is almost as drawn out as her majors are. She writes poetry, essays and stories, she dances, mentors high schoolers in the Bronx and often plans environmental events in NYU Residence Halls. She has a poem published in the introspective study Inside My World by the Live Poets Society. Despite vehemently condemning social media, she ironically has instagram which you could follow her on. 

For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC,  from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourage them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing and services.  

In September of 2018, I found myself alone in the city that never sleeps. Ironic, considering the countless nights I had laid in bed, dreaming of one day calling the city my home.

I longed for the diversity, the trash-filled subways, the way you could wear an outrageous outfit while singing obnoxiously and people would simply walk by, minding their own business. Just another day in the city. I also needed to escape my pain. I love my hometown, Newburgh, New York, but I could no longer stand visiting the supermarket I had last seen my father alive in.  My heart ached every time I drive past the apartment where papi and I danced to Marc Anthony and would drunkenly slap me around in. I could hardly bear to look at my mother’s face while speaking with her. We were ignoring the fact that her boyfriend sexually abused me when I was sixteen and ignoring that she never believed me and that she was still dating him. I was being haunted by places and faces. Haunted by the ghost of my father and the essence of my mother. I yearned to be free.

The city offers this freedom I yearned for. I knew I would no longer be bound by the shackles of my closed-minded town. People would no longer ask why I dress the way I do or why I thought writing was a feasible career. I could wear my red velvet skirts and fishnets and write uncensored, get tattoos and piercings and feel more at home in my body.

I did most of these things once I arrived: converted to thrift shopping, got three tattoos and five piercings, wrote more in a year than I ever had in my whole life, but after just two weeks of the first semester I sat alone in my dorm, sobbing. I had everything I wanted: a full ride to my dream school, NYU, a dorm in the heart of Greenwich Village, and the most freedom I ever had. Yet for some reason, I still felt empty. There was a hole in my chest that no amount of the city could fill.

I had forged new bonds with friends. We would occasionally get lunch or go out at night, exploring and unearthing the mystifying gems the city had to hide. We found many. However, the second I walked back into my dorm after one of our rendezvouses, that empty feeling crept its way back in. I was surrounded by silence and four, cold white walls. My friends had family and significant others to return home to. What did I have?

I sat at my desk, staring at the polaroids and Photobooth pictures of me and my friends, cheesy grins plastered on our faces. How is it that I could I feel so at peace with them? How is it that I could I coin the nickname Smiley and take hundreds of silly Snapchats, but feel so hollow in my own company?

Humans experience a multitude of complex emotions. These emotions are difficult to comprehend and take much chipping away to reveal their origins. Sometimes it takes life-altering experiences to truly understand them. As I sat sobbing in my dorm, I realized that happiness is a fleeting feeling. The excitement I felt to hang out with my friend had quickly turned to despair as she cancelled on me for the third time that week. I was alone in this world, and I had not yet learned how to cope.

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By Jaelynn Grace Ortiz

Jaelynn is a rising sophomore at NYU majoring in Journalism and Social and Cultural Analysis with a focus in Latino studies and is minoring in Creative Writing. The list of her hobbies is almost as drawn out as her majors are. She writes poetry, essays and stories, she dances, mentors high schoolers in the Bronx and often plans environmental events in NYU Residence Halls. She has a poem published in the introspective study Inside My World by the Live Poets Society. Despite vehemently condemning social media, she ironically has instagram which you could follow her on. 

For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC,  from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourage them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing and services.  

Finding friendship can be difficult. New York can be difficult. Finding friendships in New York? Ouch. Whether its the sea of busy faces that never seems to wane off in intensity or speed, or the fact that all your old high school friends keep promising to come see you, but never do, it takes some outside the box thinking to find a squad to stick to in good times and bad. Here are 5 places to start looking (with a recommendation on the best way to do so.)  

1. A bookstore. I would most recommend the strand, around the outside racks where you find 48 cent pulp fiction novels. Every now and then, interesting people stop by. If they look close to your age, if they’ve got a sense of fashion you like, or hate, start up a conversation by pointing out a book on the shelf. You never know, it just might work.
2. The gym. Specifically? At 6 in the morning. You hit Palladium at opening times for three months in a row, you become one of us. We acknowledge you, respect you, we watch the weights you lift get heavier and heavier, bigger and bigger. Eventually, we take you in as one of ours. Just come by and say something, we’ve probably wanted to talk to you too.
   
3. A club you only have mild interest in. Specifically one you have only a mild interest in. Everyone says “join a club you are passionate about” but that takes so much investment and risk. What if the photography club here at NYU is pretentious and they don’t like me? What if the other basketball kids don’t like the Wizards like I do? Join a club you are curious about, but one that you might enjoy. A small club where there is a tightly knit community, and they’re looking for new blood. Who knows, maybe NYU’s golf team becomes your home away from home?

4. A museum. One you care about, obviously. But also one that is a little more lowkey. If you go to the Museum of Sex looking for friendship, you’ll probably run into more tourists looking for a free place to stay the night rather than future groomsmen at your wedding. I recommend local art galleries and exhibits, the National Geographic is currently running a cool exhibit just south of Washington Square Park. The botanical gardens in Brooklyn are also awesome for this. Go check it out, wait for a guy wearing a leather jacket or a girl with a New York Times tote bag to go in and strike up a conversation. You might strike gold!

   

5. Finally, I would recommend a park. I know it feels more like a pick up artist strategy than a real way to make meaningful friendships, but you never know, it could be both. Sit somewhere near a street performer and throw in a comment about it to the people next to you. Sometimes, all a good conversation needs to get fired up and going is a little spark. Parks are places where people relax. They aren’t usually going to be in a rush if they’re standing around looking at something. Get a couple phone numbers, ruin your instagram follower ratio, and start making friends.

By Victor Galov. Victor is a Sophomore Student at NYU passionate about self-help, self-discovery, and the self regulation of not eating too many unhealthy snacks. He is easily spotted in the wild, usually sporting a red jacket and skipping to whatever classic rock band his ears are crushing on that week with headphones in. He will most likely have tinnitus by 40, but doesn’t worry about it too much, because he knows humanity will live on in robots and computer simulations by then, anyway. He also hopes to have published his novel by then, though at the rate he is going, he will totally delete it through revisions before getting even close to finishing the first chapter.

For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC,  from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourage them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing and services.  

Studying, in a world full of distractions and commitments, fun activities to do and cool people to talk to, can be difficult. It seems so much easier to just put off your assignments, your work, your schooling, till later. Especially when its not some concrete homework assignment of 25 math questions you need to finish by Thursday, and is instead a test on Thursday that you know half the material of half as well as you really should. Sometimes, the willpower dips just an inch, but the entire boat seems to sink. Well, there’s always ways you can solve that. Here’s 3 of them.

First? Find a Mantra. Not the first definition on Dictionary.com, but the second. “A statement, or slogan, repeated frequently.” Come up with something, and have it mean something a little more than it sounds like. Personally, I’ve got a couple. When I need to get moving, or I need to get started on something, I’ll give myself a three count. 3, 2, 1. I’ll say the words out loud, too, so that once the dust settles on that last 1… You don’t really have a choice if you don’t get out of bed and get working. I also have a “keep going” mantra, I’ll just go “Hoo, Ha, Hoo, Ha” under my breath for a while when the willpower starts slacking. I do it when I hit the gym and need to lift weights that are a bit too heavy, or when I’m studying in the library and after thirteen minutes of hard work my mind starts wandering. Mantra’s work, if you train them, and even though they miss at times, and you fail, it’s still worth trying.

What’s next? Get out of your room. We all have productive spaces, and unproductive spaces. Personally? I can’t get ANYTHING done in my room, ever. Whenever I tell myself “oh, this time I’ll master that space and work productively in it” I end up watching podcasts on the ethics of hunting bears with a bow and arrow for four hours. WHile I’m something on an expert when it comes to both sides of that debate, now, I’m scrambling for grades. I hit the library, and a specific section of it, and if possible, a specific seat. I have one “power” spot on the second bottom floor of Bobst? I’m invincible there. An unstoppable force.

Finally, get help. Be it an online resource, or a friend, limit your own options of screwing around. I’ve got an app called “Cold Turkey” on my computer, which you can get for free here at https://getcoldturkey.com. I block websites, apps, and distractions with it every single day from 10 AM to 10 PM, and I get a lot more done because of it. Whenever I try to open up netflix, boom, blocked. Facebook? Nope. Today, by sheer force of habit the first tab I opened up while starting up on this article was youtube, and I was greeted with a gray screen and a quote that I think sums up the importance of taking the proper steps in your study routine, which I will use to close off this article, and get back to the 25 page paper I have due next week.

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” -Confucious.

So go, slowly, sure. But don’t stop. Keep trying.