Chapter 1
The first week of school
Stress, stress, scurrying, and more stress. Those were the first disorienting days in New York City. Moving my suitcase from one place to another and lugging Ikea furniture boxes on and off subways. The first few weeks in NYC were like being on a Ferris wheel. Eventually, at some point, the low points subsided. My lab partner spilled vinegar on my jeans and offered to buy me coffee after class, which turned into a four-hour conversation. I wore an outfit that two separate girls complimented. I went to a cute cafe and managed to sit still the entire afternoon
and do my homework. This was the top, and I had a view of the city stretching out below. My lab partner would become my best friend, and I’d have cute outfits to wear every single day, and I’d be the most organized student in class. It was exhilarating. Until my lab partner dropped the class. Until I wore a sundress on a windy day and decided I would only ever dress practically from now on. Until I got a C on my first quiz of the year. So, once again, I was on my way to the bottom of the wheel.
Things were like this for a while, stuck on a pendulum of extremes. The city was suffocating at the lows, with too many sounds and noises and bodies pushing on me, to the point where I dreaded leaving the little box I called home. At the highs, I was overstimulated and overly optimistic. Out all day from one place to another and certain that success in every aspect of my life was going to fall from a highrise into my lap.
That is what it’s like when you first move to a city, when it is your first time being completely alone in a new place. Involuntarily you are dragged up and down because you don’t know how to separate yourself from the chaos surrounding you every day. That is the first stage, the porous stage, where you soak up too much of what is around you. The next stage is realizing that if you don’t want to passively let the world influence you, you must exert some sort of force back.
It starts off with very small things. I raised my hand in class voluntarily once, then I did it every class, and soon, I was comfortable enough chatting with my professor after class. During one conversation with Professor Rowland, I told him how I would obsessively organize my parent’s bookshelf growing up, and he offered to help me get a part-time job at the school library. My Monday and Tuesday nights became calmly spent sorting return books while sipping powdered hot chocolate from the break room. One day, I woke up at 5am and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I went for a walk. I realized it was nice walking without any destination, and I began walking every morning just for myself, not thinking about what I was going to do, or who I was going to see. On one of these walks, I ran into a girl from class. We were walking in the same direction, and I offered to walk with her for a bit. We agreed to work together after class. This random classmate became Jenna, and Jenna became a contact in my phone. Jenna eventually became my favorite person to run errands with on the weekends, and then she was the first real friend I’d made at school. On days when the traffic and lack of direct sunlight started to become too much again, I realized I could hop on the subway and ride up and up. Up until trees started to replace buildings, and apartment complexes and brownstones were replaced with spread-out houses and small cafes. Things got less extreme, more manageable- things got better.
It was on the way home from one of these expeditions that I happened to be at Grand Central at 5pm on a Wednesday. That was when I had the realization that the city was full of potential and especially full of young, attractive men.
Olivia Sully is a Junior studying English Literature at New York University. Olivia spends most of her school and professional life writing and reading, but she likes to decompress with her paintings.
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