Summer in New York City is my favorite time of year. I love the sunshine (and yes even the extreme heat). There’s a different buzz to the city’s inhabitants- myself included. I feel as if my need to be stimulated by a variety of fun is fulfilled. I love the rooftop bars. The spots where you can drink and dine whilst staring across the Hudson at New Jersey. I cannot get enough Guac and chips washed down by several Aperol spritzes in a high ball. I don’t care that my make-up sweats off and streaks my face making me look like a close relative of the Joker by the time I’ve reached my friends, because I’m happy to be alive. I’m not wearing a bra, my tits are swinging in the breeze and I couldn’t give a monkey’s bottom. I don’t care because I live in the greatest city in the world. New York City.
Mad Manhattan…
This was how I felt every year, until this year, 2020.
This year for most of us brought a lot of sudden change. For those of us who were making the most of our last ‘all work and of course lots of play’ years, it was as if we lost our lives overnight. One minute, I was planning my bachelorette party to Cartagena promising my friends it was a perfectly safe destination and they wouldn’t get the squits from the food. And I was busy auditioning for Broadway. Then the next thing I know, I was left without a dream to chase and a postponed wedding.
I am aware that I am lucky to have only lost my plan- for the next two years of my life, my livelihood and my dream. But as someone who loves their life to be structured and who has spent the last decade hustling hard to the point of exhaustion, it sucked balls to have all of that taken away from me.
I’m in my thirties. In my mind I only had one more year left to go for it and make it big before I should crack on trying to have a mini-me. Turns out getting broody is a real thing. It suddenly keeps happening to me everywhere!
I’ll interrupt serious conversations with my fiancé to squeal and squawk like a deranged seagull about other people’s children. My eyes well up with tears every time I see my landlord’s baby in his mini Havaiana’s. Then when that baby is wheeled away from me, I sob as if I’m seeing him off to college and as if he is my child.
I finally realized I was most definitely experiencing some maternal instincts when I had to be stopped purchasing a Mickey Mouse stroller from target for my pug… filling a void much?
As I’m starting to see myself as a mother, I have to admit that it’s hard for me to let go of everything I have been working for and am yet, still to achieve. Even though I know I’ll get back to it (if the world returns to some sort of normality and there is a theatre to be in).
I can’t help but feel as if I’ve failed at my life.
When I have these feelings I have to remind myself that the world changed- the city changed! And this caused me and my wants to change.
And that is perfectly ok.
As I was running in Central Park, basking in the glorious sun and listening to Ru-Paul, I suddenly remembered a book I used to love as a child; The Town Mouse and The Country Mouse. For those who aren’t familiar the moral of the story is it’s better to live a safe and simple life. Being content with little, as opposed to a life filled with abundance and living in a constant state of fear.
I would read this book over and over again- sometimes staying up all night. Even though the mice were nearly eaten by a cat and killed with a broom when living life out on the town, I still decided that I would be a town mouse when I grew up.
I think I made these decisions based on the fact that my grandparents had a farm and when I went to stay there I experienced a series of miserable events. There was the time I fell down a rabbit hole- not to find a talking rabbit or cat. Then there was the time that I was bitten on the bum by a goose. Oh and then, there was also the one time my gran allowed for me to stay up and watch Children of the Corn by Stephen King. On the following day, she took me through some corn fields. This caused me to be forever mentally scarred by corn ears and men with the name of Mallachy.
I was convinced ‘city’ life was surely the way to go. And it was for a while.
Even when I met my fiancé who was also British, we always spoke about how we would one day move to London to be closer to our families. Neither one of us expressed an interest in returning to ‘small town’ life. We saw ourselves being with our friends up in London or even if the opportunity arrived, moving to Hong Kong! Because why the blooming heck not?
When we found ourselves in lockdown, we suddenly found our apartment to be extremely small. For a one bed on the Upper West Side it was a pretty decent size- if you’re in and out every day. For two people and a pug to be there all day every day, it felt claustrophobic. It was as if we had eaten a slice of the toadstool that made you grow bigger and we could no longer fit inside it. And as if my little black pug was the size of a ten foot tall brown bear!
We immediately started asking ourselves should we move to London- now? For the rent we pay we could get a spacious two bed there in a rather sought after area. And it would be nice for him to see his family more.
Then as if our prayers for space were being answered, we were generously given my New York Family’s Park Avenue penthouse for the summer (tick that one off the old bucket list!). We couldn’t believe our luck. We had a terrace the size of an entire block, a king size bed and lots of large bright windows and doors to gaze out of at Central Park. And yet, one Sunday whilst having breakfast I started to browse homes back in the little town where my fiancé’s parents live. A quaint little town filled with cottages and pubs along the Thames. A picturesque English spot where many ‘simple’ lives were being lived.
I couldn’t help but wonder, could I be content living there? I asked my fiancé his thoughts and it was as if I had turned on our light bulbs.
The more we spoke about leaving New York, the more we realized we could see ourselves saying goodbye to our lives in this mad metropolis and beginning a new chapter elsewhere.
Somewhere more… peaceful.
Well right now I still am very much a City Mouse. But never say never. A part of me feels as if I’m suppressing a Country Mouse. Maybe it’s been inside of me all along…
Header Photo Credit: Craig Adderle