NYC independence

It was four years ago today that my dear friend Ally and I formally declared our NYC independence. We had each spent months living in the city before, but never without the cushion of college to return to. This was different—permanent, or at least temporarily so.

Our immigration to Manhattan was uncomfortable and full of uncertainty but we were determined to follow through with our plan to conquer New York, a plan that began as an idealistic "what-if" some months previous but had blossomed into an unwavering commitment.

We flew into LaGuardia a day or two before July 1 and reunited with our third roommate, a Teach for America corp member who had already been living in the city for a year. Mel had stoically borne the brunt of the tortuous burden that is apartment hunting in Manhattan and against all odds secured us a three-bedroom apartment within our meager budgets. Ally and I signed the lease before we saw the place, and soon after giving us a tour, Mel departed for a much-needed summer vacation in her home state of Rhode Island. Since the movers were far from arriving we had no furniture, and Mel said Ally and I could stay at her current apartment as long as we wanted.

But the evening of July 3, Mel's current roommate returned from a trip, and we no longer felt at ease crashing on borrowed futons. We decided that, furniture or no, it was time to lay claim to the apartment we were paying for. The next day, we piled our luggage into a cab we couldn't really afford and unloaded everything onto the curb in front of our new building. Neighbors gave us second glances outside in the oppressive heat—probably due to the oversized teddy bear perched on my hip like a stuffed toddler—but no one offered to help us get our cargo indoors.

Around sunset we took a long subway ride to Battery Park and watched fireworks explode above the Statue of Liberty. After we got home it was past midnight and we resigned ourselves to the lack of mattresses and air conditioning and did our best to breathe in the sticky air and fall asleep on the wooden floor of what would be Ally's bedroom. Her room faced the street, which meant we heard every one of the fireworks the neighborhood teens saw fit to set off.

The first time we heard a bang we thought it might be a gunshot—I had once mistaken a gunshot for a car backfiring in a different Manhattan neighborhood and didn't put anything past anyone anymore. But when the cracks continued we remembered the holiday, and our fear was replaced with frustration.

We didn't sleep much that night. The floor was hard, the room was hot, and the firecrackers continued until well past 3 a.m. But it was our own floor, in our own apartment, and the noise of our own neighborhood. We were independent, God bless America. We were home.