“Here, in a city of eight million, I think whatever temporary afflictions I am experiencing will feel scaled down. I expect to evanesce in the rush-hour crowds, to feel dwarfed by the tall buildings and tall women, teetering on their four-inch-tall heels.
And if not, I think I will feel commiseration.
New York is like the crisis hot lines that tell potential suicides, “You are never alone.” Here, you really aren’t ever alone. Everywhere you look, there is someone to remind you they are there. There they are, crossing against a light. And there, catching your hair in the corner of their open umbrella. And there, letting their fluffy, white poodle crap in the middle of the sidewalk. Everywhere you turn, there is someone else to remind you just how miserable they are, too.
I find out quickly that this doesn’t help. If anything, it only reminds me how disconnected I am. After a few weeks, I can ride eight stops on the number 6 train with one person’s hand on my ass and another person’s sour armpit two inches from my face, and still emerge through the sliding glass doors unruffled because I’m troubled by something bigger. Even in Midtown, among the throngs of people that shoulder by me, I feel the thump of loneliness. From the outside, it’s hard to imagine life can exist inside the mirrored skyscrapers, when I walk by and all I can see is my own painted little face staring back.”
–An excerpt from Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, a novel by Koren Zailckas.
While learning something from a book is gratifying, relating to it is even more fulfilling. In Smashed, I find myself nodding along to her stories, her accounts of high school parties and college rush events. When I read the above excerpt, I couldn’t help but think how ironic it is that one can feel so lonely in a city of so many. Sometimes the anonymity the city provides is almost suffocating; the oppression it creates is palpable. I feel invisible everyday I walk down the street to work – especially when I’m jostled and elbowed and run into as if I don’t exist. It takes a tough exterior to live in this city; unfortunately it’s just that – an outside facade, a painted shell of the real you. The city hardens you; it’s easy to forget to smile or return the morning greeting of a construction worker. You step easily over the homeless man and his empty coffee cup outside the subway station without giving him a second glance. It’s a city where chivalry does not exist; it’s every man and woman for him or herself.
(http://www.korenzailckas.com/)
