The Joys and Sorrows of Loving and Leaving New York

By Sarah Christensen Fu    |   Wednesday, February 04, 2015 - Off the Shelf When I told my friends at work about the financial problems my family was facing, I described it like a temporary bohemian adventure set in Brooklyn. I thought my husband and children and I emanated an underdog success-cum-romance that would end with us finding the perfect rent-controlled apartment. Some kooky coincidence would pave the way for us to stay. Of course it would. When I next confessed that we were thinking of leaving Brooklyn altogether, no one was the least bit surprised. “That’s what happens!” they exclaimed, a little too supportive. “Everyone’s moving to Jersey!” The truth is, when you have to leave New York, for whatever reason, there’s nobody to talk to. You’re on your own for that one. Leaving New York City is a loss. You grieve it. It’s who you were. It’s your middle name. New York. When you leave, you are missing something. In New York I found myself. I found my people, my tribe. I found my mate. I opened my arms to welcome everything I ever wanted and feared. Joan Didion, in the essay that gave its name to Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York wrote, “I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again.” I couldn’t read Goodbye to All That for six months after I left Brooklyn. I brought the book home from a business trip and unpacked it with my dirty underwear and contact solution. It sat on my bedside table for weeks. Weeks and dusty weeks. During that time, friends from the city kept emailing or texting or IMing with articles I didn’t want to read about how Brooklyn was so overpriced now, and everyone was getting squeezed out. My publishing friends would write, “Have you read Goodbye to All That?” I’d change the subject. . READ FULL POST