The Coastal Complex

In the last few weeks I have met some incredible New York transplants who now call Nashville home. As Nashville continues to gain ground as a hub for creatives, we’re starting to see an influx of people from New York and Los Angeles, all flocking to Nashville for a scene where they can be creative, pursue their passions, and stop struggling to get by.

The common theme in my conversations with these people, who are firmly emotionally planted where I was eight years ago, is the struggle they had when deciding to leave. Whether it’s widely recognized or not, there are certain tribes in the United States who are seemingly genetically predisposed to view the world in three segments. There are the people who graduate from college and move to New York, the people who graduate from college and move to LA, and then there’s everyone else.

As someone who spent the vast majority of her life in a world where it’s understood that you achieve success by first moving to one of two places, then kicking major ass, I felt my choices upon graduation were slightly limited. Trying life in New York seemed inevitable, even though there was a little voice inside me that told me it was a mistake.

The interviews I went on, the conversations I had, and the jobs I pursued just didn’t feel quite right. There was something insincere about the way I was dressing, how I walked, and the things I said. I heard myself lying again and again about how badly I wanted to pursue a career in fashion. What I wanted to be was a writer. What I wanted to do was travel. But those desires fell into the green part of the pie chart and were therefore not something I was programmed to let take hold. But as I heard myself accept a job that a million girls would kill to have, I knew I was jumping on a speeding train, and I’m definitely more of a golf cart kind of girl.

On its own, commuting was enough to make me feel like I was losing a little bit of myself. In the summer, it was torturously hot on the packed commuter train and I would come up for air before jumping on the subway to cut across town. In the winters, it was even more sweaty thanks to the heat pumping through the vents, the puffy jacket I wore, and the heat of strangers’ bodies pushed against mine. New York is one of the only places in the world where you are basically non-sexually assaulted for a good hour (sometimes two) each day. Full-body physical contact with strangers becomes so normal that you barely roll your eyes at things you’d run screaming from in any other situation. Man picking his nose while resting his chin on your head? Normal. Woman sneezing on your shoulder, wiping her face with her bare hand, then grabbing the railing in front of you by reaching around your body? Normal. Someone offering a hard-earned seat to a pregnant woman? Not normal.

Then there was my home. My best friend Preston and I shared an illegal sublet that was 500 square feet and only had one bedroom. 24 hours after we moved in, we realized that our tiny oasis was nestled next to a construction site where they blasted every. single. morning. It was like living in an active war-zone.  I’d wake in the living room to the sound of the air horn, run into Preston’s bedroom and fling myself into bed with him. We’d hide under the covers as the blasts shook the building, causing our brick walls to release cement particles into the air.

We quickly learned to cope with the blasts that shook our building every day and life started to feel fantastic.  And as I dressed each day after the morning blasting, I felt a certain amount pride in knowing I was making it (re: surviving) in the Big City. I would leave our building, step over the homeless man who slept on our stoop, grab a coffee and a WWD at the corner deli and head to work where I spent my days steeped in fashion and fabulocity. During smoke breaks I’d see Ethan Hawke walking down the street screaming into his cell phone, have casual (on purpose) run-ins with models and actresses in our building, and dashed to meet fabulous friends for drinks after work. There was something electric and addictive about the feeling of living in New York. The noise, the cement, the stink; they were all just part of what made it so invigorating. Yes, it was war, but it was worth fighting because it was New York and that’s where it all happens.

But I soon realized that it actually takes a really long time for all the things to happen. People at work were, for the most part, really hard on anyone at the coordinator level. I felt like they sensed my weakness and often passively put me down, judging my clothes, always pointing out that they could tell when Preston didn’t pick out my outfit. I started to become self-conscious and worried about stuff that never bothered me in my past life. I knew that these people wouldn’t likely help me move up; they were more likely to get me drunk and talk me into doing something stupid so they could laugh at me in the bathroom and gossip about me the next day. Furthermore, everyone I knew who was ten plus years older than me was still single and living in tiny apartments with roommates. No one cared about getting married or having kids. They were living the life they wanted to live, climbing the ladder one rung at a time. The fact that I wanted marriage and kids and wanted them sooner rather than later began to drive a wedge between me and the life I was living. I was losing faith in the idea that I’d ever make it to the point where it all became worth it. That moment where I’d sit back next to my bearded husband, not rushing anywhere, not panicking about making rent, not buying groceries at the dollar store seemed like a moment that would never, ever come. I realized that on the track I was currently on, I’d never wake to silence peppered with the chirps of birds, feel a summer breeze that didn’t sting my nostrils with the scent of urine, or even feel comfortable in my own skin. I started to feel like I was playing a role every day, dressing the part, talking how I should. But deep down, I wasn’t happy. And I started to feel like I couldn’t achieve true happiness in the life I was living. 

The slow, creeping realization that I would not last in New York was something that completely undid me. For those of us raised to believe that the population is segmented into these three distinct groups, leaving New York is seen as the absolute admission of defeat. In fact, in many circles it’s looked upon as the number one sign of imminent failure. Once you start wrestling with the idea of leaving it’s like wrestling with the idea that you’ll never amount to anything. And even if you do “amount” to something once you leave it won’t matter, because unless you succeed in New York, it’s not really success, now is it? I was not programed to fail yet there I was, completely blowing my chance at making something great out of my life, all because I couldn’t shake the desire to really live.

It wasn’t long before I withdrew and my behavior became erratic and self-destructive. My existing friendships fell apart and I left the tiny nest I had made with Preston, choosing instead to move into a room in a downtown apartment with 4 strangers from Craigslist. I was so lonely I actually looked forward to going to the job I hated, and when I left work I would take a roundabout route home to avoid seeing happy people laughing and eating together. New York can be the loneliest city in the world because you’re forced to watch others spend time with friends no matter where you go; sometimes you can even hear laughter in your own bed. On weekends I didn’t leave my room. I drank alone, cried, watched reruns of That Seventies Show and slept. The noise, the cement, the stink; the things I was once so enthralled with began to drive me into fits of mania. I knew I had to get out of the city, I knew I had run myself ragged, but leaving felt like a bigger move than I was capable of making.

In the end, I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I tried to leave my job and went on dozens of interviews. In the last one at a very well known company, the interviewer asked me why I wanted to be in fashion, and I sat in horror as I heard myself say after a long pause, “I don’t.” And then I started crying. I left New York not long after because I couldn’t even get another interview after that. Puffy, sad, and completely filled with self-hatred, I packed a U-Haul and left. It turned out that I wasn’t capable of being the person everyone around me thought I should be.

It took me a long time to recover; to actually enjoy silence and fresh air, a hot cup of tea on a deck instead of endless round of cocktails at a fetish bar. I had to learn that it was okay for me to be a little different and to desire different things. My truth is that I could only achieve success and I defined it by stepping outside the box in search of a life where I felt fulfilled. That meant learning about myself, listening to those voices, and giving myself the freedom to forget about the judgment of others and focus instead on finding happiness.

When you’re in the thick of living in New York, it’s hard to hear through the noise. Not only the actual noise of sirens, clacking heels, and traffic; the inner-noise of things to do, things to wear, what people think of you, and what your next career move needs to be. But here’s the thing: that nagging feeling in the back of your head that you’d love to walk out of your house in bare feet onto grass, see a tree, or lay under the stars at night isn’t something to ignore or push aside. It’s something to really listen to and give merit and respect to, because these things are not wrong as we’ve been taught to believe. These are the calls that, once honored, will become the foundation of the life you’re meant to live. But the version of success we’ve been conditioned to pursue does not have to be yours. It’s important to know that how you define success is completely up to you.

What I’ve realized since removing myself from all this is that this tunnel vision threatened to hold me back from the life I was meant to live. When I close my eyes and try to imagine who I would be if I had stayed in New York, my brain can’t even conjure what that would look like. I used to distrust silence, I viewed seeing the stars as something special reserved for vacations, and was so jaded that if a man ran up to me covered in blood, screaming, I probably wouldn’t have even taken out my headphones to hear him better. Now, I get to walk outside every morning and wiggle my toes in the grass. I have coffee next to my bearded husband watching our adorable daughter play and we’re not rushing anywhere. The breeze is fresh with notes of honeysuckle, and my home is my own. I buy real food, make time to nurture my art, and feel genuinely happy and content every day. I now exist in that little sliver of green and it’s where I’ve found my very own version of success.