I was out for lunch with my old roommate the other day, catching up over some sushi. He dipped his salmon roll in soy sauce, placed it in his mouth, and chewed slowly, ruminating.

“Sometimes, I think about moving out of the city, owning some land, and starting a farm. I think I’d like to raise chickens and grow zucchini and shit.”

I giggled. Been there before.

To my suggestion, he took his very first Gallatin course: “The Political Economy of Development,” taught by Rosalind Fredericks, an influential professor of mine whose course I took my freshman year. I had been meaning to introduce him to the Gallatin philosophy. He was way too into psychedelics to not find it enlightening.

My old roommate admitted that the lens in which his major was viewed through this new course was diametrically opposed to his studies at Stern, and this new perspective had him calling into question what he really wanted to be spending his life doing.

“What’s really the point of all this? This city makes me feel like a fucking ant sometimes.”

I agreed, nodding along knowingly with a wide smile and savior complex. 

But despite this, for as long as I can remember, I’ve had a very innate fascination with the urban environment. There was a sort of reverence I had toward the buildings, the people, and all the things to do. Feeling like an ant felt both humbling yet strangely empowering, that I could do anything because no one was looking. My earliest memories of going downtown Chicago were nothing short of religious experiences for me. Everything was so chaotically ordered, brimming with excitement, and I finally felt like I had a place where I belonged. It was my Disney World and the L was my Magic Mountain. I was a train kid, after all. 

Like so many others, I left my home for the prospect of finding happiness in New York City.  The queer kid who runs away to the Big Apple—it’s a tale as old as time. Rife with opportunities, romantic prospects, and arguably some of the best fashion in the world, the move was a no-brainer. I idolized the city the same way my peers would idolize Taylor Swift or Kobe Bryant—yes, I was that one bitch who had posters of the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan skyline hanging in my childhood bedroom.  

As I got older, the city took on new meaning. I realized not only that I had problems, but that New York can lend itself as an excellent place to run away from them.  I began seriously struggling with my mental health during high school, and I could not shake the feeling of suffocation I felt. I knew that New York was what I needed, but there was an underlying sense of escapism wrapped up in my intentions, laboring under the assumption that a move across the country would rid me of my woes, that a change of scenery and people would finally make me content. The thought that such a move could exacerbate the very problems I sought to leave behind never once crossed my mind.

In August of 2020, I met with my therapist for the last time before heading off to go start my new and improved life. Toward the end of our session, she looked up and straight through me with her soft brown eyes. They were warm but piercing.

“Ben,” she paused, “your struggles aren’t just going to go away when you move.” 

I responded the only way I knew how: I laughed. She knew me too well. And she also knew that I would be stopping treatment. Issues with interstate insurance was the reason I gave her.  Associations with all the people and problems I wanted to leave behind was what I felt.

And she knew this, for she knew me.

When you stop seeing a therapist, you always think you’re doing better, that you have moved on beyond their support and can handle yourself. And for the first few months of my new life in New York, I was able to get away with it. The lights were just scintillating enough to help me forget about all my woes, and I managed to sidetrack myself enough with books on the weekdays and boxed wine on the weekends. 

As my picnic blanket was rolled up for the last time and that autumn marched to a close, I began to fear the sunset for the first time in my life. I started maniacally checking my weather app, ingraining the conditions of the day, eternally chasing the light. The reality of living my life at the bottom of an urban canyon shrouded me like a rising tide of cold water. I tried so hard to avoid the darkness but its presence was unavoidable and made me freeze, sink, and asphyxiate. I wanted to to fight back. I filled my dorm room with decorations and plants, ordered multivitamins and a sunlight lamp, and attempted to regiment my day with bookended self-care. But gradually, my bed began to lay unmade and my journal gathered dust. 

Before moving, nature had been a constant in my life, taken for granted, embedded into my routine, but always in the periphery. I didn’t fully grasp its importance until arriving to New York, and and that first winter was trying. My disconnection to the natural environment fostered a desire to actively seek it out, to reimagine and engage with urban conceptions of it. Coupled with my never-ending solar pursuit, living here has made me feel as connected to nature as I ever have been, but it also made me realize how badly I wanted it more. New York’s constructions of nature are palliative, they medicate you, but they are always in the context as a respite, only to return you to the broader city’s thralls.

I was quick to blame myself during that winter—that I hadn’t done enough, that there was something wrong with me. But as the spring rolled around, I bounced back and chalked up my spiraling to caprice. I was doing better and didn’t care to exhume the lows of that season which I had already buried deep. I certainly didn’t dare to acknowledge that I had awoken from the dream I thought I was living. 

Upon returning to New York for the following fall semester, I was brimming with the confidence and energy that the summer had bestowed upon me. With a year under my belt and experience navigating the city, I knew that I was set for at least the next few months.

Except I wasn’t. 

While the Covid-19 pandemic haphazardly molded and informed my freshman year, relegating us to parks and curfews, the fall of my sophomore year marked the genesis of a proper social life as rollbacks came rolling in. Which meant more exposure to the city. Which meant I was eating and sleeping less, but going out and getting sick more. 

That semester was also characterized by illness, but this time, my mind wasn’t the only site of its manifestation. I contracted the flu, strep throat, Covid, several colds, and even broke out in a full-body rash. I thought I was hexed. In hindsight, I was just brutally worn down and nutrient deprived. For reference, at that point in my life, my version of veganism was to pull the cheese off of a dollar slice.

As my second New York winter rolled around, I realized I could no longer put the onus on the pandemic—my struggles with mental health were largely consequent of my own (in)actions. There was relief to be had in chasing college pleasures and in pursuing all of the exciting opportunities that the city offers, but such relief was restrained to the short-term. The night’s ephemera were becoming increasingly harder to justify through the morning’s clarity. 

The city is distracting; if you make poor enough decisions and don’t think too hard about why you’re starting to get death premonitions, the monotony of it all can feel like a footnote. When people on the street start feeling like NPCs and opening texts from a friend feels like you’re reading the results from your long-awaited biopsy, it can be tempting to make a playlist about those feelings instead of calling up your estranged therapist.

Moving to New York was unfortunately not a panacea, I must admit. It more closely resembles a toxic relationship—it loves you so hard, and even though you’re getting beat down and bruised, you want nothing more than to love it back.  There are so many moments of pure euphoria that remind me why I moved here in the first place, but just as many that shove me right back down.

I got pushed an article on my phone the other day. It read:

Cities are associated with higher rates of most mental health problems compared to rural areas: an almost 40% higher risk of depression, over 20% more anxiety, and double the risk of schizophrenia, in addition to more loneliness, isolation and stress.¹

When I read it, I was instantly annoyed and my instinct was to reject it. Quick on the defense, all the reasons why I fell in love with New York came rushing back to me. Rationally, I know the urban environment ushers in such profound, unquantifiable benefits: confidence, freedom, and boundless opportunity. But as someone intends on dedicating the rest of their education and livelihood devoted to cities, the prospect of having a farm, raising chickens and growing zucchinis and shit sounds pretty good some days.

1. Michael A. Rapp, “How The City Affects Mental Health,” The Centre For Urban Design and Mental Health, January 11, 2017.