Reading through my journal, last year today was when we were officially cleared to move into our apartment. Most of you who read this probably wouldn’t understand what the big deal is, but if you’ve been accepted into a co-op in Manhattan before, you’d be saying, “Why in hell would you put yourself in such a situation?” The answer is even more of the “huh??” kind: I didn’t know what I was getting us into.

Moving is always crazy, but in NYC, it’s pushed to another level. You can’t even look for apartments until about a month before you move, because no one would take you seriously. Apartments are sold within a month to 10-day period, anything older than that means something’s wrong, and then no one wants the place.

So while we eyed this apartment about three months before the move, nothing really moved until about a month before the move itself. And then it was time to get approved. I won’t get into the whole process, but I will say it involved all kinds of bank statements (all must be notarized by a third party), credit statements, official notice of employment, saving accounts, and a bunch of forms to sign that include weird things like the notion that you must have rugs at the place and that you are not allowed into certain part of the building. Everything revolving around these agreements means you also pay more money to have the board look over the papers, and if the move happens to be on a weekend, you’d pay a fine, so you must take off from work. There was even an interview, the kind I’d expect to have when I look for a job, though that part was fun.

This would maybe be normal if we were buying the place, but we were just looking to rent. And the biggest kick in the nuts was the fact that in NYC you can’t rent (sublet, legally speaking, though it would be rent anywhere else) an apartment in a co-op building for more than two years unless special arrangements are made. Why? I don’t know. I still didn’t fully get a satisfactory answer to this, but it seems to be more like a city-wide custom than anything else. So one more year in this place, and then (supposedly) we will be looking for a new place.

I like living in the city, and I love this apartment. I love the neighborhood. We managed to find a place in Manhattan that is quiet enough to recognize the birds by sound and neighbors who are kind and quiet and don’t smoke right outside of your kitchen door when you cook.

If you haven’t caught on yet, you have to be a little nuts and adopt a lifestyle to live here.

To start with the obvious, I don’t think you can have kids and live here unless you make more than a 6-digit salary. Way more. Then, you don’t really have a good quality of life unless you lucked out somehow (as we did). There’s always the constant noise of sirens, helicopters, horns, and people yelling (at each other, their phones, other cars, you, whatever). The filth is everywhere: on the streets, rolling in the wind, in the subways (causing fires on tracks and delays), on the sidewalks when you zig-zag your way around dog-made mines left by their generous owners. Homelessness is a constant problem, especially in the winter, and some of these folks are dangerously mentally unstable (the kind that scream at you at the top of their lungs about Jesus and the devil when you take a subway ride). You can’t live here and not be affected by something, somehow. And I’ve been here for over a decade.

Still, or perhaps because of this, somehow it all works out. The commute to work is impossibly good and lets me not worry about taking a quick power nap throughout the day. I find and go out with awesome people who are all around me, who would require me to drive far and long anywhere else. The contrast between having the city available to you on one hand and the beauty of the parks on the other is unmatched. You learn to appreciate the quiet moments and the nice people here so much more because they are few and far between. It’s an experience that, I think, would be good for everyone to go through, at least for a limited time.

I don’t know that I’ll stay in the city forever. Perhaps I’ll find myself at a bigger house in the suburbs sometime soon, perhaps also behind a steering wheel (I haven’t owned a car in a very long time). For now though… I’m still here.