Welcome to Notes from New York. My name is Aisling Marron and in 2022, I moved from the greatest city on earth (Dublin) to Manhattan with my husband and two small children.
The move was much harder than I had anticipated, something I previously wrote about in the Irish Times. Relocating your entire life and giving up your career all while bringing up two babies in a new country with no connections is hard - who knew? I found it extremely difficult.
On top of the general stress of setting up a new life abroad from scratch was the additional pressure (pressure I realise now was coming from myself more than from anybody else) to be having an amazing timeee!!!! And to be doing something soooo interesting because you are in New York and you can do anything you want and you are living the dreeeeaaaamm!!!!
“Whose dream?”, I would think, if someone said that. This wasn’t my dream. This isn’t my dream.
I was so homesick and unhappy in those early months that no amount of sudden appearances of the Empire State Building in the skyline could make up for it. Was it for this, I would ask myself whenever it did suddenly appear. Was it for this that I uprooted a perfectly happy and comfortable life? A life with friends and family and neighbours and community. Am I meant to feel joy when I spot the Empire State Building as I wander around feeling disconnected and alone? Is this what it’s all for? Is this enough?
Time, however, is a great healer. It is trite but it is true and with time, I have grown to love NYC and my life here. (A not insignificant amount of time, I should add. I say this to offer hope to anyone struggling to settle into a new place. After three months, I was lying awake in bed at night with no one to text because everyone I knew was in a different timezone, crying and googling “How long does it take to settle into a new city?”. The answer was always a year. But after a year, when a friend asked “Do you like it now?”, I responded honestly: “No, but I hate it less!”
I can’t pinpoint when hating it less turned into not hating it at all to liking it to loving it. But almost two years on, I love my neighbourhood and the weather and the subway and the parks and my bagel shop and the brownstones and the yellow taxis and the smells (I do genuinely love the smells).
I love living here and feel so lucky that I get to experience it.
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I will be posting weekly Notes from New York here every Thursday, detailing my exploration of and adventures in the city. I hope you enjoy these joyful and grateful updates from my life in New York. I promise they will be funny and full of life and fun. I can’t wait to share it with you.
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