The balmy, albeit cool, spring evening elicited a wan smile from me as I stepped up into the front yard and deposited the paper and plastic in their requisite pails. Every color was muted in the post-sunset light. For once, the block was quiet. Aside from the clanking of bottles falling into the pail, no noise disturbed me. The brownstones that line my street looked stately and beautiful. For a split second, I was almost pleased.
I always wanted to live in a brownstone. I finally do. Now that I'm here, I can't get past the problems. A week without hot water in the dead of winter. Termites. Centipedes. A gigantic cockroach every now and then. The crack house that's five doors down ... or the one that's three doors down ... or the one across the street and down a few doors. The upstairs neighbor who had a party the Saturday before Easter until 4 in the morning without any care for the other five tenants in the building. The upstairs neighbor who thinks nothing of blocking in the ground floor (my) apartment with the garbage from her parties. The list goes on.
Marcy Avenue is beautiful between MacDonough and Jefferson, with the exception of a big public school at Macon Street. There's a house on the corner of Hancock and Marcy that, when I'm walking to the grocery store, I daydream of owning. There are so many things in this neighborhood that can give me pause ... in a positive way ... but there are so many more that do so negatively. Bedford-Stuyvesant has so much architectural beauty, but it is overrun with residents who care nothing for their surroundings, their neighbors or themselves. My neighbors have managed to negate every iota of positivity I could glean from this place.
I'll be leaving when the lease is up. I can't deal with watching people litter, hearing blaring music from someone's Yukon Denali at 4 a.m., hearing gunshots at any twilight hour on any day, listening to people shout their conversations about nothing at each other while they take up the entire sidewalk. I've seen people litter while standing next to a trash basket. There's dogshit on every sidewalk. Puke on every other block. This place boggles the mind. It tests one's sanity. To live here is to be insane.
So, I have to go.
To live in New York is also a form of insanity. At some point, I will have to finally respect myself enough to think I am worth living somewhere affordable, bucolic and where my rate of pay is commensurate with the cost of living. This is a city of self-hating masochists. Unless one makes enough money to negate the exorbitant cost of living, that person is merely castigating themselves for a reason I fail to comprehend.
I don't know why I'm here.
Eventually, that ignorance will have to become my motivation to leave.
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