Why I Am Not Leaving New York - BY MOLLY JONG-FAST
Why I Am Not Leaving New York
BY MOLLY JONG-FAST
March 28, 2020
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I’m always enraged by the assumption that I would leave my city — the only place I've ever lived — in her hour of need. I am not leaving New York. Not that a smart person would stay. My apartment building is almost empty. And I can’t blame them. New York City isn’t normal. New York isn’t even post-9/11 New York. No, pandemic New York is completely different than any New York I’ve ever experienced in my 41 years of New York.
I've never left New York. I’m not one of those people who went to seek their fortunes elsewhere. I grew up in New York, both my parents both grew up in New York. My children are growing up in New York. This is not a phase for us; it’s a pathology. We are more New Yorkers than we are Americans. But the New York of right now is not the New York that we have known for all our respective lives. It’s more like post-nuclear-explosion Chernobyl.
We’re the epicenter of a pandemic. We’re Milan. We’re Wuhan. We’re a cautionary tale. Every day around 11 or so, Andrew Cuomo tells us what's happening in our broken city, “New York is your future, New York is a warning.” The warning is that other cities could soon drown in a sea of bodies, the way we are. Our morgues are almost at capacity. Our hospitals have lines that snake around the block. Our doctors are on TV every night begging for 99- cent masks to shield their faces. "The apex is higher than we thought and the apex is sooner than we thought," Cuomo told us on Wednesday. "New York is the canary in the coal mine, New York is happening first, what is happening to New York will happen to California and Illinois, it is just a matter of time."
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Many of my friends have left, gone to parents or friends or summer houses. They were scared and who can blame them. I’m scared too. Every time my asthmatic teenage son coughs, I wonder if I made the wrong choice to stay. Am I irresponsible? Am I selfish? Am I a terrible parent? I don’t know, maybe. But I’m here in my city, my poor broken city, as she shakes and her people suffer. We’re all scared, and we should be. But I’m here and I’m not leaving.
Sometimes at night when I lie in my bed haunted by the silence of the city streets I am convinced that I am a violinist on the Titanic, playing away to keep myself from being afraid.
the rest:
https://www.vogue.com/article/why-i-am-not-leaving-new-york
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