They say New York is a lonely city.

Seems like a contradiction, right? Here you are walking in Times Square with hundreds of people crowding the sidewalks.. There are groups of kids on school trips, men going to and from work in their suits and briefcases, people walking their little 'toy' dogs... some in sweatpants, others in designer clothing. You walk by streetside restaurants with diners on the patio ranging from small groups of tourists to in-love couples. At first you are overwhelmed by the lights and advertisements and the mass of people, but after a while that fades into oblivion and you find yourself alone.

I think about New York in two different ways. I think of how it must be at the top: Cashmere Mafia, Gossip Girl, Sex and the City... But that glorious penthouse lifestyle is like being at the top of the pyramid, and the further you go down the more dark and depressing it gets. There was this one man that came up to me in front of the Met. He called himself "the poet of New York". He was trying to sell me his poetry or something like that.. said I would be his first customer. I asked him to read his poem to me and after he read the first one he gave me his two pieces of paper hastily stapled together, asked me to read the second one, and said he would be back in about 20 minutes. I waited around for a while because I had some time to kill, I figured I would take a break and soak up some sun before I walked back to my hotel. He never did come back though.

I think about the poet, about the vendors in Chinatown selling knockoff designer purses, sunglasses, and perfumes, about the street performers, about people sitting alone on the subway, about the guy walking around with a cat on his head who asked some people to spare some cash to get something for him (and his cat) to eat. That is the true essence of New York City, not what you see on the Apprentice or the Real World or that show about being the next Hilton. The real New York isn't glamorous, it is full of people just trying to get by.

I liked New York because I think I would fit in. Here is a place where I don't have to feel the need to pretend to be someone I'm not. It is such a different place compared to Lennoxville, where it seems like everyone is living in a sheltered bubble. Mommy and Daddy worry about their finances and give them cash to use as "spending money" aka booze fund. Classes? No big deal, all they need is to pass. Their biggest dramas are who said what and who went home with who. This disillusioned sense of reality only pushes me farther into antisocial behaviour. I'm not part of that. I see the world around me for what it is, not what I want it to be. Ignorance isn't bliss, it is simply ignorance, which is something that should be looked down upon, not encouraged.

New York is different. You can't be ignorant when you're in a city that is so bluntly in-your-face. You can be your true self, because thats what everything else is. You don't have to hide.