Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 207

(3/3) “We met for a couple hours, and decided to go on a...

(3/3) “We met for a couple hours, and decided to go on a picnic the following week. Our goal was to get on his boat, find a random island, and have a picnic. We were out for about an hour when the sky started getting very dark. We decided to keep going. It started pouring. We jumped in the water and hid under the front of the boat. The rain was cold but the water felt like a bathtub. He took this photo of me and sent me an enlargement. When I got home that night, I started writing him letters. I wrote him one letter per day, but I saved them all, and recently I gave him all seventy of them. The first was from the day on the boat. The last line was: ‘And happiness was everywhere that day.’”

(2/3) “I’d also been engaged recently. We broke it off in...

(2/3) “I’d also been engaged recently. We broke it off in January. I was trying to make some changes in my life. I stopped wearing make-up for a few months to see what sort of things I’d notice if I stopped looking in the mirror so much. I made a deal with myself that I wasn’t going to post any selfies for a while. I was only going to photograph things that weren’t me. I started posting photos of nature, art, and my teacup collection. That began to attract other people into my life who were interested in those things. One night Chris sent me a message. It was a photo of a bridge he’d just taken. We went back and forth for a couple weeks, then decided to meet. A few months earlier, I probably would have never agreed to meet. But I was at a point in my life where I was trying to be open to new things. I told him my only rule was that he couldn’t murder me.”
“And my only rule was that she had to wear her cat glasses.”

(1/3) “I’d just broken up with my fiancée in May. She left for...

(1/3) “I’d just broken up with my fiancée in May. She left for work one day and never came home, then she mailed me the engagement ring. I was going through a rough time. I’d recently gotten sober. I was managing to stay away from alcohol, but sometimes I’d have to look at my watch and just commit myself to five more minutes of sobriety. One morning I went to a coffee shop and saw they were promoting their hashtag. I was brand new to Instagram, so I was just figuring out how it worked. I typed in the hashtag, and I noticed a post from Whitney. Her hashtags seemed thoughtful, so I followed her.”
“At first I thought he might be a serial killer.”

(4/4) “She left without telling me. I came back from a dentist...

(4/4) “She left without telling me. I came back from a dentist appointment and everyone was gone. I went into a deep depression. My friend had to move in with me to keep me from killing myself. She wasn’t allowed to take my kids like that. The court issued a summons, but her father got a lawyer and they took out an order of protection against me. I’m not a bad man. I’m not a bad father. She knows I love my kids. She can’t look me in the eye and tell me that I’m an abusive man. I would never hurt her. But there was something that happened. We had an argument a week before she left. I got so mad and stressed that I grabbed a bat and started smacking the door and the wall. She came out of the kitchen and she caught me in that moment. She was so scared. I’ll never forget the look of terror in her eyes. I immediately dropped the bat. I said ‘I’m so sorry babe,’ but she didn’t want me to talk to her or touch her. It took four days for her to let me kiss her again. Then a few days later she was gone. I haven’t seen my family for a year. I know it was wrong. I’m sorry. But I’d never hurt her or the kids, I promise. I was only hurting the wall.”

(3/ 4) “We worked so much that Stacy and I barely saw each...

(3/ 4) “We worked so much that Stacy and I barely saw each other. We were doing better financially, but the bills had really piled up. You can’t grow in this city. I was raised in Puerto Rico. When you work in Puerto Rico– you buy some land and you build a house. You can see the growth. But nothing grows in this city. You work, and you work, and you work, but you live in a box and nothing changes. It all adds up to nothing. We were surviving, but we always seemed to be on the edge. I could handle it because I’m laid back. I can live my life without thinking about tomorrow. And the kids were fine because they’re kids. But Stacy wasn’t fine. She saw all the homeless families on the street, and the families in the shelters, and she was convinced that was going to be us. She was always so worried. She was stressed all the time about the rent and the food and the bills. She was driving me crazy with the nagging. We kept getting in stupid fights. I kept telling her: ‘Stacy, you’ve got to stop worrying about all this bullshit!’ We did have our little moments where we’d go to the beach or the park and forget about things, and we’d have a moment of peace. But those moments never lasted. Every morning Stacy would wake up and smoke a cigarette, and you could just see the unhappiness in her face. I should have left. I should have given up and moved us all back to Pennsylvania. Instead I started smoking too much weed, and trying some other stuff. And that made it worse.”

(3/5) “We worked so much that Stacy and I barely saw each...

(3/5) “We worked so much that Stacy and I barely saw each other. We were doing better financially, but the bills had really piled up. You can’t grow in this city. I was raised in Puerto Rico. When you work in Puerto Rico– you buy some land and you build a house. You can see the growth. But nothing grows in this city. You work, and you work, and you work, but you live in a box and nothing changes. It all adds up to nothing. We were surviving, but we always seemed to be on the edge. I could handle it because I’m laid back. I can live my life without thinking about tomorrow. And the kids were fine because they’re kids. But Stacy wasn’t fine. She saw all the homeless families on the street, and the families in the shelters, and she was convinced that was going to be us. She was always so worried. She was stressed all the time about the rent and the food and the bills. She was driving me crazy with the nagging. We kept getting in stupid fights. I kept telling her: ‘Stacy, you’ve got to stop worrying about all this bullshit!’ We did have our little moments where we’d go to the beach or the park and forget about things, and we’d have a moment of peace. But those moments never lasted. Every morning Stacy would wake up and smoke a cigarette, and you could just see the unhappiness in her face. I should have left. I should have given up and moved us all back to Pennsylvania. Instead I started smoking too much weed, and trying some other stuff. And that made it worse.”

(2/4) “I think she regretted coming the moment we got here....

(2/4) “I think she regretted coming the moment we got here. The first time we rode the subway together, a man and a woman started slapping each other on the train. Everyone on the train just pretended not to notice. I remember that bothered her so much. She just wasn’t made for the city. We moved into a small apartment in East Tremont. We set aside an entire room for me to play music. Things were OK for the first eight months. We went to museums and parks, and the kids seemed to be happy. Things were going pretty good. But soon the money ran out. We’d had $14,000 in savings but we burned through that pretty quick. Stacy had to start working at Dunkin Donuts. I had to get two jobs. I was a carpenter during the day, and I worked overnight in the shipping department of a big store on 5th Avenue. Not much was happening with music. Everything cost so much money: studio time, instruments, musicians. It wasn’t fun anymore. Everything was about money. When we lived in Pennsylvania, I’d stood out. I’d been different. I was a guy from the city. Once we moved to the city, I was just a common dude like everyone else.”

(2/5) “I think she regretted coming the moment we got here....

(2/5) “I think she regretted coming the moment we got here. The first time we rode the subway together, a man and a woman started slapping each other on the train. Everyone on the train just pretended not to notice. I remember that bothered her so much. She just wasn’t made for the city. We moved into a small apartment in East Tremont. We set aside an entire room for me to play music. Things were OK for the first eight months. We went to museums and parks, and the kids seemed to be happy. Things were going pretty good. But soon the money ran out. We’d had $14,000 in savings but we burned through that pretty quick. Stacy had to start working at Dunkin Donuts. I had to get two jobs. I was a carpenter during the day, and I worked overnight in the shipping department of a big store on 5th Avenue. Not much was happening with music. Everything cost so much money: studio time, instruments, musicians. It wasn’t fun anymore. Everything was about money. When we lived in Pennsylvania, I’d stood out. I’d been different. I was a guy from the city. Once we moved to the city, I was just a common dude like everyone else.”

(1/ 4) “I met Stacy in Pennsylvania when I was working for her...

(1/ 4) “I met Stacy in Pennsylvania when I was working for her father. She was a smart girl. She was studying to be an accountant. I think she was really intrigued by me because I was from the city. I had a different way of talking and a different way of acting. I stood out. The way she looked at me—you could tell how much she loved me. And that lasted for a long time. Through our marriage. Through the kids. Everything was going great. We had a car, a family, a house. We had five children. I’d come home at 5:30 or 6:00 every night and I’d get a hug and a kiss. Stacy had her own little business, and she was eventually planning on opening a bakery. She had everything she wanted. But I couldn’t get used to it. I went from the house to the job, from the job to the house. I thought: ‘This can’t be the end of my life.’ I’d always loved playing music, so I thought: ‘If I’m going to do something else, it’s got to be now.’ So Stacy and I made a deal. We’d move to New York for five years while I tried to start a music career. We’d give it five years and if nothing happened, we’d come back. Honestly, she was so in love with me at that point that she’d probably have followed me to Africa.”

(1/5) “I met Stacy in Pennsylvania when I was working for her...

(1/5) “I met Stacy in Pennsylvania when I was working for her father. She was a smart girl. She was studying to be an accountant. I think she was really intrigued by me because I was from the city. I had a different way of talking and a different way of acting. I stood out. The way she looked at me—you could tell how much she loved me. And that lasted for a long time. Through our marriage. Through the kids. Everything was going great. We had a car, a family, a house. We had five children. I’d come home at 5:30 or 6:00 every night and I’d get a hug and a kiss. Stacy had her own little business, and she was eventually planning on opening a bakery. She had everything she wanted. But I couldn’t get used to it. I went from the house to the job, from the job to the house. I thought: ‘This can’t be the end of my life.’ I’d always loved playing music, so I thought: ‘If I’m going to do something else, it’s got to be now.’ So Stacy and I made a deal. We’d move to New York for five years while I tried to start a music career. We’d give it five years and if nothing happened, we’d come back. Honestly, she was so in love with me at that point that she’d probably have followed me to Africa.”