Before We Were Strangers

by Renee Carlino

I became acutely aware of everyone around me carrying on, living life. I was static, standing on the platform, watching train after train go by, wishing I knew which one to be on.

New York has an energy that takes root inside of you. Even a transplant like me gets to know the different boroughs, like they’re living, breathing organisms. There’s nowhere else like it. The city becomes a character in your life, a love you can’t take out of you. The mysteriously human element about this place can make you fall in love and break your heart at the same time. When you hear her sound, when you breathe in her scent, you share it with all the people walking beside you on the street, in the subway, or gazing from a tall building across Central Park. You know at once that you are alive, and that life is beautiful, precious, and fleeting. I think that’s why people in New York feel so connected to each other; the city harnesses this collective love and admiration.

“I feel like I’m living in a nightmare, like I’ve just woken up from a coma to discover that fifteen years of my life have gone by. Everything went on without me. I missed everything.”