Brooklyn, New York. Or, People I Love, Gentrification, and Introspection.

I flew back from Kiev, Ukraine last week, en route to a home I had never seen before. Luckily, Chris was home that night so I knew I wasn't coming home to an empty building. My friend's mom drove me home, and told me when I first got in the car that if she didn't like the neighborhood, she wasn't letting me out of the car. Well, the first few neighborhoods we drove through she thought were adorable. Then we started to enter mine. Not so cute, by her measurements. As we pulled up, she told me, "I don't like this neighborhood, Lilly." I sat in the back seat, half-grimacing, half-smiling to myself, thinking, "if you only knew that I grew up in a neighborhood like this...." I was almost home.

Our apartment is glamorous by my-first-apartment standards. We live on the third and top floor of a walk-up in Brooklyn, 20 minutes from NYU's campus on the L subway line. We have a fire-escape that leads to a rooftop with no railings (no drunken parties on the roof!) but a breathtaking, soothing view of the fabulous and sometimes frightening Manhattan. There is a California-style Mexican food joint on the corner, and a convenience store on the other corner that sells my 99 cent Mucho Mango Arizonas.

The neighborhood is mostly Puerto Rican, but Mexican enough that I can find Mexican products on almost every block. It is also getting super gentrified. While I LOVE the Mexican restaurant on the corner (they have chicken mole and horchata and sometimes Jamaica and speak my brand of Spanish!), they offer tofu and soy cheese and they're always packed with young white folks. Same deal with the delicious Thai restaurant around the corner. Walking back from the subway, I hope I don't look like another one of them who doesn't realize or care how much their/our presence is altering the community and neighborhood. I came home hella upset about it the other night, and Chris talked me through it and soothed my conscience a bit. He promised we'll find out if there's any sort of community board, and we'll go to meetings and be actively engaged in the community. Without trying to run it, of course.

So people have been coming to visit me in this new apartment of mine (that I would have cried if I had to move into by myself. Thanks, Dad!!). Last night, one of my closest friends came over to chill. He told me I've changed. I seem quieter, more pensive. I'm not super talkative like I used to be. I've been thinking on this all night, trying to figure out what has changed within or about me. Maybe it's 'cause I've ingested so much this summer--been filled with so much information, with so many new lenses for seeing the world. Maybe once I start my hectic lifestyle up again, I'll be highly caffeinated and unable to shut up. Or, perhaps it's just part of me growing up. Me learning that silence doesn't need to be filled with banter, that not all my thoughts need to be shared. Maybe it's me validating myself, in my head and in my heart, instead of seeking external validation.
Regardless, I do feel like something in me has shifted. I am growing. To where and to what I'm unsure, but development is under way and it feels at once scary and comforting, epic and insignificant, natural and unusual.

So here's to New York, to grounding myself, to staying in one place for a while, to reuniting with people I love and to finding new ones. To remaining self-aware, but shedding self-consciousness. To Brooklyn. To this new year, and whatever it may bring.

P.S. My new favorite song that I listen to at the break of each day: India.Arie: Beautiful Day. Please go listen! When I shared it with Jenna, she remarked that this is the philosophy that she and I hold about life. It really is.

Love and smiles and introspection,

L