Hi, my name is Sara-Rivka, and I am from Manhattan. Yes I really am.

No, I was not here on September 11, 2001, no I don’t go clubbing in VIP lounges, nor am I rich, and no, I don’t love the city. People don’t always believe me when I say where I’m from.
A typical conversation goes like this:
“Where are you from?”
“New York City,” I reply.
“No, I mean, originally.”
“I said, New York City.”
“Ohmygod, really? Like from the city?”
“Yeah, there are only a few million of us around,” I reply with a hint of sarcasm.

I used to feel more cultured, or cool for announcing ‘I’m a Manhattan girl!’ I loved telling people about my romps in Central Park and playing in Riverside Park near my home. I would brag about the celebrity sightings, the few cool nightspots I’ve been to, the food, and the liveliness. People I’ve met who grew up in houses, and were used to driving cars were baffled by my living in an apartment and riding the subway(alone).
“What, you don’t drive? Oh my god, I love my car,” was a typical reaction.
“No, and I hate driving.”

When I lived in Australia, and would tell people where I’m from I often got “But you don’t have a New York accent.”

“Right,” I’d say, except for there words –cawfee, chawclit, tawk, and cawl,” just to list a few.”

Giggles would follow.

After the bragging, the pride, the feeling of utter coolness and independence, things have changed. Lately I’ve been feeling this hatred toward my New York identity. I associate it with all of the things I despise about this city: the rush, the crowds, the suffocating ‘kill or be killed’ mentality. The slow-walking tourists, the homeless people on the subway, peddling for spare change; the horns honking at dawn, garbage trucks humming outside my window as the sun comes up. Not to mention the over-priced rent, transportation, and food.

This city turns me into a fast-talking-coffee-chugging-power-walking-neurotic-woman with its car-honking-cacophony and claustrophobia-inducing population. My chest tightens when I leave my apartment, and my airways are constricted. No, it’s not asthma, but yes, a panic attack, every time I leave to get on the subway. That cannot be good.

So, now what? What do I do when the city I have always loved (as the t-shirt says), the one I so strongly identified myself with when in college, or overseas, makes me ill, sometimes angry? We’ve heard of people who hate their religious identity, or sexual orientation, but what about urban identity? Is there is therapy for that? Until I find a way to love, or at least like the so-called amazing, fabulous, famous city, I’ll just be the girl, on the subway, taking slow, deep breaths, and hope one day, I can breathe again.