New York: A Lesson On "What If"

I recently went to New York with my husband. It was a trip of necessity that we turned into one of enjoyment as well. I had never been to the city; my perspective was guarded due to a combination of disliking crowds and being susceptible to the horrific stories portrayed on the news. I remember thinking of all the "what-ifs," of all the ways things could go wrong and how I would surely be plagued by regret. Call it what you like – fear, spiraling, a vicious cycle – but I had my anxieties, and there was no hiding from them.

The New York City skyline

Friends in Jersey City took us in for the weekend; we arrived at around midnight on a Thursday, exhausted and more than a bit irritable. That night, I slept fitfully on an air mattress, kept awake by a barking dog and a garbage truck picking up what seemed like endless supplies of trash. Even the dead of night was loud, bright and restless.

The alarm went off and let me tell you, mornings are not for me. Nor are crowds. Nor the cold, or chaos, or not feeling in control of a situation. But there I was, sardined into the subway with hardly a clue of the destination, sweating under my bulky winter coat and hanging on to the metal handrail like it was a lifeline out of the Titanic. The “what-ifs” came back – it would be easy to exit at the wrong station and be stuck in the middle of Times Square when you swore you were headed for Brooklyn. Miraculously, however, we made it. Google Maps became my best friend that day.

I left that subway and my expectations did a full 180.

Map courtesy of microsoft.com

When we stepped onto the busy streets of New York, realization hit me: I had spent so long working myself up over this trip, worrying about the million little could- or could-nots, that there was no time to process anything else. I didn't register excitement until that moment.

We got breakfast at a little coffee shop nestled between other closet-sized businesses. It was nine in the morning and we ate our meal, taking time to breathe. In the end, we did almost every tourist-trapped thing we could think of. We sat in Times Square, braved the Empire State Building, and visited the Lego store in Rockefeller Center. We navigated miles and miles of the city that day, and by the end of it I was limping and exhausted and fully prepared to swear off walking for the rest of my life. But I was happy.

Times Square

The rest of the trip flew by: more walking, more sightseeing, more taking ridiculous pictures with the pigeons that could not have cared less about our existence. We ate a meal in Little Italy and adventured through Central Park. We befriended a subway rat. Would that had happened if anxiety controlled my every move? Probably not.

The last night we were there, we took a ferry from New York back to Jersey City. I sat next to my husband on the top of the boat and watched the beautiful, staggering skyline stretch further and further away. I realized that this moment, those memories, never would have happened if I had focused on the "what ifs" and let anxiety hold me back from going on this trip. I never would have understood the magic of New York. A lot of my life has been dictated by anxiety, but it’s small steps like these that help to banish those nasty, insignificant voices back to their caves.