It's a living!

New York City is an icon. What makes it so memorable, even for those who have never set foot here? What is it that comes to mind when thinking of NYC? The skyscrapers? Amazing food? Broadway shows? Central Park?... Really, just name it and New York has some claim to fame for it. How many movies do you see a year set in Manhattan? This must mean something. That makes it important, right?

But what about the things you don't hear about? The headlines in our daily reads are slightly different than the typical suburban landscape... Bed Bugs, poverty, crime rates soaring on the subway platforms after several MTA budget cuts, another Starbucks on another corner... Name a million warning signs of a bad living situation and quite a few will apply when considering this place. I thought I was prepared...sort of. Mainly, I knew I would be uncomfortable, but it's worth it! Sure.

The truth is, the cost of living here alone, even far out in the outer burrows, is inconceivable. Luckily, Tom had already established an apartment deep in Brooklyn where we were able to live cheaply when we arrived. Please, do not mistake my optimism. That was the only practical reason tolerate that place. Until you've lived it, there is no way to comprehend the tension of submitting yourself into a situation like this. It was one of the deciding factors in my decision to sell Iron Man and the number one reason why I sought out another horse after a year of living there.

Imagine, if you can, a newly married couple living a perfectly normal life in a perfectly normal city on a modest budget in a one-bedroom home with a dog and a cat. Now, take away the normal city and place them in the heart of a grungy Brooklyn neighborhood (but slightly up-and-coming with some ethnic families, artists and hipsters). No lawn to mow may be a plus, but the loss of mostly green for mostly gray has a larger effect on the mind's emotional health than generally assumed. Now that our couple is in Brooklyn, we're going to take away their modest one-bedroom house and place them in a loft apartment that was a part of a warehouse recently converted from a knitting factory into a residence for artists of lower income. You're picturing them alone, aren't you? Guess again. Though the square footage of the high-ceilinged studio is comparable to the cottage they shared in the heart of downtown-wherever-they're-from, the rent per month is higher than both of them make, combined, in a two week period. Some couples can rationalize spending more than 50% of their monthly income on a place to lay their head. We're not that kind of couple.

Living beyond one's means in NYC is perplexing...especially since so many young people do it just starting out. But what really makes no sense is why anyone would spend over half what they make on a meager salary in one month on a storage facility. That's all it really is. Ask any New Yorker how much time they really spend at home and more than half will probably say they spend maybe a couple of hours plus sleeping hours at home and nothing more. It just doesn't make any sense. People, generally, want to live nicely, but between transit times, outside entertainment, and insane work hours, there is no time left to relax at home. I learned that lesson the hard way.

We thrust ourselves from a comfortable $500 a month 3 bedroom home in a nice neighborhood with a front and back yard and easy commute to work into an inflated artist's loft for ever 2k a month, 5 bed rooms, 6 residents including ourselves, 1 kitchen, 1 bathroom and no heat or AC. **Note to readers: Do NOT visit NYC in the summer. You will regret it.

Of course I had the "new bride" mind-set--I can't be expected to live in other people's filth and be forced to tolerate substandard living conditions just because it's cheap! I admit, I still adamantly believe a married couple should live alone for the pre-baby years, if for no other reason than to spare other inhabitants the horror of an angry young-woman who can't seem to get her way. It's awful. After countless attempts to make Tom break down and let us find our own place, I decided to take a different approach. If I couldn't spend money on residential privacy to find some peace and happiness, I'd have to spend it on something else entirely...something I couldn't share with my husband. I got the "grin and bare it" speech more times than I can recall, but it finally clicked when I started paying board for my horse.

I am about to make a rather bold statement. Horses in the NYC area (and other animals belonging to human beings able to spend ungodly amounts of money on their welfare and comfort) are expensive to keep. In about a month from now my horse will officially cost more for room and board than I pay for myself.

Take it in. It's sick.

So the absurdity of it comes down to this: What is happiness worth? Does it make you happy to come home and be alone in a palace of an apartment from which you will never see your hard-earned money return to your pocketbook? Or are you comfortable lowering your standards of living so you have more money for something else in your life?

It's something I wish I had considered in more depth before moving to NYC.