Goodbye, Beantown!

And that’s a wrap on Boston.

My first leg of the trip was pretty much everything I wanted it to be. It challenged me in so many ways, I really got a good understanding of what my life in Boston would be like if I settled here, and I relearned how good I am at taking care of myself and enjoying time on my own. Have you ever seen someone in NYC with headphones on singing and dancing while waiting for the train or at a crosswalk? And you’re like that person is living their life not giving a single, solitary shit what anyone around them is thinking of them?

I danced and sang to myself so many times with headphones on around Boston. I was that bitch. I have never felt so calm and peaceful and just fucking GIDDY in my entire life.

The first two days I was here, feeling scared and sad and FRUSTRATED THAT BOSTON’S STREETS WERE MADE BY FUCKIN’ HORSES AND AREN’T A GRID, all I did was keep questioning whether I had done the right thing. I missed the support system of friends and family I had built in New York. I have never traveled to a new US city barely knowing anything or anyone; I’ve lived in New York my entire life. I also hadn’t dated in a year and a half. I sincerely wondered if I could financially afford to eat the non-refundable deposit I had put on my apartment in Brookline. In short, my first 48 hours in Boston were spent wondering if I was strong enough to do this trip. After all, Boston was me dipping my toe into this year-long adventure. If I couldn’t survive these 7 weeks, how the fuck would I be able to do close to a year away from home? Who did I think I am?

All of these feelings quickly passed after I took my psych meds, ate a sandwich at Cutty’s, and got laid.

You know what happened after those 48 torturous hours that turned my whole life around? I started owning my fucking life. “I am doing this for me,” I reminded to myself. Not for anyone else. There were suddenly no rules. So what did I want to do? In Boston, owning my life meant:

1. Experimenting with dating multiple people at once. (I am a hardcore monogamist, so this was VERY new for me.)
2. Eating what I wanted when I felt like it—and I didn’t feel guilty over a SINGLE GODDAMN THING. (Half my bloodstream is made of pizza now, by the way.)
3. Owning the fact that I am beautiful and desirable and that I’m fucking D-O-N-E with ingrown hairs and never waxing my puss again because no man over the age of thirty really gives a fuck about my pubic hair. Or my stretch marks. Or my belly. I barely wore a full shirt the entire time I was here.
4. Owning the fact that what I’m doing is very brave. It takes a strong person to go off on their own, to question all of the messaging we’ve been bombarded with since birth that we should get married/have babies/get a mortgage and, instead, go our own way.

And when you own your own life, you start owning other stuff, too. These are some things I have done that I didn’t give myself nearly enough credit for until I did this trip:

1. I beat a very, very difficult eating disorder and maintained ten years of recovery.
2. I went and got help for PTSD this past spring when it was the absolute last thing I ever wanted to do.
3. I returned to college and graduated on time after dropping out.
4. I paid of $50k of student loans in 4 years after graduation while working at close to minimum wage (ah, book publishing!).
5. I got my first book deal before the age of 25. (Because I am a fucking machine.)
6. I got published by all my dream publications within 6 months of starting to freelance for magazines.

Tracee Ellis Ross gave a talk to Glamour magazine (that everyone should watch in its entirety here) about living your life intuitively as a woman. She says:

“When we put ourselves first by doing things like saying no, speaking up, sleeping with who we want, eating what our bodies intuitively tell us to eat, wearing training bras instead of pushup bras, posting a picture of ourselves without using FaceTune, we are condemned for thinking for ourselves, being ourselves, for owning our experiences, our bodies and our lives. That kind of boldness is seen as threatening and scary. What would it look like for women to completely own our power? To have agency over our own glory, our sexuality, and not in order to create a product or sell it or to feel worthy of love or use it as a tool for safety. But instead, as a way of being. Imagine that. Truly owning our own power, agency, and sexuality.”

This trip started off as a way to make sure that I wasn’t going to settle down in NYC for another 11 years without knowing what other cities are like, but what it ultimately taught me was to own my power.

[I want to take a second here to shout out my day job—I know some of my coworkers read my blog and this trip would NOT be possible even in the slightest without the stability, flexibility, and unending kindness of everyone on my team. Thank you, thank you, thank you.]

So yeah. This trip has been really amazing for me. Here are some of my favorite Boston memories:

• Walking across the Harvard Bridge for the first time.
• Sitting in front of a fireplace with a group of new friends and laughing my ass off/discussing the logistics of inserting a scrotum into a vagina (this was a solid 25-min debate, btw). I also gave a tutorial of how to DP a woman, as seen here:

• Watching the Harvard Symphony Orchestra play a tribute to Leonard Bernstein inside a gorgeous church.
• Eating lunch on the balcony of my apartment in the sunshine, listening to Stevie Wonder, and thinking to myself, “I am so deeply, deeply happy right now.”
• Having the best sex of my life with someone so hot I probably lost some IQ points. SZA’s “CTRL” is… *chef’s kiss* an excellent album to fuck to. (The last record holder for best sex of my life was this INSANE man from Williamsburg who put on some D’Angelo and whipped out his P’Angelo).

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And to think that this is just the first leg of my trip! I am truly #blessed.

Before I get into some AirBNB tips, let me tell you a little bit about where I had been staying for the last 7 weeks. My AirBNB sublet was so weird in the absolute best ways. Now, I lived in Brookline Village and really wanted to live with people during this first excursion because I felt weird being on my own in a city I didn’t know. It was expensive as fuck, but ultimately worth the money because it was very quiet during the day, incredibly safe, and very convenient to everything. I don’t think I would have liked living in any other part of the city, to be honest.

I had three roommates:

1. The surgeon from Austria. I don’t go for blondes or thin men, but… oof. When I first got to the apartment, he was coming down the stairs as I was going up and he carried my bag to my room. I was like HELLOOOOOOOOO NURSE.
2. The computer scientist from Italy who looked like a freakin’ Greek goddess. I laughed after I asked why she wasn’t trying to date in Boston and she replied, “My entire program is full of nerds.”
3. A young man from China whom I never saw. Ever. My other roommates had seen him and I knew he existed because a) he always made a mess in the bathroom (WIPE DOWN THE SINKS, YA JERK), b) I could hear him walking to the kitchen from his room a few times, and c) one time I heard hentai porn coming from his bedroom. It got to the point where I made a game out of “Can I make it my entire 2-month trip without running into him?” just because it made me laugh and I WON. PS: MAJOR props to AirBNB for making sure that I hadn’t been harassed by my anime porn-watching roommate that I never saw:

Anyway. Here are some hot AirBNB tips:

1. If you’re a horrible sleeper and your apartment is sunny af and you don’t have blackout curtains, tape black trash bags over your windows and make your host think you’re fucking crazy.
2. Bring an extension cord in case none of the outlets are near your bed and you like to charge your phone next to your pillow like me.
3. Bring a pillowcase from home and buy a candle to make your space seem more homey and yours.
4. Don’t assume your bed is going to be comfortable. It may seem stupid to buy a $100 mattress pad for two months, but think of it as someone offering you a much more comfortable bed for an extra $50 a month in rent.
5. Leave the $100 mattress pad for your super nice AirBNB goddess roommate when she and the hot surgeon both admit that they heard you having sex in your room with that giant donkey-dicked motherfucker.

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On a very personal note—after my ruptured cyst, I learned that my autoimmune disease, which was very stable for the last two years, has suddenly become not-so-stable again. The next six weeks home in NY will be filled with doctor’s appointments, tests, and seeing if I will be healthy enough to continue the trip in January if I don’t need to go through treatment again. If I have to put things on hold or renegotiate the timeline of my trip, I will make peace with that. In the meantime, I will always cherish my time in Boston. Here are some things I learned:

1. I like living in a quieter city.
2. I like living in a greener city.
3. I kinda, sorta like sticking out like a sore thumb. Brookline is essentially sponsored by Vineyard Vines, so it was oddly fun having a clothing style that entertained and, at times, confused other people. I’m pretty sure the sidewalks of Brookline have never been stepped on by a pair of Doc Martens before. I also barely own any shirts that cover my bellybutton.
4. The only live music I enjoy going to is the symphony and will probably never go to a concert that isn’t classical music ever again.
5. Related: If you can, always spend the $150 to get a primo seat at the symphony. The experience was transcendent and we’re all gonna die one day. (I went to the symphony 4 TIMES while in Boston; 3 student performances—Harvard for $25, MIT for $5, and Boston University for $20—and one “professional,” non-student performance at Symphony Hall.)
6. After dating in Boston, I will never date in NYC again. Ever. There is no comparison.
7. Everyone who complains about the green line can go fuck themselves. They have never lived off the N/W in NYC.
8. I know I’m not going to stay in New York if I can help it.

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First city down, 5 more to go. Thanks for everything, Boston.