Another item on my bucket list just ticked off. I now can proudly announce that I've done solo traveling before I turn 25 and it was truly a love affair to me since this is exactly my favorite city in the world: New York City.
I've traveled alone before, but usually it's either for business or my partner makes me feel alone (yep, things just get sad quickly around here). Never before I have the chance to be alone in a great city that becomes home to millions of people and yet, all the time that I was there, I never felt lonely.
When you travel solo, you are literally alone. No one knows your name. No one knows what you are actually doing and why. You are free to shape your own image, create your own story, make your own decisions (either it's only about what to eat for dinner or what you're gonna do in a cold, dark, night). You are only where you want to be; when you want to be, and how you want it to be. Depending on how you see it, the world either doesn't exist to you (it's all you!) or you don't exist to the world.
You are completely on your own, and let's face it: when do you think was the last time you are so far, so independent, from any label attached to you? Probably never before.
I have never feel more liberated than I ever did the whole time I was there. I could choose where I want to be. I could be in bed at 8 pm in my hotel room, or I could be in a stranger's bed in Astoria, having sex with someone I'd never have to care about ever again in my life.
It could've been anything. Nothing, and no one, was stopping me.
And New York--there's no better place to be alone than New York. You've heard countless stories about it. The lonely, the distraught, the drunks, the drug addicts, the workaholics, the shamed sluts... you've heard it all. You can see yourself in that woman sitting next to you at the subway station, or the little boy standing alone holding on to his science project inside the train. You can see yourself in the hard-working construction worker who never stopped shouting. You can see yourself in virtually everyone you meet--or even see--in the street. It's a bowl with millions of people looking for... oh, who knows?
Maybe that's the reason why people love New York.
If you could see yourself in almost every single person you encounter, you'd never feel so alone in the world.
If you could see yourself that you're no alone in the world--that someone is having a day as hard as you, a life as tough as yours, a future that you're not sure yet but willing to work for... you're not going to feel like the world is falling apart and everything is going against you.
