Crying in Public

Shortly after I moved back to New York, I was let go from my job. It was the first time I ever cried in public, and I still recall more of the emotional nuances of the experience in my heart, than any of the actual details of the job. I just remember suddenly needing to get out of the building, waiting tortuously for the elevator to take me down the 40-or-whatever floors, and having nowhere to go. So I simply broke down into sobs in the street.

I felt embarrassed, like insanely embarrassed, and I was so worried that people would come up to me and ask if I was okay and it would only make it worse. But no one came up to me. I don’t think anyone even took a second look at me. And this was a busy area in mid-town, a few blocks from Grand Central.

I fell in love with New York a little bit more that day. Sometimes you need to cry, and in New York that often means crying on the street or in the subway, because life doesn’t happen in your apartment, and you don’t have a car to hide in. There’s a shared experience of this, anyone I’ve talked to who lives or lived in New York has stories like these. And the beautiful part is, that we also all know that the best way to comfort someone who is crying in public, is to leave them alone.

I love that, and I love this map, which so effortlessly conveys the experience of living in New York during your formative adult years with emojis and one-sentence stories. Thank you for this.