On leaving New York, and maybe my impostor syndrome, behind

Last sunset over the Hudson as a Manhattan resident

I first fell in love with New York City as a teenager growing up about 30 minutes from the George Washington Bridge. It probably happened when I started taking the commuter bus from the suburb I grew up in to the Port Authority and blossomed into romance when I’d travel to Columbia for the annual Scholastic Press Association meeting and a science honors program on Saturdays. By the time I was in college in Cambridge, I knew I needed to live in New York, and that made NYU an easy choice for medical school.

Except for about two years between 1998 and 2000, I’ve lived on the island of Manhattan since 1994. It’s been quite a love affair. And while it’s not ending, exactly, it’s shifting to a new phase. Cate and I are leaving the Hell’s Kitchen apartment we’ve lived in since just a few weeks before we were engaged in April 2004. It’s the same building I’ve lived in since September 2000.

That means I was standing on my balcony on September 11, 2001, watching the Twin Towers fall.