Now that I have some distance from you, I can see you more clearly. I don’t feel you in me grinding my bones. Metal on concrete on bone. People on people. Maybe you’ve changed. Maybe I’ve changed. Most likely, we have both changed.

The NYC of my youth was gritty, fun, wild, and lonely at times. Open. Hard but not devastating. The Village was still a neighborhood. Things had more character. The city felt personal.

When I was 16, I got my first fake ID in Times Square. “Julia H___” from Maryland, making good use of the “Spanish name” I insisted I had to my teachers in pre-school. It was a time before the biggest of billboards were up, and everything was shady as F.

In my infantile days, I remember NYC as raw. Homeless people everywhere. The energy of the 80s. Lots of badly dressed youth jumping into photos with my family in Central Park. These early and original photo-bombing episodes were not bombs. I kind of think they were genuine like, “Hello little Korean family, we are a bunch of inner-city wild teens, but we would absolutely love to form a unified family portrait with you. No, we are not being ironic.” The horses in Central Park and the carriage rides. The time I auditioned at Carnegie Hall. The memory of riding up to the 11th floor of a building to get my ears pierced at the age of 3. Tears. Pain. I remember looking at my own reflection in the mirror with my mother holding me up and me feeling tremendously betrayed. All the fish swimming in dirty water in front of Korean restaurants. Me hoping they had nothing to actually do with our meal other than provide decor.

College was another kind of NYC, living up in Morningside Heights, summering in Fort Greene. Long breakfasts at diners and my favorite generic French brasserie, Le Monde. I felt like I was playing adult then and that version somehow seems more adult than me today. It was a constant seesaw between domesticity and wildchild.

Throughout my 20s, I was unfortunately dead inside. I killed my personality and self to work and hold the responsibility of being in an intense 11-year relationship that was like a marriage. It’s taken a long time for me to separate the city from the feelings of that union. I’m not 100% of the way there yet and will never be there, but I have redefined it for myself.

Now that I’m in my 30s, I’m semi-recovering what should have been my 20s. I’m also trying to rebuild my life in a way that feels sustainable. So far, results have been mixed.

Today, the city feels frenetic. Perhaps the fastest city in the world is becoming even faster, mounting in velocity through cell phones, technology, and being even more “on” in the city that never sleeps.

The commercialism. The to-do lists. The feeling that you will be swept up in the frenzy if you do not control your own schedule and have it keep pace with everyone else’s can be daunting.

My point, I think, is that NYC is a great place to build your career. If you’re someone who’s already high energy like myself, burning out is a real risk, however. The schedule can become packed hour by hour with almost no intervention.

I’m still not sure where I’m going to end up. Until then, I will be a nomadic princess in NYC jumping from apartment to apartment. I am not sure it’s my home anymore, and while I want to be comfortable, I also want to find ways to refashion my existence there to see if I can really uncake the layers off of me.

I want to fly around unencumbered by the heavy remembrances of the past. I want to learn how to live and be in NYC, not deflect. It can all be quite overwhelming.