For several months anyone who's heard I would be spending time in New York said roughly the same thing, "Oh, you're so lucky! That'll be so much fun!" And I've smiled nervously and tried to keep mum about my own anxiety. You see, there's a particular sort of stress I associate with New York. It may be irrational, but I get very antsy and agitated when dropped into the center of a teeming mass of humans. I start to feel as though I am always a) in the way, b) surrounded and pressed from all sides, and c) being watched. I don't have this problem to quite the same extent in other cities, but I suspect that the population density is greater here.

Of course, having said that, I'm well aware that there are indeed many great things about New York (in other places you go to sushi, in New York, sushi goes to you!), and that I am lucky to spend some time here with no worries over how I will support myself and where I will live. Several of the great things even go hand in hand with the population density. Surely other cities don't have quite so many delicious restaurants everywhere for the simple reason that their populations can't sustain them, for instance. Also, I always feel like I'm in American Europe when I am here because of all the small markets and cafes and so forth, which again seems related to the population and the lay of the land. You have to build upwards if you want to expand, and you have to make do with small spaces for retail and food services the majority of the time. In Europe that's more due to the age of cities, though, so I don't usually feel quite as pressed. Here... I don't know. The sense of not being able to escape gets to me. I'll give an example.

Last night we went out in search of food and ended up going into a gourmet grocery. For about one minute I felt okay in the shop, but then I started to feel a bit fluttery and flushed and uncomfortable. Moss apparently had no idea, but I continued to get more agitated as I realized that all the aisles had only room for one person to pas through at a time, and I kept running into dead ends and being forced to move constantly to let people pass me. I said quietly that I would like to go, but either Moss didn't hear, or he mistook my meaning, because he later said he'd thought I was asking him if we needed more things and inviting him to continue shopping. After a few more moments of sharply escalating anxiety (with me asking if we could go in between dodging strollers and chic 30 somethings in engineered jeans), Moss realized I was upset, but feeling that it had come out of the blue, reacted by being upset back (admittedly by that point I was snappish, so I can see how he must've felt blindsided).

After we left, I started to calm down, but it took a long while. I was quite uneasy walking home through streets crowded as always with people. In the blessed sanctuary of our studio I drank water very fast and Moss explained that in retrospect he could see that I'd been wanting to leave the store, but at the time it hadn't struck him that way. I tried to explain that horrible feeling of being closed in upon as if I might be a frantic mouse in a maze that constricts as time passes. I don't know why I feel this way, but I do. Aside from New York, I tend to feel this way in Whole Foods stores (perhaps I am allergic to gourmet grocery shopping?). It's a bit embarrassing to admit. People don't always understand, even people like Moss who are also largely introverts. I think we both felt better later when we went out for a second time to a quieter supermarket with more space and had a much more reassuring and typical shopping experience, but the whole event exhausted me so I slept for more than 12 hours. Anxiety is tiring. _
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