3 years

Three years in New York. My three-year anniversary.

If I had known everything that was going to happen, I would have been too scared to make the move. Which makes me thankful for ignorance and optimism and my proclivity--at least in this case--to leap before I looked.

I get divorced and move to New York all in the same day, a hot day in July. Also my mother's birthday. I take a cab from the airport and show up on the doorstep of my best friend's apartment late that evening. I drink champagne with her and eat olives and pounds of Petit pont l'eveque and taleggio and Scharfe Maxx and am both ecstatic and terrified of the next day and all the days after that.

I move into a Manhattan apartment all by myself, set it up exactly the way I want. I collect my dog from my from ex and obsess about how I am going to get her to adjust. (Little did I know she'd adjust so much quicker that I.)

I take the subway. I start work for the first time in a New York office. My very own cube. I walk to work through Times Square and consider myself lucky (hardly annoyed at all the gaping tourists.) I see a Giants game. I take the dog to Central Park every weekend and it becomes our favorite thing to do together.

I go to all the restaurants I had spent so many years reading about. Butter. Shake Shack. Stumptown. PDT. Momofuko. ABC Kitchen. The Dutch. Chelsea Market. Eataly. Balthazar. Locanda Verde. Boqueria. John Dory. The Spotted Pig. I brunch like a champion New Yorker, drinking late into a Sunday. I celebrate my first birthday with a bar crawl through the East Village and end the night crying on the corner.

I go on a date, the first in over seven years. We eat lunch in Chinatown and decide at the end of the platonic afternoon just to be friends. I stop short just outside of the Museum of Arts and Design in Columbus Circle with this feeling of butterflies that something big is about to happen. I meet Dan at a Meetup.

I dress up like a slutty devil for Halloween and go to a sleazy warehouse party and dance the night away with my friends. On the way home I accept a ride from an unmarked car because it's pouring rain and there are no other cabs and I refuse to talk dirty to the driver even though he begs. The next day I go to coffee with Dan.

I go on a second date with Dan. I go on a third date with Dan. Dan and I are dating. We see Paul McCarthy perform at the Apollo Theater and I cross yet another thing off my bucket list. I cook Julia Child recipes for Thanksgiving dinner in my tiny apartment for my friends. I celebrate the start of 2011 with my best friend and her sister. I don't even make it to midnight I'm so exhausted and ready for the new year. I make a resolution to get a new job. I deem it the "Year of the Career" and think I'm clever.

I'm miserable at work. I cry when I get home each night. Dan and I go to Mexico and discover we are a good match for traveling together. I have mice in my apartment. I have more mice and baby mice. The landlord sets traps. Mice in traps! I go on tons of interviews. I start a Tumblr. Dan and I watch fireworks over the Hudson River from a Midtown rooftop--we have no words for how amazing it is. There is an earthquake. There is a hurricane. I'm really miserable at work. I get close with two of my co-workers and start to feel like I have friends in New York. I cry on my birthday at work. I celebrate my birthday that weekend at Blue Stone Barns and feel like a dream has come true.

Dan and I go to New Orleans. We fall in love with the city and eat and drink everything sight. We spend Thanksgiving together in New York. I roast a whole turkey in a tiny oven. We celebrate New Years 2012 with shots at Valhalla and sushi at Blue Ribbon and I fall asleep on the couch before midnight--not because I'm anxious for the year to be over, but because I'm content.

I get a new job. We go to a Mets game I move out of Manhattan and into Brooklyn and in with Dan. We go to a Yankees game. We decide to get married. My best friend moves to London and I try and mostly succeed to be happy for her because it's a really good thing. We celebrate endings and beginnings at Gramercy Tavern, another dream come true.

Dan and I get engaged after the Jay-Z concert at Barclays; Beyonce is the special guest. My best friend marries us in my favorite little bar in Brooklyn in front of our families and friends. We go to Prague and Vienna and Budapest on honeymoon and have a last hurrah so to speak.

We start trying to have a baby. I'm impatient. I get pregnant. I see the heartbeat for the first time on the very day of my third anniversary in New York.

I'm overwhelmed by how a city can be so terrible and so beautiful all at the same time.