I'm Entitled to Be Neurotic

I've been feeling a change recently. It's a deeply rooted feeling, something I haven't been able to pinpoint. Something that's unsettled me and has had me guessing what the issue really is.

I've finally figured it out. New York has turned me into Woody Allen.

I think it's New York's prerequisite. They should make you check a box when they run a credit check for an apartment.
"Are you willing to invent health symptoms?" Check.
"Are you capable of feeling uncomfortable in large groups and feel an overwhelming sense of being strangled?" Check.
"Do you mistrust your tap water and do become easily convinced it's causing shortness of breath?" Check.
"Do you have misgivings about your mailman's intentions?" Check.
"Have you abandoned eye contact with strangers completely?" Check.

I've come to realize that New York has a way of toughening you up beyond any vision of authority you could have ever imagined yourself in. At the same time, the city also gives you this false sense of entitlement that I imagine only lucky millionaires feel. If something doesn't go your way, you stamp your foot and it will. If someone isn't treating you how you want to be treated, well, just be really disappointed in them until they do. This is New York, damnit! This is where things happen!

This sense of entitlement is the excuse I give the thousands of people I have to endure on any commute. This is the reason people will elbow you for a seat on the train, the reason people do not hold a door open for you. This is the reason why they'll skip you in line and not think twice about it, why a receptionist has no qualms about snapping at you over the phone while setting up an appointment. Why teenagers suck their teeth at you when you exit the elevator in front of them.

Most people walk around this town with a sense that they were meant to have this. That it doesn't matter if you don't have it now, you will. And in the mean time, you can just be really angry you don't have it. I think this kind of mentality is what has kept this town going, otherwise who in their right mind would move here? There has to be an edge of neuroticism and arrogance to move here. If not, New York will whittle you down into a tiny sharp object that would leave you running for the door.

This is what I think we all need to tell ourselves to survive here, or really anywhere. We're entitled to this. This piece of pie right here? Mine. You can have some too, but this piece, this piece I really want and I'll arm wrestle you for it.

Don't misunderstand. This is the best place to be. This is the kind of challenge I've wanted and this kind of "Anything Can Happen" mentality exists here. This town is exactly what I had pictured it would be. An island of dreams. A shimmering sphere of hope for all. A wonderland. A bubble that once you step inside, you ask yourself, "What the hell is that smell?"