Moving Abroad (Pt.4)

Moving again. This is the fourth time I write a version of this post, and the boxes were more or less the same boxes. This time there was an ocean in the middle. I flew alone, knowing the drill by now, with two colossal bags that had my whole home inside them. Gabi came a month later. When you move like this a few times you stop packing objects and you start packing a life, compressed, hoping it expands again on the other side. People describe cities with words like charming, or livable, or expensive. New York is none of those first. This city has as much energy as an atomic bomb. It goes off every morning and it does not stop until you close your eyes, and even then you hear it through the window: a siren, a truck, somebody yelling at somebody else for no reason that matters. Turin taught me that every city has its unwritten rules, and that you suffer when you expect the new place to behave like the old one. New York has rules too, but nobody explains them, because nobody has time.…