Joan Didion expresses in her essay “Goodbye to All That” how much where she came from influenced the way she experienced New York City: “I am not sure that it is possible for anyone brought up in the East to appreciate entirely what New York…means to those of us who came out of the West and the South.” The distance provides a view of the city that heightens the excitement and surprise when one finally reaches it.

Didion entered New York with a naivety that is necessary when moving there from so far away. The city was the first stop in her adventure as a young woman, unattached and determined to live. As Didion put it, “[There] is the conviction that nothing like this…[had] ever happened to anyone before.” Life in New York is thought of in the present tense to a young newcomer, because that is all that s/he knows. If she thinks about what to do when the cold comes, or the heat, or the next bill, she would either be paralyzed from fear or retreat into denial. Unlike natives of the east, who see New York as “a plausible place to live,” migrants to the city of cities arrive to live in a different way than they have ever lived before. New York has a living that is unique to its inhabitants, brand new and full of inspiration even in the most unremarkable of happenings.

What Didion came to realize though, and everyone like her eventually does too, is that one cannot escape the reality of city-dwelling even in New York. This city has its own special harshness in addition to the universal difficulties of every city. It may be the small world of shallow relationships or the wide gap between the richest and poorest that gets to a person, like Didion encountered. Despite the density of people and opportunity in the city, eventually one may end up feeling more alone and disadvantaged than ever. At this point, Didion needed to leave the place where “she did not belong..., did not come from…” Not all who move to New York feel they must leave permanently as Didion did. In order to live in New York, one must not only embrace the whole of it as a city; one must ultimately accept life as a New Yorker.