Somewhere Between the Rooftops and the City

There’s something about seeing New York from a rooftop that makes everything feel a little different.

Down below, the city is doing what it always doe moving too fast, honking too loudly, rushing somewhere important. But up here, everything softens. The noise becomes a hum. The buildings stretch out in every direction, and for a second, I’m not thinking about where I need to be next.

I’m just here.

Somewhere between the rooftops and the city, between the life happening below me and the one I’m still figuring out, I realized how much I’ve changed.

I used to think becoming meant having some perfectly mapped-out version of what life was supposed to look like. Now, I think becoming looks a lot more like this: standing above a city I’ve loved through so many versions of myself, letting the wind mess up my hair, looking out at everything still waiting for me, and realizing I don’t need to know exactly where I’m going to know that I’m moving forward.

And maybe that’s exactly what I needed from this weekend. Not answers. Not some huge revelation. Just a change of scenery and a few days to enjoy the city from a different point of view.

So, I packed my bags and headed to New York for a weekend that somehow included a little bit of everything: rooftop views, getting ready with my forever friend while singing and dancing between makeup steps, wandering around the Lower East Side, and checking out a rage room that we thought had an opening.

It didn’t.

But somehow that worked out just fine, because instead we ended up having some delicious sushi.

One minute we were singing, dancing, and getting dressed, turning the room into our own little mini concert. Honestly, that might have been one of my favorite parts of the night. My forever friend and I also had our own mini photoshoot, taking turns pretending to be each other’s photographer. And every time I look back at those pictures, I’m reminded of how much fun can exist in the smallest moments.

Then the real fun started.

My forever friend’s crew came through, my cousin Hannah showed up, and from there, it was nothing but fun. There was no perfectly planned itinerary or pressure for the night to become something extraordinary. We were simply together, laughing and enjoying the city.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I realized that maybe that was the point.

Sunday slowed everything down in the best way. After all the singing, dancing, getting ready, and going out the night before, we spent part of the day at the rooftop pool. Sitting above the city, taking in the skyline and just enjoying the moment felt like the perfect way to end the weekend. There was nowhere to rush to and nothing I needed to figure out. I could just be there, soaking it all in.

On the ride back to New Jersey, I found myself thinking about the weekend differently. I thought about my forever friend, my cousin Hannah, and the people who showed up simply because they wanted to be there.

It made me appreciate everything a little more.

Sometimes it’s easy to look at our lives and focus on what we think is missing the things we haven’t accomplished yet, the relationships we don’t have, the plans that haven’t worked out, or the version of life we thought we would have by now.

But maybe having everything was never the point.

Maybe we just need the people who show up. The people who turn getting ready into a concert, take a hundred pictures until we get the one, change plans when the original ones fall through, and make an ordinary weekend feel like something worth remembering.

I went to New York thinking I needed a change of scenery.

Instead, somewhere between the rooftops and the city, I was reminded to appreciate the life that is already happening around me.