I Gamble Everything I Have To Be Who I Am

by Niti Majethia

When I was around 8 years old, I’d steal blank sheets of paper from our stationery drawer at home and fill them with my words, cut-outs from newspapers, stickers I had, quotes from my school English textbook — and then staple the sheets together and call it my magazine. I did this for many, many years. I hid them in a special place in my childhood bedroom. Not many people knew of these “zines,” and I never cared to show them to anyone or seek validation.

As I approached my teens, I would religiously read publications like Vogue, secretly envying the writers who got their voices heard. In my head, I pretended I was one of them.

I don’t remember the first time I felt the need to create — except I knew it was a need. I could not live without it. I wouldn’t dare to. Moving to New York to pursue journalism — waking up in the all-encompassing magic of Manhattan every day, walking by the office buildings of the biggest media companies, learning from professors who work at publications like Bloomberg and The New York Times — even on my hardest days, the days I’m tired, drained and my brain hurts, I remember that little girl; filled with wonderment, love, and

most of all, hope. She had a deep and pure passion that existed just for itself.

New York has taught me many things. Sometimes, it will kick you down just as high as it lifts you up. You will walk home some nights, dehydrated and hungry because there has been no time in the day to eat a full meal, with tears in your eyes. After all, you got rejected for something you put in so much work that you bled yourself dry (and this happens many times.) Because you feel lost. Because it’s all too hard. But on that walk home, dragging your exhausted body through the biting winter cold, you will see a man at the subway station on 50th Street singing a song with the most beautiful voice you’ve ever heard, being ignored by the rushing crowd. But he keeps on singing. He keeps on singing.

See, in New York, we’ve all got places to be. We’ve all got people to meet. There is less socializing and more networking. There are more sharing trade tips and career strategies than sharing personal feelings and emotions.

New York has also given me moments so cherry-sweet and satiating that they could be considered art. Finding family in people who come from completely different backgrounds than you. Discovering a cozy hidden record store with a genre of music you’ve never heard, but it hits you so deeply that it instantly

becomes home. Tasting a cuisine you’ve never had before and craving it every day. Having SO much to give that you physically feel it searing through your bones — and then realizing you’ve found the one place in the world where it isn’t shunned but wholly celebrated.

You could never be ‘too weird’ or ‘too ambitious’ in a city that is a patchwork of ethnicities, cultures, and dreams. Be yourself, and you belong by default.

New York City throbs with possibility. You can feel the weight of potential in the air. It’s almost too much. The desperation of it — demanding to be felt. Seeking to be fulfilled. It reeks of your wildest fantasies and tastes like your forbidden pleasures. It’s seductive and daunting. And the baggage that comes with that is the baggage of expectation — how can you ever not deliver? How can you fumble? How can you rest or slow down? How could you allow yourself to be human? Because when you’re here, no dream is too big. Play your cards right, and the world is at your feet. Make a mistake, and the fall down from the top can be pretty damn long. Because there are thousands, millions, just like you.

But through the highs and lows, the city remains your one true romance. It unfolds like a delicate piece of lace through every heartbreak, rejection, and loss as it does through every triumph, opportunity, and celebration.

And sometimes I think, what would that 8-year-old think of my life now, as a 26-year-old, away from my family, on a different continent all alone, striving each day to become something? Falling more than flying. Sometimes barely crawling. Still as hopeful. Still as naive. Bleeding herself dry to be a part of a city that otherwise drives people out, with its high rent and increasing living costs.

Sometimes, you wonder, you’ve come so far, but what if you still don’t make it to where you want to be? Would this all be in vain? The work, the sleepless nights, the sweat, the tears, even just the thrill of it all. Or is it enough just to have had the chance to experience the view as you were climbing the mountain, even if you don’t make it to the top?

When will it be enough? The ambition, the hunger to make a point, the need to deliver each day? How much is too much? How do you know you’ve made a real difference in this world? When do you stop?

Maybe you never truly stop.
Through your creations, you are immortalized. Through your love, you are eulogized.

And somewhere in the middle of it all..you find meaning. Not in the awards or bylines but in the quiet sentiment of getting out of bed and showing up each day even when every inch of you is aching not to.

And perhaps in another world, the man singing at the subway station on 50th Street has all his wildest dreams come true.
And in this world...I still believe.