I just finished my first trip out of NYC in 2.5 years to visit a friend in DC (I am, in fact, writing this on the Amtrak home). It was an absolute delight to see my friend and his partner and get to spend so much quality in-person time with them. DC and Maryland, though…I was quite taken by surprise by how distressing the not-NYCness was for me. Y’all, I was complaining about how clean DC is for fuck’s sake. I still have a lot to process about exactly why it was so upsetting and, specifically, if it’s that I really prefer NYC or just that I was struggling with the drastic change after so long of being in the same place. I think I’ve started to understand why I was missing one thing in particular, though: crowding.

You would think as someone that’s neurospicy in a few ways I would hate crowding. From a sensory point-of-view, this is absolutely the case. I don’t like having people near me. I don’t like people running into me. I absolutely cannot stand being stuck behind a slow walker. I don’t like the noise, especially all the talking. You can imagine what a delight I am in tourist-heavy parts of NYC- definitely reinforcing that angry New Yorker stereotype. Even though I still kept my headphones in basically the entire time I was in DC and Maryland, I appreciated not having those parts. But I still found myself missing the absurd mass of people that is NYC at basically all times (noting that most of my time is spent in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx).

It took a lot of reflection but I realized why: crowds feel safe because I become invisible.

Realistically, I know this isn’t the case. I get approached pretty often for directions and change. So clearly I am both seen and also often seen as approachable. But I feel invisible and that feels safe. There are a couple of reasons for that that I think override some of my other neurospicy needs.

The first is related to anxiety, social cues, and general social awkwardness. I’ve only recently started to understand the extent to which I fail to accurately read social cues and move through the world in ways people may find awkward. I always knew this in some ways, but I thought I was doing an excellent job masking it. That all of the training and reading I’d down about psychology and observing and creating internal social rules allowed this struggle to go unnoticed. Not the case apparently. But in doing all of that masking, I developed some significant social anxiety and deep shame about when I get things “wrong”. My brain still likes to pop in a memory from years or even decades ago (damn that makes me feel old) about some slightly off social interaction I had.

Being in a city with so many people feels freeing because I’ve internalized that the average New Yorker sees so many people and so many of them doing various flavors of strange that there is absolutely no way the bodega worker is actually going to remember when I was half-asleep and asked for my sandwich on a footlong instead of a hero. It’s my neighborhood bodega so there’s a good chance if I went there often enough he’d start to remember me. But there’s very little chance that he remembered that interaction for more than 5 minutes, if at all. Some of that is just that he sees who knows how many people a day. A lot of it, though, is that the bar for memorable and worth talking about is a lot higher in NYC than basically anywhere else. My associated flavors of social awkwardness are never going to take up more memory than someone’s crack falling out of their pocket on the train, someone lighting up a joint on the train, a couple having public sex on the platform, or even just a particularly large rat (all things I’ve seen, btw). Things like that are pretty spread out, but when things like that are a pretty normal occurrence (and the “rare” things are even more absurd or, alternatively, horrifying), it takes more to get more than a fleeting reaction. I can exist without trying so damn hard to be someone I’m not and endlessly beating myself up when I inevitably fail. It allows me to actually live, maybe for the first time ever.

Crowds are also incredibly important to me as a trans/nonbinary person. As a trans/nonbinary person, particularly as one that’s often visibly so (in ways that have various levels of risk), being able to blend into a crowd is a valuable survival strategy. There is an abundance of people who see my existence as something to be corrected, whether through legislation or violence. One of those people seeing me at the wrong place and the wrong time could very well mean my death. The occasional hostile glare I got on this trip (usually in the tourist areas of DC) was a very palpable reminder of their existence. Those people exist in NYC, too, but they melt into the crowd and the crowd reduces the likelihood of violence. But I also melt into the crowd, often without having to even tone myself down. It takes a lot to stand out in NYC. Even if the worst were to happen in NYC, there always being so many people at least creates the possibility that someone would help me. Anyone (or at least anyone AFAB and/or femme) who’s walked an empty street at night is well aware of how dangerous that emptiness is.

While perhaps counter-intuitive to some, the NYC tendency to ignore other people has been essential to me when I’m really going through it*. Unless you’re extremely privileged (and maybe even then), this city is an absolute pressure cooker. Many of us are food insecure, housing insecure, underemployed/unemployed, and living in toxic situations (and I use the “us” here intentionally). It takes a toll and sometimes becomes too much at inconvenient times, like when you’re in a crowded housing situation or in public. The ability to have a cry on the train or in the park or wherever with some confidence that I won’t be interrupted has been essential to my mental health. In a city with so little reliable privacy, we have to be willing and able to ignore things like this so people can have some chance at getting things out in a healthy way and getting on with their life. To outsiders it may seem cruel for someone to be sobbing on the train and no one to speak to them, but for me it’s always felt like a kindness, a mutual understanding that shit is hard because we’ve all been there.

Perhaps that’s the real reason crowds in NYC feel safe when, at first glance, that shouldn’t be the case. At the end of the day, I can count on the fact that most of the people in that crowd have gone through some shit and/or are going through it currently. People assume that it’s made us cold, uncaring, rude, violent, or any number of terrible things. And it has for some people. I won’t deny that reality. From my experience, most of those people in the crowd are, instead, kind. We will mind our business but also give you directions if you’re lost and try to help when things get fucked up (for every subway shoving, there are also people trying to help save them). There are plenty of places where crowds are very unsafe, but, for me, the crowd in NYC is a place of safety and comfort.

*I would being doing a disservice to us all if I pretended that this collective apathy only has good outcomes. A lot of people who are in need don’t get help because the rest of us see it and say nothing. There can be really tragic outcomes from this and we’ll never know the full extent of that. It’s particularly problematic when it comes to child abuse, as the recent murder of an abused 9 year old by her mother should remind us all. Every neighbor interviewed indicated seeing clear signs of abuse and many seemed to never have contacted authorities. While the failings of CPS and injustices in the system are too many to count, those who see abuse and treat it as not their business are party to that, too.