Am I Safe?

Do you feel safe in New York City?  Is a common question I get asked.  The truth is that I have never felt safer.  With each neighborhood is surrounded by fellow spirits just trying to make sense of this accomplishment.  And that's how I would describe Manhattan, the place I call home.  With the skyscrapers as high as the eye can see and its streets pressed with history touching your toes its hard to not feel secure.  Its the unfamiliarity of a new place, a change but once you stop making sense of it, all things seem to fall in place.

There's been just a few times I felt a change in the air, a heavnyness of insecurity where the thoughts "I shouldn't be here" sprung into mind.  I live by the F train (a common subway for everyday New Yorkers) and I left the actual station on the wrong side.  Sudddenly I went above gorund to a very quite New York.  A little too quiet and I was a little too new to New York but I took notice.  I understood one thing and that was that New York City was never quiet not only quiet but dark.  Something swelled up in my throat and I felt my strut turn into a faster pace jog as if a fire was lite from under my shoe.  I was alone.  I finally felt alone.  Never upon an island of 8 million had I felt this way, I knew I was in the wrong area.  Nothing happened as a sprinted along but it was one of the times I felt unsafe or maybe it was the first time I had been alone.   Needless to say, I was scared and my only thought was my mother getting a phone call that her baby girl in the Big City for the first time didn't make it home last night.

Here's a fun fact about New York, it's safe.  Sure there's area's to avoid but you never feel alone and you always feel like there is just too many damn people everywhere.  There's times when at any given moment you will have 50 people around you and then you will turn down a street and have 2.  You gracefully shoulder rub oncoming civilian traffic that people never seem too far away.
So as I sit in my apartment alone (watching Glee and drink a glass (bottle) of wine) and ponder the question of safety, I without a doubt feel it here.  I trust an inner instinct within myself that says I fight like a complete girl but could cut a bitch if need be.  With familiarity brings security because with familiarity one recognizes where they are and in New York I rarely knew where I was.  Not like I understand now being 5 months in.  For now I am safe and always felt that way the moment I entered this amazing city.