Melancholy New Yorker Finally Free

Are you the kind of New Yorker whose neuroticism and depression sometimes combine to make you think you’re not simply sad, you’re actually a prisoner to a city which, in spite of all its obvious greatness and endless opportunity, can on certain days make you feel like the most invisible, most lonely, least loved person in the world? Well, get over yourself: No matter how blue you may be, you are still a human being, with agency. Take some pills or move to Cleveland and be all “boo-hoo” there, but either way remind yourself that, no matter how much you suck, it’s your own fault and not New York City’s and you’re not actually trapped here, unlike the 27-year-old they put down yesterday, who really was a captive in this town. Hopefully he is in a better place right now, which, if you’ve been to the Central Park Zoo recently, is a fairly decent possibility. Anyway, farewell, Gus. If we were more spiritually inclined we would make an anthropomorphic joke about how you are complaining in Heaven right now, but the reality is that once you’re dead it all disappears, which is probably comfort enough. In fact, we’re suddenly feeling envy rather than sorrow. Lucky bastard.