Three years ago, I packed my bags, my books, and my cat, and moved out of New York City -- a gesture that shocked many of my friends and colleagues, especially the ones struggling to find the cheapest and largest apartments in Manhattan. (For those who've never lived in New York: "cheap and large" is an anomaly here, no matter what the latest TV sitcoms lead you to believe.) How could I give it all up, sell-out, and leave everything behind? How could I choose the madness of rush-hour Penn Station over the madness of a rush-hour subway ride? What would I do for entertainment? Where would I eat? How was I going to be able to tolerate the boredom of "the burbs?" It's not like I had kids and had to move away from the filth, scum, and lousy school systems for their sakes. I was young and virtually untied, so what was I doing?

To me it seemed very simple and logical: on top of not being able to afford "The City," it got to the point where I couldn't stand it. There was a time when I dreamed of living here. I wanted to stroll through Central Park, go to Broadway shows, order food of any ethnicity, at all hours of the night. I wanted to live in the place that I considered to be the center of the world, where anything goes, anytime, anywhere. I gave it five years. I had fun. I did all the things I wanted to do. I wasn't the kind of New Yorker that never saw a play, or visited a museum, or had Dim Sum in Chinatown. I took advantage of all that New York had to offer, on my skimpy budget, and I had a great time. So what drove me to leave all the culture and sophistication for the land of big hair, fake fingernails, and pink sweat suits? The way I see it, there are those that breeze through the city -- they work here for a year or two and then transfer elsewhere. There are those who love it and will never leave. There are those who tolerate it during the week and seek wide open spaces on weekends. Then there are those who can't quite leave it altogether, so they move to suburbia.

I might have stayed if I could have had a spacious, 2-bedroom apartment in a West Village brownstone, with lots of sunlight, high ceilings, and maybe a window box or two, but that's not realistic for someone earning less than forty thousand a year. It's not even realistic for someone earning less fifty or sixty thousand a year. In fact it's so unrealistic, that I can't imagine how much you would have to earn to live like that in Manhattan unless you had rent control. All I know is it wasn't in the cards for me. But that's the least of it. When I escaped the city, I escaped more than my inability to afford a decent lifestyle. I escaped all the things I overlooked when I was too star-struck to notice what was around me, and what was happening to me. When you're busy looking up at the skyscrapers, or scouting famous faces, or rushing out to the latest show, New York is magical. When you live here for a long period of time, it can eat at you from the inside out. There's only so much I could take of the filth, vermin, and urine-soaked subway stations. Suddenly I was looking over my shoulder to make sure no one was trying to reach into my purse. I was passing by lost tourists, thinking they were scam-artists looking for money, when all they wanted was directions. I was cursing as loud as the taxi driver that tried to run me over as I crossed the street. I was annoyed when my restaurant service wasn't good enough, the air conditioning cool enough, and the trains fast enough. I was becoming a New Yorker.

Now that I'm a commuter, it amazes me, more than ever, how much money people will spend to live in a city that gets scummier every day. What's even more amazing is the people who buy those monstrous homes on top of the Lincoln Tunnel. For hundreds of thousands of dollars they can breathe in mega-doses of carbon dioxide while looking-out over one of New York's most magnificent skyline views. The luxury high-rises of New Jersey line the banks of the Hudson too. Here people pay a fortune so they can live in a little box, with a veranda, that overlooks a polluted river, just so they, too, can say they have a view.