Reasons to go back (or an ode to New York)

When I was in NY, in one of my visits to Barnes & Noble, I picked a book called "Ways to come back home", by a Chilean author who tells the story of a 9 year old boy during Pinochet´s dictatorship.
I only read the first few pages and, more than likely, it has nothing to do with what I will write about here. I just wanted to brag.
Anyways, I´ve been thinking about this "coming back"/"going back" thing. Because there are a few places I want to go back to and, honestly, I don´t know what´s in there for me. Which means, I have no idea why I want to go back. And I guess many times, when we think we want to "go back", we really don´t want to go back to some place as much as we want to go back to some time.
No matter how beautiful a city may be, we don´t want to go back to a place where we were unhappy. Take for example this friend of mine who, before leaving Madrid after living here for 5 years, said she hoped she never had to come back to Spain again.
The first time I remember having this idea was when I went back to Venice with my family, a few years after I had been there with my boyfriend. Venice was so incredibly beautiful in my mind, and going back kind of ruined the memory. My parents found it too hot, too wet, too crowded and too smelly. My brother was down because this girl had broken up with him. And I realised how different a place can be, depending on the circumstances.
I was also with my boyfriend when I first went to London, and I loved it. And when I went back, I remember telling Mar I didn´t want to walk Regent Street because I wanted my memory of it to stay as it was. Of course, I did walk it, and the curve from Piccadilly Circus is still one of my favorite places in the world (yep), but it was much better when I saw it for the first time, at night, from the front seat on the upper floor of the bus.
When I think of the places I would like to go back to, all of them on my list seem to have one thing in common: I not only liked the place for itself, but I also liked what I was feeling at that point of my life. So after London, I would like to go back to Brussels, and then NY and DC. And if I had to pick one, NY would go first.
I haven´t done too much travelling but I wouldn´t go back to Lisbon, Berlin, Rome, Prague, Vienna, Egypt or Tunisia (that I can recall now). Not at least without a good reason. I wouldn´t go back by myself. Even though I had a great time in all those places.
So why NY? I didn´t really like the city. It is too big, and too small at the same time, and too noisy. There are too many people pushing each other to get out of the subway, too many people rushing, too many people drinking coffee, too many people working late hours or studying on saturday night. It is dirty and dark and buildings are so high that it can be suffocating. I don´t like the glowing lights and the lifestyle. I don´t like shopping like mad, or eating in a fancy restaurant that not many people can afford, or getting some really healthy food in a vegetarian, or paying 24 dollars at Walgreens for a bunch of paper rolls and a bag of apples.
So what made it so special?
When I first landed there, I thought I would be taken to lots of places. Well, the first night I was taken to Macy´s and then we took a walk somewhere around there, and we walked to Times Square, and my first memory of the city is a lot of superhigh buildings over my head, with their superlarge screens at the front, the top of them dissappearing in the mist. I thought it was crazy. And I was cold.
And then, I wasn´t really taken to many other places. I mostly discovered the city by myself. I learned to move around, I did my little research on must sees, and I did it all. I started to wake up late, and I had coffee and cookies for breakfast, sitting on the mattress, and then I used to study or read, then take a shower, then asparagus with cheese and mayo sandwich, and then starbucks and sightseeing.
I won´t lie, I was dissapointed at the beginning. But then, the feeling of being by myself, thousands and thousands of miles away, further away from home than any other member of my family had ever been, in a place where nobody knew me, where it could be hours ("hours"!) until anyone would know if anything happened to me, where I could be punched on the ribs by a random guy at the street, or called a white bitch by some woman at the coffee shop,  where I could get my palm read by a guy whose favorite flowers were cherry blossoms, or have a nice walk in the park with a guy who was afraid of "blacky" people, where I could have 10 chickenwings and live music for a dollar, where I could be asked about my shaving habits on a bus trip... that feeling, I was saying, was awesome. I don´t remember having lived so many new experiences so condensed in such a short amount of time before. And then I went to the hospital and saw that, even though they were really good, they were not unreachable. Not by me, anyways. And that too, felt great.
I don´t think I can explain to what extent the city changed me. And of course I know it was not only the city. It was all of it. It was the winter from a 15th floor in the bronx, the fish tank at the hospital library, the free wifi space in that building in Lexington where I shared the hand dryer with a homeless woman to dry our socks after the strongest rain, the walks in Roosevelt Island, the Strand, the gardener. All the people I spent time with. Staying up until 6 am talking with Kene after the coldest night. Yomi the fellow. New year´s eve at 6 pm with my family on Skype.
I didn´t intend to write a post about NY, but that is what this will end up being, I guess. And you know, I would be cheating if I changed it now. You don´t censor yourself in your own blog.
So yes, I want to go back to NY, because I want to get that feeling back. The feeling that I am barely starting my life, that I´m just about to make the ultimate discovery, the feeling that I´m completely free to do whatever the fuck I want to do, and nobody will judge, and any option will be a good option. But I´m also aware that the moment is gone (and shall never come back). Which makes "wanting to get the feeling back" not a good reason to go back. Sorry about all these backs and the next to come, btw.
So I guess my rational reason to want to go back is because I want to keep liking the experience, and possibly keep disliking the city, but from a different perspective now.
But the reflection is, do we really want to go back "there", or are we just desperately trying to go back "then"? Will we be happy to be there, knowing that we cannot be "then" anymore?