3 Strangers Taught Me How to Be Loved—And Still Live Like I’m Alone in Brooklyn

I never thought I’d find meaning in spinning reels.

I grew up in Brooklyn—Dominican mom, Haitian neighbors, Jamaican music on the subway—and we didn’t talk about luck. We talked about silence. The kind of silence that comes after the third time you lose.

Last Tuesday, I sat on a bench near the F train, watching an old man pull his coat tighter as he whispered: ‘You don’t need to win to be whole.’ He wasn’t playing for money—he was playing for memory.

Three strangers taught me how to be loved.

The first was an Afro-Caribbean grandmother who spun $5 and won nothing. ‘It’s not about hitting,’ she said. ‘It’s about showing up.’ Her machine had no bonus. Just light. Just sound.

The second was a queer Latinx artist from the Bronx who played with his eyes closed. ‘When you chase jackpots,’ he told me, ‘you miss the melody.’ His Wilds weren’t symbols—they were sighs.

The third? A non-binary grad student from Queens who bought her way into RTP 97%. She smiled and said: ‘They call it gambling because they don’t know what healing looks like.’

I used to think vulnerability was failure. Now I know: it’s the only thing left when everything else fades.

You don’t need more spins. You need one moment where someone sees you—and doesn’t look away.

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