I first visited New York City during my junior year of high school when my high school band was selected to perform at Carnegie Hall. Ever since I was a kid, I had romanticized New York City, seeing it as a place full of opportunity, charm, and constant energy, especially since Friends was my favorite show. When I finally made it to the city, it felt like a dream I had been carrying for years had finally come true. I still remember crying as we first entered the city, watching the skyline come into view, because it was somehow everything I had imagined and more.
People, especially my family, have always called me crazy for the way I romanticize the city. All they see are inflated prices, crime statistics, and rats that run through the subway. But what they don’t see is the life that runs through the streets of the city. They don’t understand the feeling that something could happen at any moment, that you could turn a corner and your entire life could change.
To me, New York has always represented freedom.
It’s a place where no one is paying attention to you, and weirdly enough, it makes you feel more like yourself than ever before. As ironic as it sounds, walking through the crowded streets made me feel like my anxiety had completely disappeared. No one was watching me the way it always feels like people are back home are. Growing up in a small town, it always felt like everyone’s eyes were on me. In a city where everyone is focused on their own lives, there’s no room for them to overanalyze yours.
I’ve struggled with anxiety for as long as I can remember. In New York, it was quiet for the first time in a long time. No one knew me there. I wasn’t tied to any version of myself I had outgrown. It felt like a fresh start, and the possibilities felt endless, like there was something there waiting for me, and I just hadn’t found it yet.
In New York, I wanted to say yes to everything. I wanted to explore every street, every late-night adventure, and every unexpected moment. I found myself saying yes to things I never would have back home. I didn’t feel judged. I wasn’t questioned. I was just allowed to exist as I was. That was freeing in a way I haven’t experienced since I first moved to college.
These feelings all spilled out of me one night at a concert while in the city. I had one too many drinks, and all these thoughts just connected to me, and I had to tell someone. I was sitting at the bar with my boyfriend’s stepbrother’s fiancée, the music vibrating through the room, and somehow, we started talking about life.
I don’t even remember how it came up, but suddenly I was telling her everything. About New York. About how I felt there, about how ever since I landed, I felt more like myself. Instead of looking at me like I was being dramatic, it was like she understood. She told me how she felt it too. That pull toward something bigger. That feeling that there’s a place out there where you’re more you than you are anywhere else. We sat there, shouting over the people and the music, talking about my future after undergrad, and about chasing something we both couldn’t fully explain. It was nice to have someone encourage me to go for it and not hold back due to fear.
In that moment, it wasn’t about New York. It was about the idea of becoming the person you feel yourself being in glimpses. The version of you that shows up when you stop holding yourself back. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel crazy for wanting it so badly. If anything, it made me realize that I’m not alone.
The second we landed back in Orlando, something in me shifted. Everything in me felt slower, smaller, and quieter. It was as if that version of me was folded up and placed back into the box it had spent so long in. Since then, I’ve been trying to find my way back to her.
I want to live a life where I say yes more often. Where I stop overthinking every decision and just let myself experience things as they come. I want to rediscover the parts of me that felt so natural in the city but feel so out of reach here.
Ever since I came back, I’ve had my eyes set on returning. Not just to visit, but to build a life there. Whether it’s for graduate school or a full-time job after college, the idea of going back doesn’t sound unrealistic anymore; it feels possible. That trip gave me something I didn’t expect. It gave me proof that I can belong somewhere bigger, louder, and more unknown than anything I’ve ever experienced.
It made me believe that I could make it there, and more than anything, it made me want to try.