A Montage of 8 Years of Living in NYC

I have gone from being a girl who dreamed of a life in NYC and a career in fashion through the glossy pages of magazines while I was in high school to a bright eyed, bushy tailed 20 year old who landed in the city of my dreams to intern there for a summer. Those blissful few months introduced me to the humidity of an east coast summer (a rude awakening to someone from the west coast), a tiny NYC walk up apartment with no A/C or dishwasher, amazing restaurants, bars, and rooftops, one Tinder date, late bar nights, busy weekends, and the midtown work life. Fast forward a year, and I returned to the city, recently single and heartbroken with just a few friends in the city but a decent apartment on the UES, a great roommate and my first job out of college.

I struggled for a few months feeling lonely and friendless until my social circle gradually started expanding, and I started making friends at work and started getting over my ex and meeting new boys in the city. I discovered new bars and restaurants after work and on the weekends, and was living and experiencing life like I never had before. However, I gradually started hating my job and decided I was tired of living so far uptown.

I moved to an apartment in Chelsea with a friend. Thus ensued an anxiety-ridden year of reckoning as I struggled to figure out what I wanted to do career wise, and how to get there while I struggled simultaneously with living with that friend who was becoming less and less of a friend those days and more like a roommate I didn’t want to live with.

Fast forward another year and I get what I think at the time is my dream job at a dream company - an Assistant E-Commerce Manager position at an iconic department store in NYC. I find a new, much better roommate who I live with blissfully for two years until that roommate randomly unfollows me from Instagram and stops talking to me after she moves out.

I grow up a lot and learn how to defend myself and grow more confident in myself as I battle working at an extremely toxic work environment, (as by that point the glory of working at my dream company had faded and the glaring reality of how they truly are is exposed, leaving me fumbling.)