When you weren’t born in New York City you undoubtedly have a moment in your life when you stop—everything around you seems to come to a slow huussshhhh and your mind, like the city, seems to stop racing—“Holy shit,” you say to yourself. “I’m living in New York City?!” It’s both a statement and a question. On one end it’s finally hit you, you live in one of the chicest and culturally rich cities in the world. On the other end, you can’t believe how you got here. How you came from There to Here.

I had that moment on the 6 train heading downtown towards Broadway-Lafayette. “Okay,” I thought, smashed among the morning crowd of artists, students, blue collar, and white collar workers, “I catch the F downtown on the next stop.”

Quieting the sound of the automated subway announcement was the silence my mind began to hear. My moment.

I couldn’t believe that I knew where I was going and exactly how to get there. A few years ago if someone tried to tell me how to get to the Lower East Side, I would have just nodded my head and then eventually hopped in a cab to save myself the time and the embarrassment of asking, “Which way to Orchard Street?”

Here I was navigating my way breezily through life and the New York City transit system—happy, though not regretless. I find myself wondering how the hell I made This life out of That life. How I came to be Here when all that I had was There. Most of my friends and colleagues grew up in this city, exposed to all the wonderful treasures of life in the Big Apple. I grew up in a small town amidst small minds (a few good friends excluded, but then again, they all moved to big cities too). I would flip through issues of Vogue and drool over the glossy, doll-like, models in couture—wondering what it would be like at the fancy parties where everyone had a drink, a date, and fabulous shoes. Some people might see this as a vapid childhood, but when you grow up like a caged bird, these things come to symbolize something magnificent—a life filled with luxury.

So even if I am still on the 6 train, working a full-time job, and squeezing graduate school  in between it all, gone are the days where I’m wishing I was someone else, some facade in a magazine. I’m living in New York City and immersed in the art world that I work so arduously to support. This is my time. And I’ll be damned if I let a few wrinkled pages ruin my moment.