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When I was fourteen years old, New York City began to make my hair fall out. Lots of it. Clumps of it. 

It made my hip bones jut out at an angle sharp enough to bruise whoever hugged me. 

It made my collar bones look “Kate Moss chic.” But really, I looked like a heroin addict. 

When I was fifteen years old, New York City gifted me a love-hate relationship with coffee. It would keep me awake at early morning photo shoots. It would fill in all the gaps in my stomach, so that food wouldn’t dare enter.

New York City promised me I could be as beautiful as I dreamed to be, but that beauty had to fit into a sample size zero dress, extra-small top, 24-inch jeans, and size 7 shoes. After all, a model is just a hanger, and these are the only acceptable sizes to showcase in a catalogue. 

New York City taught me that getting your period is no excuse when you’re on the job, and expected to stand in a white bikini for hours on end with no break, so the photographer may capture that perfect Brooklyn bridge twilight. It taught me that we aren’t in the business of selling bikinis. We’re in the business of selling dreams. Faulty ones. 

When I was sixteen, New York City showed me that smoking cigarettes is an easy way to fill up any space that the coffee may have forgotten. 

It gleamed in the background, as I poured over my AP history notes between shots, wondering how late the shoot would go, and if I would have enough time to cram in that last chapter before tomorrow’s exam. 

It gave me a high-five when I made the honor roll, got a 5 on my AP Exam, and got booked by a department store all in the same day. 

When I was 17, New York City had seeped into my veins. I would go to college here, if I ever made it out alive. 

It was a drug I couldn’t get enough of. Every weekend was spent drowning in its intimidation, as I walked from casting call to casting call, hailing cabs and riding subways like those chic models in magazines. 

It introduced me to clubs and bottles and models, while my friends back home were playing flip cup in their basements and getting greasy eggs at 24-hour diners. 

At 18, New York City laughed in my face when I couldn’t make the choice between an ad campaign and prom. 

It rolled its eyes at me when I rescheduled a booking for my graduation day. 

It chuckled at my diploma and aspirations to attend college because my job as a hanger was to be pretty and look skinny and sell an image that can be perpetuated for years and years to come–engrained into the minds of young girls, so that they, too, get sucked in when they are of age. 

It gave me countless friends, took away a few more, introduced me to the power of wearing all black, to the perfect ristretto, to a hatred of my body and softness and shape and curve. 

And when I was hesitant, when I took a moment to reconsider my relationship with New York City, it shut me out, kicked me away, cut me off, and told me never to come back. 

So obviously, I did. I went to college far away, I lived in Boston after graduating, and then, when the opportunity presented itself, I turned down moving to Miami because I wanted to experience New York City through the eyes of an adult. That same city had seduced me years ago, when I was young, impressionable, anorexic, angry, fiercely determined to be nothing less than perfect. 

But when I changed, when I became an adult with a wholesome life–a career, friends, family, self-respect, dignity, confidence, and happiness–New York City welcomed me back and showed me its other side. I had only experienced its darkness, its ruthless ambition that tears apart little girls and turns them into monsters–tall, skinny, wide-eyed, cigarette-smoking monsters. 

Today, I am experiencing New York City’s openness. Every street, every neighborhood, every corner is filled with acceptance. It is the perfect city to get lost in. To not fit into. 

It lets you stand out, it encourages you to be yourself. 

It supports you with its depth of culture, its vastness. 

It keeps your soul alive by offering you an endless expanse of options. 

It lets you embrace anonymity, even during its horrible rush hours, in its crowded streets, packed subways, and during overflowing happy hours. 

It gives you a chance to form relationships with people you never before fathomed meeting. 

In one breath, it lets you live the high life, and in another, it grounds you with its widespread homelessness. 

It teaches you how to distinguish between a good slice of pizza, and a great slice of pizza. And it tells you that it is okay to eat another slice. 

If you let it, New York City will run through you veins, seep into your head, tear apart your bad thoughts, and tell you that you don’t need to be a certain way, in order to be beautiful. 

It will add a little pep in your step. 

It will show you beauty in everything–a random compliment from a kind stranger, the look of awe on a person experiencing Times Square for the first time, or that perfect moment when the sun comes up over the Brooklyn Bridge. In that moment, the city is at its quietest. And if you close your eyes, take a deep breath, and let its expansiveness comfort you like a blanket, you can picture yourself being the only person in this city. You can tell yourself that the sun is coming up just for you. 

In that moment, you will experience an unmatched feeling of content. You will realize that your own company is enough. You are enough. 

And if you decide you want something beautiful, something positive out of life, this city will bend over backwards to make it happen.