I stood in awe with my arms dropping by my side, as I tilted my head up to the buildings I was surrounded by.

With my luggage in hand, camera around my neck, and the best city outfit I could think of, I knew for a fact there was something in this city calling my name.

At fourteen years old, I was able to take my first few steps out of the taxi into the enticing city, holding the strongest feeling that this was exactly where I needed to be.

I was back in the city at the age of eighteen on a boat with my mom and sister, circling around the city I pictured myself in about four years prior. At this moment, I was able to understand that my fourteen year old self would not have been able to enter the city alone while distancing myself from each of my ties back in Maine. It just would not have been practical. Although, the nostalgia became very prominent while on this boat, with my eyes glued to the city.

The countless magazines I would read as a child referencing New York Fashion Week, the overwhelming amount of times I would beg my parents to move to New York, and the Tumblr account I made primarily to repost aesthetics of this big city—these goals were all now attainable.

At this very moment where I took this picture of the city, my watering eyes told me it was time to chase my childhood dreams.

Returning back to the hotel was the start of everything. It was when I put my thoughts onto paper, underlying my passion for this city; my passion for New York.

As my thoughts began to pour out, they all stumbled into the college essay I submitted months later to many colleges—the essay that took my childhood aspirations and actually grabbed them. The essay that moved me to New York.

I often think back to this trip, generally because at eighteen years old, I knew I finally had the ability to fully grow in the way I always knew I needed to. As I started college in New York the fall after this visit to the city, I am so lucky to have been able to get to the heart of this city much more often.

As I was then capturing a picture of the city my childhood thoughts dreamed for, I have now learned that the Tumblr pictures I would dream to be in, and those pictures I took on that very trip, do not have to be looked at in pictures anymore. I am now able to see them in person, continuously leaving me speechless—incapable of even beginning those thousand words.