I've been a scaredy-cat my whole life.

I can't remember a time when I didn't fear walking around a city by myself, or even a knocking on my door while home alone. I've been sheltered my whole life, so it's inevitable that I would grow up scared of everything. The fact that I'm from a small town doesn't help my cause. I never heard of many bad things happening in my town, so most of the time I felt fairly safe. My parents have also taught me to use the buddy system, not answer the door to strangers while home alone, and not accept candy from people in vans. While thinking about my future after college, I always see myself ending up in a city. As nervous as I get in cities, I know that at some point in my life, I need to move to one in order to expand my horizons.

I only lived 20 minutes from Portland, which is one of the safer and smaller cities in this country. When I went into Portland, I was always with friends or family. Even then, I would sometimes feel scared of some questionable people wandering the streets. I've been to Boston several times, and New York City twice, but I never felt like I had enough time to take in the city and experience everything I wanted to while visiting. I'm not sure what it is, but I get a feeling of enchantment while strolling through the streets of NYC, and I know at some point in my life, I need to experience that more.

The first time I visited NYC, I was with my family and a couple other families, and we just walked around the city for hours on end. We didn't go into many stores, we just wanted to see as much of the city as we could in a short period of time. The second time I visited, I spent a few days there. I felt completely overwhelmed, and a little scared, but it was a good scared. It scared me that I was walking by thousands of people with completely different lives, and just for a minute, all my troubles felt so irrelevant. It scared me that there were more people in just Manhattan, than in the whole state of Maine. For the first time in 17 years, I actually liked the feeling of being scared.

After seeing Mamma Mia in the front row on Broadway one night, my mother, sister, and I were trying to make our way through a crowd of people to get back to Grand Central Station. We were clenching on to each other's pinkies, hoping we wouldn't get separated while navigating our way out of that overpowering swarm of people. Through all the chaos of trying to find our way out, I was still smiling. I didn't know one person in that crowd, and to be honest, many of them were probably very rude to us, but in a way, it made me happy to be surrounded by strangers. I still think back to how I felt that night, and I would give anything to feel that way again.

Since I'm a marketing major, I would really like to get a job in the city after college. Don't get me wrong, there's several opportunities for jobs wherever I end up after college, but I can see myself working on the 27th floor of a skyscraper overlooking a city. I plan on declaring a minor in journalism fairly soon, so as a true Mainer would say, it would be wicked cool to write for anything even remotely close to a newspaper or magazine. After watching several shows that take place in NYC, like How I Met Your Mother, Gossip Girl, Sex and the City, The Carrie Diaries, and Friends, I dream of one day taking a taxi, or walking several blocks to my job.

I realize that there's a small chance I'll find a job right after college that will pay enough for me to live and pay rent in the city, but for now, that's my dream. I need to branch out and stop being so scared of the unknown, and the city just may be my cure. I could end up feeling terrified and alone in a city of millions of strangers, but I will never know unless I try.

In the end, I owe it to myself to experience new things and maybe even scare myself along the way.