I have loved New York for a really long time.

But not in a chronological sense— more like since I was able to conceptualize that a single thing could be that big, that all encompassing, that “every where you look.”

I was very young when I first went to the city— maybe a toddler— but that moment imprinted something on me that wouldn’t resurrect itself for another 20 years. We have heard the story so many times, but it is literally the origin of who I am/ am still becoming. 

Twenty-one years old, fresh out of Notre Dame, believing that my life will be in Washington, D.C. for the foreseeable future. And then my baby journalist sister gets her first New York Fashion Week assignment, and all of that certainty on the Capitol City goes up in smoke. 

It’s 2008, and we don’t have the money or foresight for Amtrak Acela, so we arrive to the city by bus to a humid, heaving entity that seems to wrap us in its pulse. There’s a trek to a friend’s cousin’s place in BK (“I left my key so we have to go through the fire escape…”), Kevin McAllister-esque upgrade to a suite at the hotel and a crush of cultural inspiration that engulfed me in seconds-flat. The next afternoon, I pressed my little face up to the tents of Bryant Park and realized there existed a place that would allow me to be so much more than what meets the eye. That nagging sense coming into focus that I was tougher than my outward Southern Princess facade, that I was bigger than my petite frame, and that I was indeed holding the entire Universe inside of me.

I returned to DC the next week like a lover already gone. I cold-called anyone I could think of who could get me to Manhattan, while simultaneously booking my next bus ride. But more importantly, I simply sank into the reality that NYC was coming to get me, no matter what. No matter a fantastic job and a growing crop of truly magnificent friends, and this first adult relationship with a man who was well over 6 feet, kind, funny and also loved kissing. Because the thing about NYC is that it’s all momentum. It’s all No Matter What, it’s all Ever Upward. 

When I crash landed into NYC almost exactly four years later with a job at the biggest retail name and the shaky support of my change-averse mom, I knew that every age of Amelia had prepared me for this moment. Even when the work, the grime, the inconvenience, the INSANITY of the city beat me down, there was never a doubt of what it was instilling in me. For the first time, I learned to let go of how I looked and instead tap into what I was trying to say. I made relationships at work with women who let me shine in my own off-the-rails way, which forced me to take account of the people in my life who didn’t. They beat the Southern deference and people-pleasing out of me, and have since surpassed my college best friends as my ultimate ride or dies.

It’s been 11 years since I left, but the city has clung to me every second since. I recently quipped to a friend “I mostly eat dinner in New York…” and she looked at me like was I insane. She just doesn’t understand how NYC pours itself into every crevice of your being, and that it’s when you are away that the pull is the most formidable. It’s Homer’s Odyssey to make it to your favorite Manhattan intersection and just bask in the glory that you’re staring down an entire day in the greatest city in the world. 

Currently, I am at a really interesting point in my relationship with NYC. I’ve been working in the city for the past five years, so these intermittent moments of return have shaped themselves into a routine of “being back.” I see my friends almost every month, run errands like a local, and have recently delved into a relationship with a BK Boy. There was a dark night of the soul in 2025 when I was on the precipice of going back fully for a job that didn’t pan out, and then for an extended stay at an apt that didn’t pan out. It was early October when the text that the sublease wouldn’t work came through and it crushed me for an excruciating 60 seconds. “God, why don’t you want me to go back to the city? What are you trying to tell me?”

And then, I remembered that divine No Matter What. Amelia, the Universe inside of you will always find its way back to that girl who stood for hours outside the tents of NYFW just to get a glimpse of a life that is perhaps too big for everyone else, but certainly not too big for you. Xx 

In a moment when many are reflecting on what NYC means to them, I had to write (yet another) ode to this city. My other New York pieces here, here and here. If you need specific recs for the city, drop them in the comments! Start spreadin’ the newssssss!