"It’s weird when you wake up one morning and realize your entire adult life is based on a decision made by a teenager..." -Passing Strange

When I was sixteen I decided I would move to New York from my teeny tiny hometown after I finished college. I was here for a long weekend sleeping in a basement, helping in soup kitchens, cleaning churches... I also saw Rent, ate Sri Lankan food (where is Sri Lanka again?) and met some of the most incredible people. I went home and wrote in my journal that I would move to New York when I finished school and signed the statement to make it official. Silly girl.

Six years later I had grown up considerably from that silly sixteen-year-old but I still had my sights set on New York. It was almost too easy. A childhood friend started dating a Brooklyn boy she had met in college and decided she would move to New York with me. I waited a million tables that summer and saved up $3,000. I packed my things and moved to Brooklyn promptly spending half of my savings on one of three bedrooms in a cheap apartment in a really lame neighborhood in Brooklyn . That turned out to be the easy part.

I began looking for a job as soon as I arrived. I thought I would wait tables to pay the rent until I found a "real" job. It turns out one needs "New York experience" in order to work in any decent restaurant in the city. I did eventually find a job but not before the money ran out. The job turned out to be the most trying experience of my life (at that point). Soon after, my friend moved back home without warning. Then my car died. I eventually got a new car (which came with a monthly payment) so I could drive to my horrible job on Long Island (I know, could it be any worse?).

I hadn't really had some fantastic New York life dreamed up before I moved here -I had never seen Sex and the City- but this was not what I had hoped for. I was alone, broke and freaked out.

Then I got sick.