A colleague asked how our move went, and as I was showing her photos of our new apartment, her eyes widened and lit up as she exclaimed about how “adult” and beautiful our new space is. “Wow, so this is how the other half of New York lives!” she said, stunned, admiring the natural light and the bathroom space.

All I have to say is, this isn’t how I grew up, and these apartments are not at all exemplary of where I’ve come from.

Post college, I was constantly humbled when people had no idea what Elmhurst, Queens, was. Even when my apartment was huge with a renovated granite kitchen and a brand new oven/stove, it didn’t matter because people are so location-obsessed in New York. And it didn’t help that slowly but surely, I started discovering the roaches all over the kitchen and the bathroom. Even my mom discovered them on her second visit and was constantly chasing them around the kitchen to kill them. She asked where they were coming from. I told her it was a combination of bad foundation, old home, plus the disgusting landlords downstairs.

Then, I moved in with Chris to a much smaller space on the Upper East Side. Though the building was good with monthly check-ins with the exterminator, plus an elevator and laundry in the basement, the biggest scare I would have is cleaning under the kitchen counter to find the occasional dead roach, usually at least one to two inches long. And one memorable morning, I woke up to use the bathroom to discover a centipede and all its scary legs walking all over the bathroom tiles. That wasn’t fun.

This is a very different place than what I’m used to. It still doesn’t feel quite like home yet, and I still feel like I’m walking around someone else’s house. But hopefully soon, it will start feeling like my home.