My heart rate picked up, beating its own chant of Oh my god, oh my god. My dress—the gorgeous locally-made-in-Brooklyn, cost-a-small-fortune soft silk dress that I’d splurged on at Alter in Williamsburg—had gotten stuck in the subway doors and ripped straight down the seam, from the back of my neck right past my butt. My fancy sack was now a fancy mess.

“Oh my god,” I said out loud.

New Yorkers are well practiced in the art of not staring, but dare to step into their personal space and their eyes turn into lasers that can incinerate upon contact. Unfortunately, no one’s personal space was safe around me as I frantically tried to grab the back of my dress with my free hand and hold it shut. At first, my elbow smacked into someone’s arm, and I was met with a “Jesus Christ” from the skateboarder who’d been on the receiving end.

“Sorry!” I stepped forward to recalibrate and squashed someone’s foot underneath mine.

“Excuse me,” hissed a woman in fancy athleisure wear as she recoiled.

“Sorry!” I squeaked again. God, my arms ached. I shifted the box onto my left side and shimmied as far as I could against the door, hoping I could buy myself some time before the next stop. But as I grabbed the material by my butt and held it shut, the dress started to slip off my shoulders.

Is it possible to laugh and cry at the exact same time? Because just as tears pricked along the edge of my eyes, hot and huge, I let out a guffaw. This day.

“You okay?” the pregnant woman asked, a look of genuine concern on her face.

“My dress.” I gestured toward my back. As I did, the right shoulder strap slipped off my body completely.

“Oh no,” she said, horrified.

“I know,” I replied, the panic evident in the high octave of my voice. “I’m having a massively shitty day, and in a few minutes I’m going to be mooning the station when the doors open.” All it took was one blink before the tears began dripping down my face. Everything awful that had just happened to me was spilling out, in the most public place possible.

Before I could stop her, the pregnant woman shouted into the crowd of commuters, “Does anyone have any safety pins?” Her voice was loud enough to startle almost every person nearby. “Safety pins? Anyone?”

A few people looked up and then looked back down at their phones. A girl in an NYU hoodie, her hair in a giant topknot on her head, glanced over and offered me a sympathetic smile. The older woman began to dig into her massive purse.

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” I tried to assure her, even though I was obviously not. I pressed myself against the door as we chugged toward the next station.