Translated
I left NYC without a clean break. The city doesn’t release you like that. It stays in your walk and in your timing. My city taught me how to move fast when needed, sideways when necessary, inward when survival required it. It taught me contradiction as a daily discipline: gentle and tough, beauty next to neglect, ambition wrapped around ache. I didn’t know how much of that had become me until I put distance between us.
DC didn’t replace New York; but it reoriented me. The pace slowed just enough to let clarity surface. Conversations stretched. Listening mattered. I began to feel the difference between motion and direction (this was huge for me). In DC, I learned that purpose doesn’t always announce itself, it waits for you to catch up to it. What once felt like restlessness began to feel like readiness.
Moving between these cities became more than relocation. It was me being translated. Leaving New York showed me how deeply I belonged to it, and arriving in DC showed me how much more I could become. I carry both now! The edge and the ease, the hunger and the hope all alive in me. And for the first time, the future doesn’t feel like something I’m chasing. It feels like a open door.