A New City Is a Marriage You Didn't Choose Carefully
Moving to a new city is a lot like getting married. You arrive full of hope. You promise to adjust. You tell yourself the difficult parts are temporary, that it takes time, that everyone says it gets better. And like most marriages, it either makes you or breaks you. Mostly, in my experience, it breaks you first. Not with anything dramatic. A city doesn't fight with you. It simply refuses to know your name . It lets you discover, slowly, how much of your identity was built by the streets you knew, the people who greeted you without asking who you were, and the places that once felt like home. But the real damage doesn't happen on weekdays. Weekdays are merciful. There is an office to go to, meetings to survive, deadlines to chase. Routine keeps your mind occupied and convinces you that you're doing okay. It's the weekends that expose the truth. The festivals. The evenings. The birthdays. The days when your phone is full of pictures of people laughing over dinner with fa...