what moving cities taught me about identity

i've moved enough times that i've stopped answering the 'where are you from' question the same way twice. sometimes i say where i was born. sometimes where i grew up. sometimes where i spent the last two years. they all feel equally true and equally incomplete.

when you move somewhere new, you get to choose which version of yourself to introduce first. that's disorienting but also freeing. old habits don't have witnesses. you can just not be the person who always apologizes, or always deflects, or always orders the same thing.

but you also lose something. the people who knew you before - who knew the context behind your habits - they're not there anymore. you start to feel slightly fictional. like you're performing rather than being.

i think what moving actually teaches you is that identity is collaborative. you're partly made up of what other people remember about you. take them away and you have to do more of the work yourself.

i'm not sure if that's liberating or lonely. most days it's both.