I remember the taxi from Charles de Gaulle. The grey of the périphérique, the smell of the car, the particular quality of the light — flat and non-committal, as if the city hadn't decided yet whether to let me in.

I had a job. I had an apartment. I had a list of arrondissements to explore and a French tutor booked for the following Monday. I had, in other words, done everything right.

What I didn't have was any idea that I had just left myself behind at the airport.

Nobody warns you about this part

The logistics of a move are enormous, and they absorb you completely. There are visas, removals, school registrations, bank accounts, the endless administrative theatre of becoming a resident somewhere new. You are busy. You are competent. You are managing.

And then one evening — maybe three weeks in, maybe three months — you sit down in your new apartment and you don't recognise the person sitting in it.

This is not a crisis. It is a transition. But it feels like a crisis because no one gave it a name.

The person you were at home doesn't fit here yet

At home, you had a context. A history. People who knew you before you were good at things, who remembered your embarrassing phases, who understood your references. You had a role — professional, social, familial — that held you in place even when you weren't sure who you were.

Here, you are starting from zero. And starting from zero is exhausting in a way that has nothing to do with effort.

You are not failing. You are translating. And translation takes time.

What I wish I'd known

I wish someone had told me that the disorientation was not a sign that I'd made the wrong choice. That the grief — and it is a grief, even when you chose the move — was not ingratitude. That the version of me who would eventually feel at home in Paris was not the same person who arrived, and that was not a loss. It was the whole point.

I wish someone had told me to stop performing adjustment and start allowing it.

And I wish someone had told me that the question wasn't when will I feel normal again — but what does normal look like now, here, in this new life I'm building?

A last word

If you're reading this from a new city, in a flat that doesn't feel like yours yet, in a language that still makes you tired — I see you.

You didn't move to Paris. You moved away from everything you were.

That's not a mistake. That's the beginning.

— Daria