WASHINGTON, D.C.
How does one express the full breadth of sentiments about a place that raised you? It feels cheap to write a segment on the best food, shopping, or site seeing in Washington, D.C. I can’t remember if I had expectations when moving there. The bar must have been low as I made my entrance on a Megabus whose ceiling glass shattered minutes into my journey from New York to D.C. after having spent the previous 10 days in Israel post college graduation. I’m not one for doing things the simple, less encumbered way. I stared at the spidered pane for hours waiting for a piece to come undone and coat my hair. It would be a good story, I thought. I have a disposition for the dramatic, at least internally. I arrived with one suitcase to meet my mother who had my other suitcase which eventually became multiple homes, furniture, decorations, heartbreaks, letters, and memories over five full years. We think with every move we only transfer, acquire, or rid ourselves of the material. We also bring or shed the threads of what make us who we are.
My plan was to stay the summer for my internship at the Capitol and hope for the best. I was “building” my resume for my assumed application to grad school. For what? Who knows. On paper I come across as someone calculated and methodical in the decisions she makes. Even now at 29 I don’t know if I can own that designation. For better or worse, and I mean heavy on the worse, I put one foot in front of the other. It’s fitting that my favorite pastime is walking. Those steps have lead me into rooms with people who propel me forward, I find myself on websites with applications, or in church listening to a sermon God himself wrote for me. Other times my feet lead me to a hamster wheel. I found myself in all those situations at one point or another during my time in D.C. There are no regrets.
One of the first rooms I stepped into led me to a job with a Senator merely 3 weeks into an internship. I quickly discarded the ideology that you must gain everything in life solely on merit. It dawned on me that who you know gets you places, but more importantly, it is your work ethic and what you do that keeps you there. Nearly a year later I walked out of the Capitol and into corporate America where I eventually graduated with my Bachelor’s degree in the real world. I enrolled in the proverbial classes of identity, faith, professionalism, love, heartbreak, friendships, establishing boundaries, and crossing them. With every smile, laugh, tear shed, mile walked, and decision faced, I grew. Though I stayed in my second job for roughly three years, I walked in and out of many other rooms during that season. The footsteps I took varied - sometimes I stumbled, sometimes I ran, sometimes I hit a stride, others times I was pushed, and on occasion I quietly and unassumingly tip-toed in.
As I reflect it’s evident that what I’ve accomplished, on all fronts, has often been because someone else saw something in me, not because I thought I deserved to be in that room. And I don’t think thats a nod to being humble, I think it’s about being insecure. The tug-of-war in me is at a standstill between “I want that and I’ll do anything to get it” and “I could never and I’ll be found out”. I still carry some of that weight, but the burden is lighter now.
The evolution of my time in DC is not only marked by haircuts, but the acquisition of the assurance that things work themselves out even when you are in the middle of the knot. I’m still learning to believe that each day - it’s funny how amnesia settles in on a pendulum’s schedule. Just when you remember, you forget again. In every wrong room there is still a door. I overstayed my welcome in some rooms - mental states, habit loops, daily routines. At times I walked out of one wrong room only to enter another, but I learned to leave quickly. Familiarity is a magnet.
In 2021 I naively signed the dotted line for my final 15 month lease in my favorite city, unbeknownst to me. In the moment I was certain I would live in D.C. for as far out as my mind could comprehend. I loved my job, my church, my routines, my friends. As long as those things stayed constant, what could possibly change my mind? I time travel back to when I decided to leave and I may have convinced myself that work was the motive. I would move back to Florida temporarily and then come back. Or maybe explore somewhere else and then come back. D.C. was, and perhaps still is, both my safety net and paragon. Like many other decisions, I stepped into a room where one Facebook Marketplace post lead to another. Admittedly I stumbled into that room. Eventually I found myself in an empty apartment in June ready to leave the place where I grew into the most myself I’d ever been up until then. A place where I felt the full spectrum of the emotional color wheel in a span of 5 years - that is one my greatest treasures.
When my thoughts linger to wonder whether I should have stayed I question if there was more juice left to squeeze from that season’s harvest. The change aversion in me craved the ease of my paved patterns, but I know comfort kills. The lessons of living alone and in community, and sometimes feeling alone in community stretched me. I learned to make the most of day even if the agenda was just me, an audiobook, sneakers, and a destination. I could let people decide my steps, or I could decide for myself. The latter is a muscle I slowly, but consistently, exercised during those years and am still training today.
Florida seemed like the easy option to the naked eye, but to me it was an act of surrender. As you can tell, I seldom prepare an exact plan of what I want to do, but as far as I can remember I have always been vocal that I would not move back to Florida. Yet here I was, a liar. In my first months as a Florida resident there were still residual lessons from living in D.C. that I was learning. The one in cemented in me is that you can change your mind. Florida was not, and is not, my preferred place to live, but it is also good. D.C. was not on my radar prior to the last semester of college and it changed my life. I can change my mind and allow seasons of life to surprise me.
I made the 13 hour drive down to Boca Raton, Florida in a Nissan Armada so filled that there was no rearview mirror visibility. Barely out of the Mid-Atlantic and the symbolism of putting my faith into whatever this next chapter had in store for me was ironic. As the hours passed I thought what I would do with so much silence in the suburbs. Where will my mind wander to? I was already getting practice during the barren stretches of highway. I vowed to be intentional. Although I was not going to be in a place that inspired me, I could still find and cultivate moments of inspiration, just as I learned to do the previous 5 years. Autopilot is easy, but effort is rewarding.
I miss the cues the city taught me. The mundane has a purpose if you pay attention. All of a sudden you notice that the incline building as you navigate towards downtown means I’m no longer close to home, but steps from the White House and National Mall. The yellers on the street corner are urban roosters and begin promptly at 6:43 AM. The tree on the way to the supermarket begins to blaze red in the Fall, every single year. I miss her.
I visit D.C. every so often and as I land in Regan it makes me want to cry. The memories flood with every monument, street sign, restaurant, and apartment building I see. The people who became friends who became strangers and the recollection of the fleeting hopes and dreams I once cultivated there. So much was born and so much died in the District. I remember and hold onto each iteration of who I became in D.C. Some versions I try to keep tucked away, others I try to resuscitate but today I am an amalgamation - each persona reflecting when the sun hits just right.
