Dear Unlearners,
We don’t romanticize places. We romanticize the lives we think we could have inside them.
That’s the fantasy: reinvention. But with better architecture, cheaper bread, longer lunches. A soft launch of the new you. The kind of life where everything hard about you finally goes quiet.
I saw it again last week on TikTok.
A girl had moved to Italy and bought a seaside apartment for $40,000, less than a year’s rent in New York. The video lingered on lemon trees, chipped tiles, and a sunlit espresso on the balcony. The caption read: “Best decision I’ve ever made.”
I watched it three times.
Not because I believed it. Because I wanted to.
Why Do We Use Cities to Fix Ourselves?
Hope doesn’t need proof. Just good lighting and a European lease.
I spent ten years looking for a forever home. Paris. London. Barcelona. Summers scattered across Europe, trying to pass as a local. I kept hoping to land somewhere and simply fit. I never did.
I changed cities like outfits, hoping one would finally …
