The memory of existing without needing to arrive anywhere.

I remember İzmir as a state of wakefulness more than a place.

I wasn’t drifting, and I wasn’t settled. I was alert in a way that didn’t demand answers. Awake and unresolved—like standing in a doorway without deciding whether to step in or out.

My days began early. I walked before the city finished assembling itself, when the streets were already crowded but not yet loud, full of bodies moving with purpose that wasn’t mine. I let myself be carried by that current without trying to understand it. I watched people eat, talk, argue, negotiate their mornings, and I followed the motion without attaching myself to it.

There was a question that threaded through everything, quiet but persistent: What will I eat? Will I have enough?

It wasn’t fear exactly—more like awareness. Attention sharpened by uncertainty. I learned the city through hunger and timing, through noticing where food appeared, where it disappeared, what rhythms made sustenance feel accidental rather than earned. Curiosity and flow replaced planning. I trusted that something would present itself, and most days, it did.

In the evenings, I went to the gym. Not for transformation, not for discipline, but for repetition. The ritual mattered. The familiarity of movement gave shape to days that otherwise refused to cohere. I didn’t build anything there; I maintained a perimeter. Enough structure to stay intact. Not enough to feel defined.

I never fully entered İzmir. I hovered at its edge, half inside the place, half observing myself inside it. I didn’t try to belong, and I didn’t hold myself apart. I let the city pass through me the way heat does—felt, undeniable, but not owned.

What I didn’t know then was that this unfinished quality would last. I didn’t know this would become a reference point. Not because it resolved anything, but because it didn’t. İzmir stayed open in me. It didn’t close into a story or a conclusion. It remained a measure.

I don’t remember myself there as exceptional or brave or transformed. I don’t want to. I was ordinary, attentive, slightly off-balance. I missed things. I misunderstood cues. I grew tired. I adapted. I kept moving. There was no version of me worth idealizing—only a person learning how to stay awake without demanding clarity.

That’s what returns now, when I think of it. Not the beauty, not the struggle, not the romance in the obvious sense—but the permission. The memory of existing without needing to arrive anywhere.

İzmir didn’t teach me who I was.

It taught me that I didn’t have to know yet.

And that turned out to be enough.

WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co