Say you move to a big city, which (despite living only an hour away from it your whole life) might as well be as unfamiliar to you as a new planet.

Say you attend college in this city, where you expect to be educated not only in the classroom, but out of it.

Say things don’t go as planned.

Say you have exhausting health issues that lead to constant preoccupation and self-isolation.

Say you spend the whole semester treading cautiously on your tiptoes as you and your doctor debate whether you’ll make it through this semester, whether you’ll return for the next one.

Say your classes are underwhelming and your education incomplete.

Say you miss your family, an hour south but untouchable as you struggle to stay afloat.

How will you keep from drowning when your lifesavers are too far away to grab onto, yet close enough for their proximity to taunt you?

Say the city is large and cold and you are a warm-blooded creature. Say that one night you wake up with the smell of smoke buried deep in your lungs. Say the nearby wildfires spread and swallow up houses and homes one by one. Say you walk outside for hours despite the advisory not to breathe outdoors. Say that the burning is already inside you.

Say you somehow, miraculously, make it through the semester and receive permission to return for the second. Say your sense of strength has been renewed. Say that you are simultaneously whole and broken in a way you have not been for a long time.

Say that a semester is such a long time.

Say your head swirls with second thoughts, upcoming appointments, overpowering doubts. Say you chase them away with firm resolve, with hard-earned calmness.

Say you still don’t feel at home in this city. Say it’s hard to inhabit a metropolis so sure of itself when your only constant is uncertainty. Say that your peers have long carved out their niches here by now. Say that maybe you weren’t made for this place.

Say that you will make this place hospitable to you.

Say you will admire the colors the sun bleeds as it peaks over the skyline. Say you will inhale deeper, listen closer, touch the fabric of the city with all your senses. Say you will notice the same bird chirping each day on your walk to your classes. Say you will seek out coffeeshops tucked away from the beaten path. Say you won’t let fear stop you.

Say, for example, you are me.

Say you are counting down the days until the second semester starts, the hours, the minutes. Say your mind is a flipped hourglass, a space filling with a million tiny grains of worry that collectively fill you to the top.

Say you will not succumb to this quicksand.

Say that if you must, you will conquer this city one second at a time.

I will conquer this city one second at a time.