I Didn’t "Make It" in New York — But Maybe That’s the Point
I didn’t make it in New York.
At least not the way they sell it to you in movies. Not the way my 25-year-old self imagined when I left my small-town life in Brazil behind, hungry for possibility.
New York was supposed to be the place where I arrived. The city where success has rooftop views and your worth is measured in exhaustion. Where hustle turns into achievement, and achievement turns into belonging.
But that version never landed for me.
Instead, the city stripped me down. It showed me how much you have to lose in yourself to “make it” here. And maybe that’s the real initiation nobody talks about.
You get so close to the illusion. The nice hotels. The rooftop bars. The creative jobs that stretch you thin. The corporate jobs that drain the life from your voice. You meet the rich. You touch the edges of proximity to power. But you never quite arrive—not unless you're willing to trade essential parts of yourself for the privilege.
I’ve seen people make that trade.
They burn their nervous systems to ash.
They bleach their edges.
They perform wellness for an audience, because even healing is a product here.
I’ve tried many sides of the hustle.
The restaurant jobs.
The creative gigs with long, thankless hours.
The corporate spaces where you have to dilute your language and shrink your instincts to fit in.
Even when I finally cracked into the content creation world—the thing I thought was freedom—I found myself selling products nobody needs. That’s the game: stay relevant, stay visible, keep selling.
To survive here, you override your biology. You override your softness. You override the part of you that knows when to stop.
I did that. Until I couldn’t anymore.
The burnout wasn’t weakness. It was my body calling bullshit on a story that was never mine.
And there’s something nobody tells you when you dream about arriving in New York:
You can’t build anything sustainable on a foundation made of chronic depletion.
You can’t outrun your nervous system with ambition. Believe me, I tried.
I saw the cracks.
The indulgence.
The filth dressed up as glitter.
New York will break you down, but sometimes breaking is what roots you back into yourself.
That’s what happened to me.
I’m still here. But I’m already planning my exit.
Leaving feels complicated. It’s grief and relief braided together.
There’s grief—for the version of me that thought I could bend to this city’s rhythm without fracturing.
There’s comparison—watching other people “arrive” while wondering who I could’ve been if my nervous system wasn’t fried.
And there’s quiet rebellion—not bending to extractive capitalism anymore.
I rarely meet grounded people in this city.
You’ve got the hustlers sprinting toward an imaginary finish line.
The activists burning themselves out for global causes while not knowing a single one of their neighbors.
The ones numbing with more—more stuff, more distractions, more $8 lattes they call “self-care” (with a mountain of debt).
But people who feel solid? Who live with their full nervous system online? Who know how to be present without performing peace?
Hard to find. Maybe they’re underground. Maybe they’ve already left.
One thing I know for sure? I wasn’t born to eat anyone’s shit and tell them it tastes great.
Not here. Not anywhere.
So, I’m rewriting “making it.”
It’s not about high-rise apartments or proximity to power.
It’s about building my life on terms that don’t require self-erasure.
Letting my nervous system exhale.
Creating space for a vision that doesn’t demand I burn out to belong.
If you’re reading this stuck somewhere between comparison and collapse, let me say:
Stepping away isn’t weakness.
Protecting your energy isn’t failure.
Craving softness doesn’t mean you’re broken.
You can leave, and still belong to yourself.
In clarity & alignment,
Camila.