I am entering into a new phase of life.

Phases overlap, which nobody mentions. For a while you are both people at once.

The old ID badge stays in the drawer for two years. You still calculate in the currency of the previous country. Somebody asks what you do and you give the last answer for a beat before correcting it. None of that means the change failed to take.

Entering is slower and messier than arriving, and it is the part left out of the account afterwards. When people say a year changed everything, they have compressed about eighteen months of feeling like an impostor into a tidy summary.