Some stories are about place. Others are about time. But every so often, I come across stories that feel like they’re trying to catch something slippery inside a person—a moment of becoming that might also be a moment of unraveling. This week, my walk through Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood kept circling back to the same pulse: the uneasy work of figuring out who you are while the ground under you keeps shifting.

In A Story About Identical Twins, the narrator recalls her intense, almost confessional friendship with two boys, twins who drifted in and out of rehab, out of reach, out of the familiar. The narrator admits to liking one twin, Guy, “a little too much,” a phrase that lives in the in-between: not a declaration, not a denial, but something harder to name. Their last real encounter, in Washington Square Park, is drenched in alcohol, confusion, and a deep ache for connection. Years later, she sees him again, briefly, and he’s still moving—this time to Alaska. It made me think: what if part of knowing yourself is learning that you may never really get to know someone else? Or worse, that you only understand how much someone meant after the moment to tell them has passed?

That theme echoed, differently, in A Comic’s First Open Mic in NYC, a story with a completely different tone but the same internal tremble. The author, Clara Morris, arrives in New York armed with a title—“Class Clown”—and the dream that maybe, just maybe, that means something. She rehearses relentlessly, jokes in hand, but the real punchline is quieter: this isn’t a triumphant debut, it’s a nervous first step. The open mic is unglamorous, the audience indifferent, and the moment—though brave—feels like it disappears into the noise. And yet, there’s something profound in her showing up anyway. She didn’t “make it,” but she crossed a threshold. It reminded me how often self-discovery feels anticlimactic in real time—how courage and discomfort can exist in the same breath.

Then came Rules of Genius, and the mood shifted again. Frank Ventrola, a young artist looking to escape Philadelphia, dives headfirst into the avant-garde theater world of 1960s New York. At first, it reads like artistic fantasy: nude performances, eccentric directors, fleeting fame. But underneath the electric surface is something lonelier. Frank wants to belong. He wants to be seen. And in Tom, the director who both mentors and uses him, he mistakes attention for care. By the end, disillusionment sets in. Frank realizes that in chasing art and identity, he might have been running from himself—and that the genius he envied came with its own kind of selfishness. It’s a sobering ending, not because he fails, but because he sees too clearly what success might cost.

Taken together, these stories feel like fragments of a larger portrait: not of New York, but of the people who come here hoping to find out who they are. There’s no clean breakthrough, no grand reveal—just moments of missed connection, small bravery, and realization. And maybe that’s the point. Identity, it turns out, isn’t something you arrive at. It’s something you brush up against.

So this week’s walk left me wondering: What if growing up is less about becoming someone and more about learning to sit with the discomfort of not knowing who you are? What if the real work is showing up?

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Zoe Kalaw is a Boston native and a student at the University of Chicago. As an intern at Mr. Beller’ Neighborhood, she has been exploring and writing about stories from our archives to mark our 25th anniversary of our publication.