Stephanie + Valerie Echeveste Here's the truth: the hardest part about moving is not the physical move, but the psychological one. I moved to DC mostly to be closer to my sister. There were other reasons, many other smaller reasons, but the main one was to take advantage of a time when we're both able to hang out and do our thing, together. I had no idea this would be the most challenging part of the move.

I miss my friends in SF. I miss the food in SF. I miss the way it feels when you look out on Dolores Park and can inhale the bay, even if it is too foggy to see it. But I don't miss the feeling that I'm missing out on getting to know one of the most important people in my life: my sister. We'd talk on the phone, visit each other and spend time together at home home on holidays, but we weren't able to grab a drink together or casually get coffee or work out together or make dinner on a whim. And, the hardest thing to wrap my head around is that now that I am here, we still don't get to do all those things as often as I would like. And when we do, we realize how much we still have to learn about each other, how much we still have to make it work, how much our childhood-selves have bleed into our adult-selves, and how much we've left behind. We're getting better at learning how to fit each other in, as ridiculous as that sounds. How to be ourselves when we are around the person that knows us the best. Accepting that the person we know is constantly changing and yet, still exactly the same. I'm thankful I have the time to learn from my sister, and the comfort of knowing that we won't give up.

Some of my friends aren't even in SF anymore, or weren't around enough to see all that often anyhow. It's the strange thing about growing up, people get busy, you get busy, schedules get complicated and regular hang out time is often lost. Some of the people I've meet in DC are already moving out west to SF. It's a fact of life: people just move, things just change. This is why it's so important to me to have a strong relationship with my sister, and why it's so hard. We are both the best and worst versions of ourselves in the safe space when we hangout with each other. It's a blessing and a curse.

We're so different, and so similar. We get annoyed with each other and laugh with each other and compete in a very non-conscious way with each other. Being the oldest, I never had to deal with things that she had to growing up, but in the past five years I've developed my own issues that I never thought I'd ever have. It's strange and uncomfortable and makes us both crazy, but somehow we are working through it and becoming closer than ever. Even if we still have a long way to go.

And blogging together helps--it helps us carve out time for each other, and helps us learn about ourselves and each other in ways we didn't really ever have a chance to learn. For such a long time we were in completely different places (LA/AZ, SPAIN/PHX, LA/ROME, LA/DC, SF/AZ, SF/DC, etc.) and now here we are, DC/DC until, who knows? Anything can happen, anything can change. We're lucky that right now we have sometime to work it out. We have some room to learn.

What we've been up to this week:

Spending sister time at a MSMR concert at the 9:30 club in DC.
Trying a spiked shake from Satellite and wishing they used almond milk
Trip to Disney World.
Family time visiting Georgetown + the Veteran's Fund Memorial ceremony .
Going to a friend's wedding.
Remembering to send a card to our amazing dad for Father's Day (this is not the card, but a photo of our Dad).
Saying goodbye to new friends, making space for new memories.
Yoga, gym, TJ's, The Coffee Bar...the normal.
Unpacking, laundry, and repacking for next weekend.