Well, my Instagram name.

But for some reason, that little change triggered so many unwanted feelings about identity, who you are, who you were, and who you’re becoming.

I’m not exactly sure what’s happening right now. I don’t know if I’m intentionally stepping into a new space of being or if life is forcing me into one.

But something is changing.

Today, I decided it was time to change my Instagram name from Owner of MESS because, again...

I’m going through a divorce.

This time with my business identity.

And I think I’m finally ready to let go.

So I spent half my damn day contemplating what I would change my name to.

I would have LOVED to just be KALILAH.

One name.

Like Prince.

Or Cher.

Or X.

But nooooo.

Apparently, there is another Kalilah out there—with my spelling—who got to Instagram before me.

Rude.

So down the rabbit hole of names I went.

And eventually I landed on:

HeyKalilah.

I don’t hate it.

I don’t love it.

But it’s mine.

I was against using Kalilah Wright because I don’t want this man’s name attached to anything else that it isn’t already attached to.

So...

HeyKalilah it is.

But sitting there trying to decide what to call myself brought me back to another day when I had to change my name.

I was sitting in the Social Security office.

Crying.

Like actually crying.

I think I may have even been hyperventilating.

Because for 31 years, I was Kalilah Cummings.

And I loved my name.

I loved being Kalilah Cummings.

It was all I had ever known.

And then tradition told me that because I was getting married, I needed to change it.

This was part of my “new” life.

New husband.

New marriage.

New name.

And I hated it.

I hated that I was expected to conform to this tradition that said becoming someone’s wife meant changing something that had belonged to me my entire life.

But after crying, hyperventilating, and eventually accepting the change...

I did it.

I became Kalilah Wright.

The funny thing is, I didn’t know who Kalilah Wright was.

How could I?

She didn’t exist yet.

Little did I know...

She was becoming.

Kalilah Wright started Mess in a Bottle.

Kalilah Wright became a business owner.

Kalilah Wright bought a house.

Kalilah Wright graduated with a master’s in architecture.

Kalilah Wright became a mother.

Kalilah Wright built things that Kalilah Cummings couldn’t have imagined yet.

And now, all these years later, I find myself sitting here thinking about names again.

About identity again.

About letting go again.

Except this time, nobody is telling me what my new name has to be.

Today, I realized I’m ready to adapt to a new one.

I changed my Instagram name to HeyKalilah.

I updated my bio.

And somewhere between changing a username and staring at my profile trying to decide if I liked it, I realized...

I’m ready for my next chapter.

I don’t know if holding onto MESS has been holding me back.

Maybe.

I’ve been hell-bent on keeping MESS attached to everything.

MESS this.

MESS that.

MESS MESS MESS.

And when people would tell me, “Everything doesn’t have to be about MESS,” I would get super defensive.

Because what do you mean?

MESS is me.

I built this.

This is what people know me for.

This is my identity.

Except...

maybe it isn’t anymore.

Or maybe it’s still part of my identity without having to be my entire identity.

That’s different.

And somehow, here I am.

In a new chapter.

Walking a new path.

Going in a different direction.

With a new name.

Not Cummings.

Not Wright.

Not Owner of MESS.

Just...

Hey, Kalilah.

Maybe that’s what this chapter is actually about. Getting reacquainted with the woman underneath all the names I’ve collected along the way.

And this time, I want the name change to mean something.

I want to choose it. Commit to it. Grow into it. I don’t want my next identity to be defined by the resentment of a divorce or the grief of who I used to be.

I want this one to feel permanent because I chose her.

So now all I need to do is get the ring.

I think in my 20s, I thought MESS was cute. Not just the word, but the lifestyle. Like being all over the place. I would go wherever the wind blew me.

I know from the outside it doesn’t look like this because, like many people, I am very poised and pulled together.

But baby, I am a MESS.

So much so that I turned that shit into a whole business, and people bought it. Or should I say, they bought into it, and it perpetuated my MESS even further.

I mean, you’re here because of my MESS... right?

But secretly, I feel like I should whisper this as I say it to you, I’ve been wanting LESS MESS.

I remember one of my closest girlfriends asking me, “You love MESS, right?”

She wasn’t referring to my business. She was referring to me living life on the edge, being YOLO, not caring about the now or the consequences of my todays.

I had to let that sink in.

I quickly got defensive and had to remind her of the changes I’ve made over the years. That is when I realized, somewhere along the line, I didn’t want to be a MESS anymore.

But MESS had become so embedded in my DNA. It’s something I’ve built a business around for the last 10 years.

I remember the day I stopped wanting to be a MESS.

I was in Washington, D.C. I was lost, I needed gas, and I was already late because earlier that morning I had misplaced my keys. I was flustered.

Again... a MESS.

And in that moment I thought, What if I was better?

What if I planned my mornings? Got my clothes out the night before? Made sure my tank was full? Prepared for my day?

Maybe I wouldn’t feel so flustered and chaotic.

I had an AHA moment (in my Oprah voice), and my subconscious said to me, “You’ve gotten this far in your MESSy state. What if you lessened your MESS? Could you imagine how much better you would be?”

It was like I had been running away from structure. I thrive in the chaos, and it was all I knew.

I grew up in a home that wasn’t chaotic in the sense of being MESSy or dirty, but it was mentally taxing. I left home at 16 and went off to college, so my foundation of organization and structure was minimal.

I also grew up in a very militant environment where yelling was how things got done. Maybe, if I unpacked all of this with a therapist, they’d say that’s what caused me to become such a MESS later in life. Maybe it was my rebellious response to everything I endured growing up.

Maybe. Shoulders shrug.

MESS started to get to me over the years.

If things are too MESSy now, I have to clean them up.

I remember making a literal MESS in my college dorm room... just to clean it up.

What was that?

Was it me proving to myself that I could still be great, even in my MESS?

But once you start adding kids, a partner, financial responsibilities, and career goals, you don’t have the option of staying a MESS.

You have to clean it up whether you like it or not.

So these days, I’m on a journey to cleanse and repair.

But as I’m typing this, I am remembering that I have freshly washed laundry all over my unmade bed.

My daughter spilled rubber bands all over the floor.

And my room looks like someone threw up clothes and shoes everywhere.

I probably need a solid two or three hours just to get everything back in order.

I’ve always envied the people who seem so put together in their homes.

They’re the ones whose beds are always made. They’re the ones who don’t apologize when guests unexpectedly stop by because they don’t have to shove everything into a closet before opening the door.

I envy the people who are 15 minutes early to meetings. The people who aren’t flustered because they planned their day instead of reacting to it.

So here I am, trying to clean things up.

And I think the first step is saying some of this out loud.

I’m not striving for perfection.

I’m just striving to be as great as I know I can be.

And I think the first part of that is admitting… I am tired of being a MESS.

No matter how much I tell myself, I’m not bothered. I’m over it. It is what it is.

My subconscious has a way of reminding me:

“Girl… yes you’re BOTHERED!”

This morning I woke up remembering a dream.

It wasn’t scary.

It wasn’t traumatic.

It was just… crowded.

Crowded with faces.

Faces of people I once knew.

People I laughed with.

People I loved.

People I somehow lost.

One face, though, stood out.

A girl I was really close to in high school.

One day, she just stopped talking to me.

To this day, she never really told me why.

The only explanation I’ve ever been able to come up with is this:

After she and her boyfriend broke up, he and I stayed friends.

Maybe I broke girl code.

Maybe she knew things I didn’t.

Maybe she assumed things that weren’t true.

Or maybe that wasn’t it at all.

I’ll never know.

Twenty-five years later, he and I are still friends.

Just friends.

Life has happened.

He’s been married. Maybe divorced by now.

I’ve built a life of my own.

We’ve both moved on.

But somehow…

She never left my subconscious.

Last night, she was there.

Not alone.

She showed up with a handful of other people who, for one reason or another, decided somewhere along the way…

“I don’t fuck with you.” - in my Big Sean voice

The funny thing is, that list isn’t very long.

I’ve always been a pretty likable person.

Or at least I thought I was.

And maybe that’s why those few people stayed with me.

Not because I wanted them back.

But because I never understood why they left.

It took me years to accept that not everyone is going to like me.

Even typing that still feels strange.

Who doesn’t want to be liked?

In the dream, I was back in Brooklyn.

Maybe that’s because I’ve been writing about it lately.

I was in one of those old apartment buildings with the heavy metal doors and the little peephole.

The kind where you know exactly what the slam of the front door sounds like.

Eventually we ended up outside on the block.

Then a crowd walked past.

Some faces I hadn’t thought about in years.

Some people I’d simply drifted away from.

No love lost.

Just… life.

Then I saw her.

She looked at me with the kind of stare that says everything words don’t.

The look was clear.

“I still don’t fuck with you.”

(In my best Cardi B voice.)

She kept walking.

That was it.

No argument.

No conversation.

No reconciliation.

Just a reminder.

And somehow that hurt more.

I’ve realized something.

The people who leave us without closure don’t always leave us completely.

Sometimes they linger.

Not in our daily lives.

Not in our phone contacts.

Not even in our conscious thoughts.

They linger somewhere deeper.

Quiet enough that we forget they’re there…

Until a dream reminds us.

I’m not someone who spends a lot of time trying to interpret dreams.

Maybe this one meant something.

Maybe it meant nothing at all.

Maybe my brain was just cleaning out old files.

But when I woke up, I couldn’t stop thinking about how many people we continue carrying long after we’ve convinced ourselves we’ve let go of them.

Not because we want them back.

Not because we’re angry.

Not even because we’re sad.

But because some endings never actually end.

They just… stop.

And maybe that’s what haunts us.

Not the people.

The lack of an ending.

I hope she’s happy.

I hope life has been kind to her.

And I hope that, one day, whatever part of me is still carrying the weight of an unanswered goodbye finally decides to let it go.

Because some faces deserve to become memories.

Not ghosts.

We leave because we get pushed out.

Or because our roots have withered away. Because there wasn’t a rent-stabilized apartment waiting for us. No brownstone passed down through generations. No family property to anchor us to a city that’s become increasingly expensive to simply exist in.

I’m one of those people.

I was raised in Brooklyn from the age of four. At sixteen, I left for college with every intention of coming back.

There was never another ending to the story.

I imagined a life that looked a little like Carrie Bradshaw’s, except make it Caribbean and Black. I’d have the shoes, the fly fits, and a t-square to draw architectural plans for a new building instead of cigarettes and cosmos. Like Carrie, I imagined writing about my wild New York City nights through the lens of a Brooklyn girl who enjoyed the blocks of Bed Stuy before it became a gentrified and now its referred to only as Bedford.

Coming back wasn’t a possibility.

It was the plan.

Then life happened.

I planted my heels in Baltimore, Maryland.

And somewhere between building businesses, raising kids, buying a home, traveling the world, and becoming an adult, Baltimore gave me something I never expected:

Perspective.

Now before y’all revoke my New York card, let the record show...

There ain’t NO PLACE like New York.

I will always be a Brooklyn girl.

Always.

But I can also say this with my whole chest, like a strong shot of ginger tea that will burn your chest as it goes down…

I don’t desire to live there anymore.

I realized that this weekend.

I was in New York getting my makeup done, and somehow I ended up seeing two completely different versions of the city.

The first apartment was in one of those shiny new luxury buildings that seem to be popping up on every corner now. You know the ones. Clean lines. Hotel lobby vibes. White walls. Minimalist everything. The kind of building that’s either wildly overpriced or requires winning a housing lottery just to get in.

It was beautiful.

Then I went to my makeup appointment.

She lived in what I’d call a real New York apartment.

The kind I grew up in.

Long, narrow hallways.

Huge bedrooms that landlords are now trying to charge a million dollars for.

Heavy cast-iron entrance doors.

Stairwells that always looked just a little spooky, you know the one’s you saw in New Jack City.

Elevators that could use a serious scrubbing.

Old gum stuck to the incinerator door.

The smell that somehow every old New York apartment building shares.

This...

This is the New York I know.

As I dragged my suitcase toward the third floor, I silently thanked God the elevator actually worked.

While she was doing my makeup, she casually asked,

“So... would you ever move back to New York?”

Without thinking, I said,

“No.”

Not maybe.

Not someday.

Not if...

Just...

No.

That answer surprised me.

Not because it wasn’t true.

But because I realized I’d never actually said it out loud.

I’ve been fortunate enough to live in Cape Town, Joburg, and Rome. I’ve traveled to more cities than I can count. Every place has taught me something different about what a good life can look like.

And after experiencing all of that, the thought of moving back into the rhythm of New York just isn’t something I can imagine anymore.

Especially with my kids.

I appreciate the character of the city.

I admire its energy.

But I don’t love it enough to make it my home as an adult.

I know somebody’s already rolling their eyes.

“Girl... but you live in Baltimore. BFFR”

I know, I KNOW.

But guess what, I love it here.

I love my quality of life.

I love that I can get from one side of the city to the other without mentally preparing for a two-hour commute.

I love that, even though Baltimore City taxes got me rethinking things...

I was able to buy a F-ing house.

Actually...

Two.

That’s a flex that would’ve looked very different if I’d stayed in New York.

Could I have done it?

Maybe.

But the sacrifices would’ve been different.

And I’m not sure they would’ve been worth it.

What’s funny is that so many New Yorkers I know have made the same decision.

Florida.

Atlanta.

New Jersey.

The DMV.

We’re everywhere.

Because sometimes loving New York and living in New York are two completely different things.

Do I ever wonder if I’d feel differently if money wasn’t a factor?

Absolutely.

If I had unlimited money, would I move back?

I’ve asked myself that question more than once.

And honestly...

I still think the answer is no.

Now before y’all think I’m talking reckless...

Let me be very clear.

There is nothing...

And I mean nothing...

Like a Brooklyn summer night.

The drama at the local corner store.

Somebody yelling “SHUT THE HELL UP!” out their apartment window.

The smell of jerk chicken permeating through your nostrils on Flatbush or Utica Ave.

Kids flying past on scooters.

Music blasting out of somebody’s Honda Civic.

People sitting on stoops.

The slam of the gate as someone entered and exited their Brownstone.

The city buzzing long after the sun goes down.

New York is unmatched.

There is no comparison.

It will always feel like home.

But maybe home doesn’t always have to be where you live.

Sometimes home becomes the place that raised you.

The place that shaped you.

The place you return to when you need to remember who you are.

And that’s enough.

These days, I love that I can hop on a train, spend a weekend soaking up everything that makes New York magical, and three hours later...

I’m back home.

Back to my peace.

Back to the life I intentionally built.

Just a stone’s throw away from the city where my heart still skips a beat every time the skyline comes into view.

I’m never moving back to New York.

And that’s okay.

Because loving it from afar makes me appreciate it, that much more.