To be first-generation — the first in a family to attend university, to enter a profession, to cross a particular threshold — is to move between worlds without a map and often without company. The achievement is real; so is the cost, which includes the peculiar loneliness of outgrowing the context that formed you while not yet fully belonging to the new one. First-generation identity carries the weight of what was sacrificed for the opportunity and the guilt of the gap that opportunity creates.
Each step builds on the last.