One Year

Yesterday marked a year since I pointed my beat-up red Dodge Stratus eastward and left Seattle for Boston.

The last time I saw the
Space Needle

Taylor and I shipped out on a Monday morning.  It was overcast, and a haze accompanied us as we drove down Aurora, passing by the Space Needle, the Market, and my terrible nemesis of a Ferris Wheel before getting on the 90.  We wound through rain and mountains.  After a couple of hours, green gave way to desert and sunshine.  It was supposed to be an omen.  It was supposed to signal a similar turning point in my life, a symbolic gesture of leaving behind the cobwebs and clouds of our prior life and bursting into the bright hope of an adult future.  Real life, as it were.

Little did we know that those were the good times.  The salad days.

Boston might have seemed a warmer climate from afar, but up close it's soul felt chilled to the bone.

And yet, after a year of pain and misery, it has thawed.

Yesterday the sun shone.  It glinted off trees, leaves shimmering gold and green, sparkling in the light.  I walked down roads I knew.  Haunted areas that felt, if not like home, at least familiar.  I had my bearings.  I had my place.

My current path

Today that comfort was compounded by a beach trip, something that is interpreted quite differently on the East Coast.  This beach was no Seattle shore, made of small rocks and mud.  Instead, I welcomed warm white sand and blue waters.  Salt-smelling grass and rocky monoliths perfect for scrambling over. It was beautiful.  I talked with people.  I interacted with the world, this once-cold Boston world, and felt at peace.


When the time comes I will not be sad to leave this place.  But now, I can say I will miss it. At least I've got that.