Each time I return it feels like I've stepped back in time.
I'm 18, 19, 20. My weekends are spent with friends, exploring the streets at night, creating memories too hazy to remember fully the next morning, spending the daylight hours recovering and laughing. I was young here, wild here, learning and growing and understanding myself here. This was home. Adulthood. Identity.
Each street contains a memory. Each neighborhood a gem, a moment, a time. Even a commute is special. We once had dinner there. Met there. Spent the day there. Fell in love there. Broke there. Pictures. Moments. Anniversaries. Growth. This city watched me mature from a child into a woman.
I feel like we still know one another, Seattle and I, but we're growing estranged. I'm trying so desperately to hold each moment close, yet I feel myself struggling to hold on. New memories cloud over the old, and no matter how strong my love, my desire to be here, I know I no longer belong. I'm a stranger in those memories, in those moments, and although my new memories and moments sparkle they never seem to push away the old.
At times I wish the longing would cease, the way one knows after heartache that with time the pain will pass, and yet, who am I without this place, those memories? The twinge of longing is my connection to this place, my anchor to the past, to be strangers would hurt more than to miss one another when we're apart.
So I breathe deep. Invite the memories to come close. Remember. Remember. Remember.






