Moving is love
Each city is like a relationship, some failed, some forever
I’ve known that moving could be heartbreaking from at least age 8 — when my family moved from Oregon to Colorado, in what will always feel like fleeing. I’ll never forget watching my parents and their friends finish packing the moving truck, watching from the window with my face smooshed against the glass. I’ll never forget saying goodbye to my best friend, who I’d known since forever. And the shoebox where I still have letters from her.
I’ve moved a lot in my few years, never thinking too much about the city, just the people left behind. But today,three days before leaving for Oakland, I realized that I missed the cities themselves; each one was a past relationship.
Some locations are repeat offenders, the on-again, off-again types. Some cities draw you in, hold you tight. Make you love just a little deeper. Others fade away like one-night stands. Sometimes the break-ups are messy. Other times, totally mutual. Each place teaches you something, makes you better for it, one way or another.
Seoul
Seoul is an abusive relationship. You love it intensely. Lust for more time to just be in it. Bleed for it. Hate how it makes you feel. Hate how people there make you feel. It beats you down and you think Gamsahamnida ajjuma, may I have another?
We lived there twice in two non-consecutive years, teaching English. Loving the students, hating the hagwon bureaucracy. Living there was indentured freedom:free from everything back home, but trapped in an exhausting, demoralizing job that provided your visa and apartment.
In the midst of moving to Oakland, I’ve become oddly sentimental for Seoul. I long for it in a way that only rosy retrospection can create; I know that there’s no wisdom in returning, no point in going back. But I miss it all the same.
Chicago
After returning from Seoul the second time, we thought, ever-so-briefly about moving back to Chicago.
Chicago was my first. My first real apartment. My first real job. My first real love. But it was bitterly cold. And for much of it, bitterly lonely.
There’s too much baggage there. Too much drama.It’s just not worth the heartache anymore.
Chicago is beautiful and oh-so cold. The Windy City was always a one-way street. The city that never loved me back.
London
London will always mean the world to me. I studied abroad there when I was 22, and experienced every marvelous thing I could afford/put on my credit card.
Put simply, it was the entire world in one city. Everything I ever wanted or could want was there, if I just knew how to find it. Or if I just had the money.
I know it was an escape. An adventure filled with travel and friends and no responsibility. A dream. Some may dream of getting rich and making it big. I dream of getting rich and moving to London. London’s not the one that got away so much as the one that’s way out of your league.
Oakland
And now we’re moving on. Leaving again. Leaving for bigger and brighter things, and bigger spaces and brighter places.
Denver, you screwed us over. Gave us a hell of a time. Forced us to leave. You did this. That’s why we can’t go back and oh my is that a new coffee shop on Broadway? How come I’ve never seen this awesome neighborhood before? Aww, I wish I lived there—
Denver gets you if you’re not careful. Pulls you back in like that ex that’s just no good for you. You know, that really fit ex who loved mountain biking too much.
But Oakland is our future.Our chance to begin all over, yet again. Oakland is the new relationship after the bad break-up and sloppy rebound. The one that’s just starting but you have a feeling that maybe, just maybe it could be The One.
