A Love Letter to My City and the People I Never Left

It was in one of the last months of summer, before the season succumbs to September heat and the wildness in the air is long gone. My city became congested with humid crowds and sweaty traveling bodies, the smell of garbage and construction dust I’d grown to love. I saw my best friend for the first time since graduation and she crawled into bed with me in my air conditioned room and we giggled as we shared stories. I was much tanner from when she last saw me and her cheeks had hatched freckles. Yet, I couldn’t help feeling like things were ending, like every moment we sat together was another moment pulling away from me, shrinking to a tiny pinhole of a simple memory that I’d soon forget. I was starting to think about having to pack up my childhood bedroom and what books and photos I’d feel the inexplicable need to take and the others that would get left behind. I was starting to think about condensing my whole life in my hometown into a few small boxes for an entirely new existence somewhere else. But I was also starting to think about this new existence, this new city, this new thing that I thought and was sure I wanted for so, so long.

The next day I sat in the park with my boyfriend and maybe I was acting different or maybe he could simply read my mind, but he turned to me and he asked,

“Are you sure you want to leave home?” and I suddenly started to cry. I wasn’t only crying because I’d be leaving him but I was crying because I’d be leaving all those moments, every last one of them, the ones that could have only existed in the place I called home. I’d be leaving the place I had my first kiss, the stores my friends and I loitered in, the places I first began to write, the entire world I knew in just one city. And suddenly it wasn’t about being simply scared or nervous of moving away for school, it was that I realized I couldn’t possibly do that just yet. The truth is you don’t know how much you love a place until you are about to leave it.

So a month before I was set to move into my dorm and start classes in another state, I transferred to a school in my own city. Not only that, but soon after, I realized it was the best decision I’d ever make. It’s weird knowing that this whole other path of life was so close to being created and that there are some people I may never meet or experiences I’ll never see, but it’s so much more okay now feeling that incredible aching love for a place you might have left. My home is my favorite thing. And I almost wasn’t here.

So, to my Philadelphia:
Always remember that I loved you too much to leave. I loved my mom and dad and friends too much. I loved this dirty beautiful magic kind of city too much to leave. My love story here is not over yet. Always remember that I loved you too much to leave and I will never regret it.

–By Veronica D., 18, Philadelphia, PA