in which i write a dear john letter to an entire city.

dear boston,
we need to talk. we've been trying this long distance thing for awhile now, but i feel like we've come to a crossroads. i hope we can be adults about this.

i'm coming back to you in two short weeks, boston. and every time i'm with you, my heart feels like it will fall out of my chest with the love i have for you. i love your cobblestones. i love your accent. i love your harsh climate. i love your politicians. i love your neighborhoods. i even love your traffic, and your homicidal drivers. but we need to not get wrapped up in those fuzzy reunion feelings when we see each other again, boston. we chose to be apart. and the temptation would be too great if we were to start talking about the past. we'd laugh about the time i was waiting for the T after drinking too much, and when it pulled up and the doors opened, i stuck only my head in, vomited, and pulled my head back out as the train doors closed. we'd laugh so hard remembering how we watched my puke be carried away from the porter stop in a train car full of furious passengers.

you were my first love, boston. i was so young (too young) and impressionable when i moved to your glowing metropolis. i was enchanted by your lack of ethnic diversity, your wasp-y, unsmiling commuters, and your public transit system that closed at 12:45am.

i loved the mornings we would spend together, boston. i'd get up early to avoid the flock of skinny, over-accesorized cambridge students on the red line, and i'd get off at park street before it was overcrowded with tourists and homeless people. i'd walk up to the korean grocer's stand that looked down the gorgeous opening of charles street, and buy my favorite pumpkin cinnamon coffee. then i'd walk through the public gardens as all the wealthy comm ave-ers were taking their bulldogs for their morning walk&pee. i'd watch the cloud of my breath as i exhaled a sigh of total happiness. then i'd get back on the train, head into dorchester, and listen to a right wing nutjob for close to eight hours a day. so, ok, they weren't always perfect days.

but boston, even your nutjobs are endearing. they may play to an audience of toothless truck drivers that begin to spell america with a "u-h", but they themselves are good men. they make you develop your ideals past the college stereotype, and order booze with lunch, and tell you these engaging stories that leave you feeling like you've never laughed that hard in your life. and that's not all, boston. almost every one of your residents i've come to know, love, hate, love to hate, or tolerate (5 points for that little accidental rhyme) has shaped me as a human in some way. and i'm so thankful for that, boston.

so that's why this is so hard for me, boston. you know i love you. but, if you'll let me be honest with you, there's someone else. it's...chicago.

i know i said when i moved here i would never love any place as much as i loved you, boston. and that's still true. you'll always be my city. the place i want to raise my kids (mostly so they can have that obnoxious accent). the place i want to buy a modest but unnecessarily expensive house. the place with the sports teams i will always cheer for. but chicago has just been here for me lately. we've grown a lot closer than i thought we could. and i think we're going to take it to the next level, boston.

chicago isn't better, it's just different. the mix of people in one square mile is more than your entire state. the number of neighborhoods in chicago's city limits is literally triple yours. the train runs all night long. and my job. boston, if you could know the ins and outs of my new job in chicago, and how happy it makes me to wake up to go to work with a purpose, you'd understand, boston. the people i've gotten to know here are life-changing, boston. they're magic. chicago is just what i need right now.

i'm so excited to see you soon, boston. i hope you'll like the person i've become since we've last seen each other. i hope you'll understand i need to be with chicago for a little while to grow and live and make something of myself. i hope you know that a day doesn't go by when i don't think about you, boston; the life i had with you, the people we knew, the seafood we ate.

i'll come home to you one day, boston. but for now, i hope you'll let me be happy with chicago. you know i only want you to be happy too.

yours, always
penny lane