dear seattle,

...you rattled my bones this week. After enabling a criminal (who stole a car and proceeded to crash it in to a parked vehicle in the sleepiest of neighborhoods in this city) to flee from the crime scene by helping his mangled, bleeding body from the overturned car to only be woken up the very next day to the reverberating sound of a high speed getaway that ended as the truck ducked down the alley + slammed in to the my apartment building just below my window {they were running from the cops who were trying to pull them over for littering, of all things}, you have left me shaken + scared.

Of living alone in Belltown. Walking through the basement of the hospital to my car. Showering with the curtain closed. Sleeping without lights on. Life, in general. Every noise makes my heart jump in to my throat. And the sounds of sirens + hums of traffic that usually lull me to sleep at night, wake me up every twenty minutes, as I sit up trembling... wondering what medical emergency will traumatize the pathological optimism out of me next. I'm a little bit frightened...

... but not just of living in this city... but ironically, leaving it, too. It has been my home for the last fifteen months and I have fallen so madly in love with every niche of this beautiful city. I have never felt more in my element, with every day a wild adventure surrounded by the incredible views that the Pacific Northwest boasts about... + the even more incredible people that inhabit this Seatown. I have a network of friends who make happy hours extra happy. I have a job that I genuinely enjoy getting up before sunrise to go to for twelve hours at a time, sometimes for five days in a row. I have a masters program that challenges me in ways that makes my brain hurt but is beyond adequately preparing me for the next, big chapter.

I have five weeks left before I kiss my farmer's markets + beach bonfires + dayhikes to waterfalls + hazelnut lattes {they are the best these lips have ever known} good-bye. And while I feel a constant, overwhelming anxiety as some proverbial clock hangs over me counting down the days until I will be gone, I must shake off the crazy antics of this past week + go on relishing in all the good this city emulates, on a daily basis... because my days here are numbered. 41 to be exact. 

My dear Seattle, you are the best thing that ever happened to this girl. A girl who was lost when she arrived at your city limits.... but has found so much of herself here. She has found that nature {particularly mountains + water side-by-side} is her religion. She has found the meaning of life wrapped up in organic living, education + perfectly mixed cocktails. She has discovered her dreams within your coffee houses + the paths that will take her to them through cerebral conversations with the quality people that are "Seattlites".

You, my sweet Seattle, are loved beyond sun beams.

sincerely,

the girl whose heart you stole + is really, really going to miss you... so. very. much.