The realization that this city won’t remember your name but you’ll remember the city that helped you craft stories. Helped you hurt, and heal.
Hey, how have you been?
I wish you city questions all the time. Well.
Yes, we’re young and only 21 and we get lost in our troubles sometimes and this city is just a little too big for a love of two separate individuals to just thrive and not get confusing after. I wonder what my mother’s dream was when she was a girl? I wonder what my father initially planned working on before he decided to marry. I wonder how many headlights have passed a little after midnights and how many other writers are writing their hearts out until morning.
But it’s all about city questions.
Opening a car that is his but in your heart you’d say that this car isn’t yours.
The realization that this city won’t remember your name but you’ll remember the city that helped you craft stories. Helped you hurt, and heal.
Have you found any particular spots in the city that feel like sanctuaries for your mental health and relationships?
Have you felt the pressure of societal expectations influencing your views on love and adulting when living in this city that’s currently yours?
Will this city be yours forever? Or will this be just another eight o’clock of driving through another driveway with current friends and soon-to-be married, beautiful strangers that once were a part of an important core memory?
Will this city be your first love forever? Or will this be just another series of heartbreaks you wouldn’t tell your future partner about, leaving the past and hurt all behind because you believe you might heal in another city that seems beautiful. Because although the grass is greener, green is still a colour and it will grow flowers and trees and the shade will be all just the same for different reasons.
Where do you retreat when the city’s noise becomes overwhelming?
Has this city ever made you question your beliefs, pushing against its relentless currents?
Has this city made you write a song already? That one you might’ve posted on Youtube or Twitter (X) or Tumblr or 4Chan for everyone to hear? Maybe in a fandom or two, maybe about your favourite comfort, fictional characters or even a love never confessed?
Have you ever felt crying in the middle of rain? Begging for something unrequited, crying over a new love that’s too hurtful to be continued yet too beautiful to be ended early. Someone you thought would be a forever but now it’s time to let go and you know you should move with the feeling of utter confusion, utter dissonance, and.. this city won’t even remember the heartbreak you’ve felt. It will remain present during your cryings and questions and prayers but it will never answer any of that.
Or have you ever felt the happy and the winning. Have you forgiven your parents and love them thoroughly? Have you completely accepted that this city IS the beautiful sanctuary you’ve always been praying about, but as shadows lurk in the dark and the moon wanes different phases of its beauty that’s not always visible — have you realized that this might be the city of your dreams coming true? You in a comfortable hug, friends getaway every single day, dates everyday, a 9–5 with a healthy environment, everything that goes according to your plan and you just know that you’ve been through too much, so you deserve this city as a gift?
What about the newborns and the bakers at 3 A.M? While you were crying over college scores and admissions and thought the world as ending, will the bakers light up their kitchens and bake a warm doughnut for you?
How does the city teach you how to feel? Has the lights make any difference for you? Has it changed through the years? What will you remember from the city questions?
And, hey, I hope you’re fine and this letter. finds you in a really warm embrace. That you’ve eaten your meal twice a day and drank water and you laugh over your usual jokes and your life goes on just fine. I’m really grateful that this city has taught you how to love. How to be human. How to live, slowly. Make mistakes and repeat and regret but just be human and love. I wish you warmth and sunlight every morning, a tasteful brunch every Sunday and a delightful dinner every single night.
That you will cross the very same streets we used to cross and you will remember that once this street was named after our memories and now it’s truly yours to be loved and remembered. That you will someday learn that you’ve lived by loving yourself and accepting that we have no control over anything, that, we might get the answer to every single city questions once we’ve settled and have a little chat about it. Maybe someday.
So if ever you’ve answered to this ‘how have you been’, I wish you city questions all the time.
By the time you’re maybe 30 or 50, or back to seventeen, this life has yet too much to be lived just to feel one thing.
That’s why, I need not to inquire the city about you. Because I just know, that you’re a beautiful human being. A truly, truly beautiful human being. Alive, and.. beautifully you.
And, I wish you city questions all the time. They might not have an answer, but I always do. And it’s always beautiful when it comes to you.
