Home and Heartbreak: 120 Hours in Cowlitz County

Hopes were high for this week.

I had five days away from work and plans to spend the 4th of July in my hometown, where I've spent nearly every 4th in my 25 years. I've been hard on my hometown in the past. There are drugs, abandoned industries, poverty, the persistently declining graduation rate of my high school ... all cyclical. The truth is, though, having been away for some seven years, I can now say that the 18 years I spent there, nestled in the sort of idyllic middle-class, blue-collar neighborhood where everyone knows everyone in every well-kept Dutch Colonial on every tree-lined block, well, they're the kind of 18 years I plan to give to my future herd of little nerds.

And the 4th of July, well, the 4th of July is when my hometown gets all gussied up. The population swells as all of the Cowlitz Countians flock to Lake Sacajawea in the center of town to wait an hour in line for elephant ears and buy tatty kitsch at the flea market and watch burly loggers run with chainsaws at the lumberjack competition. People stake out their spots on the lake bank early in the morning for the night's fireworks show ... which every other year seems to suffer from some sort of technical malfunction (which we all willingly forget every year). As a kid, you went to the lake to catch up with friends during summer break. You convinced your 6th grade boyfriend to buy you a glow stick and an ice cream cone and let you hold his hand during the fireworks' Grand Finale. In college, it became the event for which everyone gathered back in town from their respective college campuses, to see the people they haven't seen in months, years. Even at 24, the nostalgia far outweighs my angst at the preponderance of "Speak English or Get Out of My Country" bumper stickers.

So in some sort of ironic twist of whatever, on Day One of my annual Go 4th Nostalgia Fest, I managed to get myself dumped by my high school boyfriend. Thud.

As I get ready for my year in the nation's biggest metropolis, I've been grappling with these ideas of home and belonging and such as, like. Do I really want to be on the East Coast? Am I crazy to abandon my Pacific Northwest, which I will argue with anyone is one of the most stunning places on Earth? Am I a big BIG city girl? I like to think the answers to those questions are no, yes, no, but that's another story altogether. Back to my broken heart.

As I was sitting on my parents' couch ruminating over the fact that I was just text dumped by the long-time apple of my eye, I realized that the place no longer felt like home. I wanted nothing more than to be back in Seattle. I wanted my kitchen, I wanted my market, I wanted to walk up to Kerry Park and watch the ferries cross the bay or sit on the patio at Linda's and bullshit with friends, new and old. Yeah I've been hard on Seattle at times too (too corporate, too fratty, not Portland, etc. etc.) but those are only on my bad days.

Seattle is the place where, over the past seven years, I've grown into my own. I like my Seattle life, my Seattle self, immensely. And I'm just coming to realize, as I box up my apartment, that I'm going to miss both, immensely, this year.

My hometown is my hometown, but Seattle, well, Seattle is now home. I'm going to miss her. Talk about heartbreak.