Dearest Edinburgh,
This isn't what I normally write but I was watching Carrie's Letters to Autumn videos on YouTube and I felt myself get sad. Their melancholy tone, their reflective style, their love, sadness, joy and pleasure of Autumn - they reminded me of how I feel about you.
I arrived at the tender age of 18 and I was lost, oh so lost. I was terrified and alone, panicked and anxious and I hated you. For a year, I wanted to be ANYWHERE but with you. I came back aged 19 and hated you less, you'd began to wheedle your way into my soul, you black-hearted bastard. By my 21st birthday, I missed you like an ache.
You kept me warm, you kept me safe and you kept me going. I had my hardest year in you, fair city and you never let me fall. You reminded me of the beauty of the world and you made me smile even in the darkest tunnels. I saw the blues and greens and greys of the Scottish countryside and fell so head over heels, I can't for the life of me work out why I so desperately wanted to run. I found cubbyholes in which to hide, to feel safe, to work hard, to relax and to love.
Very few know that I ran to Arthur's Seat on my darkest day, sat with my iPod on a rock and sobbed. You never told. Thank you.
I see you now as my home, a home I didn't believe existed in this fair and less than pleasant land.
But then I picked up and I packed up and I walked away. I sit here in the less salubrious location of my second life and I miss you. I ache with a need to be back, walking from my flat to the centre crunching through leaves or sloshing through puddles - either would be preferable to this. I cannot work out for the life of me how we got here but we did. At 18, you were everything I didn't want to be, everywhere I didn't want to go. At 22, you're a siren song calling to me and I'm trapped far away.
One day, I won't feel like this. I've already forgotten how cold you could be, how my toes were never warm, my lips always chapped. How dark it could be and how depressing that felt - how oppressive, how punishing. I'm looking at you with rose-tinted glasses and I know that.
I'm aware of the fact that I can't go backwards - stop and die. That's what life is. Forever rotating, forever rushing towards the end and backwards just ain't an option. But right now, in bleak Manchester, thinking of your beauty and your majestic quality; not the bad, but only the good - I'd give my left arm for one more afternoon, wrapped up in scarves, drinking hot chocolate in New College with my flatmates.
You were good to me, my tartan-decorated, whiskey-suppin' city.
