Visiting home earlier this month was hard. Ever since I moved away, I have been feeling a slow severance from the place that raised me. If the last decade has been a slow stretching away, this last visit was the snap when the rope gave way. I have read about this shift. For some people, it is immediate. For others, it drags on and on. I call Montana "home" now as a sort of respect for the elder that raised me, but it hasn't truly been home for a long time now. Twelve years. Twelve years as of this week that I have been away, uprooted...re-rooted. Transplanted. 

And I love my city. I don't think of myself as a city person. But I am also not a country person. I'm a "grow where you are planted" person. I had plans to leave Portland after graduation...but then I didn't. I stayed and stayed and 4 years of college suddenly turned into 12 years with no plans to leave. Portland is a city of contradictions. Maybe every city is. I don't know. But my contradictions agree with Portland's contradictions and this is the city, the place, the home where I feel most myself. Portland made room for me at several critical points in my life when I wasn't sure where I belonged or who I wanted to be. It is a city of contradictions, conflict, and maybe even chaos. But it is mine and I am Portland's.