before we start packing the truck...

A Farewell to Arms

I’m leaving Baltimore this weekend. I don’t mean that I’m going to the mall or spending the weekend in Philly. I mean that I’m leaving leaving. And because I spend so much time defending Baltimore—it has so much potential, and I’ve met so many wonderful people and had so many opportunities here—I can’t help but feel like I’m running out on it.

Every time I tell someone that I’m moving they say one of two things to me, if not both: “Congratulations!” or “You’re so lucky to be getting out.” Every time I’m met with these reactions I find myself responding, “But you know, I really like Baltimore.” I keep defending my city to her residents, assuring them—just as John Waters and Mayor O’Malley and all those contractors building multi-million-dollar condos do—that Baltimore is a great place to live. And I truly believe it. Baltimore hasn’t been taken over by the Us magazine trust fund set. It’s easy to find a scene you like, easy to get into the best clubs. It’s easy to know the right people, to make connections, to make friends. That’s something that Baltimore, even if it is a down-at-the-heels, blue-collar city, has going for it. It’s not New York or L.A., and that’s why I like it. Baltimore’s real.

On the other hand, Baltimore’s real. Real as in a murder a day, as in I don’t feel safe walking around my own neighborhood after 11. For all the reasons I like Baltimore, for all my friends and my neighborhood and the pride I feel knowing that Baltimore’s making a comeback faster than anyone expected, I can’t stick around waiting for its rebirth. I have no doubt that in fifteen years Baltimore’s going to be a wonderful place to live; not just in Mt. Vernon or that four-block-wide strip of land that flanks Charles Street, but everywhere. In fifteen years, Baltimore City’s going to be a bustling metropolis and people won’t say “Why?” when you tell them you live there. But in fifteen years I’ll be 41. And so I feel like I’m jumping ship just when things are starting to get good: like I was one of the people who were helping bring Baltimore back to life and now I’m just one of the people who used it as a stepping stone to get somewhere else.
As I get closer to leaving, it gets harder to remember why I’m going. It’s the same as a relationship, I guess: when you’re in a bad relationship all you can think about are fights and blame and worry; when you’re out of it all you can remember are happy Sunday mornings at the farmer’s market. Suddenly, I see Baltimore through the rose-colored lens of someone who’s “getting out.”

I’m hardly the first of my friends to leave the fold: there was a mass exodus at the end of last summer that left just a few of us here. As people left for Chicago, San Francisco, Alabama, or Minnesota, my friend Andrea kept saying that it was “the end of an era.” Every time she said it, we’d all break down like sniveling idiots, bemoaning the end of our grad school career, the end of things as we knew them. I was certain at the time that our happiness could never be replicated—that the friends I’d made could never be replaced; that things would never be quite as good again. Then, true to form, life went on. I made new friends, forged new relationships. And they didn’t replace the old, they just moved in next to them.

So I have faith, I guess, that I can do this again. It’s the end of an era, another one. It’s the end of my life in Baltimore and the beginning of my life in New York; I’m excited and nervous and scared. And I’m ready.