Breaking up with DC.

When I first moved to DC, I loved it. I liked the majestic buildings downtown, the Metro system, the amount of trees everywhere. I liked Rock Creek Park and the way it's a real park, really natural, and the way it spreads all over the city. I liked that the buildings were low so you never felt closed in. I liked the people, the fact that so many people here are here for a cause, working for a nonprofit or the government or some other organization that has a mission other than pure profit. I liked that when you went to parties you would end up in conversations with complete strangers about real issues.

When I moved to DC I had no plans to stay here permanently or not to stay here permanently. I just didn't think about things that way. But it was a great first city in which to live on my own. Accessible, easy to get around, and while expensive, not over-the-top, prohibitively unaffordable. It's amazing how different everything is now, just three years later. I had my first job here. And my second job. I met my husband here. I got married here. I am totally comfortable here.

But while there are certain things that I will definitely miss about the city, I don't foresee myself missing it as a whole. Missing the people I love who live here, absolutely. But I don't feel much nostalgia about the city itself. It was perfect for me as a young single person and for us as a young couple. But it isn't what we want for ourselves as a young family and then as an older and bigger family.

Still, I look forward to telling our kids about how we met in DC, and got married there, and what we did while we were living here, the same way that I always liked hearing those stories about my parents and how they met in California. And I look forward to developing a life in Denver, to having real little native Coloradan children who aren't afraid of snow and who don't think of the East Coast as the only real place to live. Even if they end up there eventually.

So, this is it for us and DC. The relationship is over. And to commemorate that, I think I'm going to go change my Facebook regional network. After all, isn't that how you know that a change is real?