I never thought I'd leave you.

I walked through all of your crevices, knew your hidden secrets, and embraced all that made you what you are.

I made memories with you, in you, and all around you.

All the people that you held in your arms- where you held their laughter, their hopes, their sadness, their happiness, their anger, and their dreams- I was one of those people.

For fourteen years, I stayed in the same spot. For fourteen years, you saw me grow into the woman I am today, and it isn't just the people in our lives that have made me, but everything about you shaped me, too. Like….

I am the laundry-mat next to the liquor store where a man clad in all-white washed cars.

I am the burger shack down the street from my pediatrician where my mom warned me not to go alone.

I am the cul-de-sac with its large brown gates that was present for every reunion, fight, and summer-night promenade.

And when I left you, you changed. You changed into something I no longer knew. Your face value became conventional beauty and your veins clogged.

Whenever I came back to visit, it was like meeting someone completely new.

Eagle Rock-- I have now moved out of the home that I lived in after I moved out of you. I didn't love it as much as I loved you- its streets were still unfamiliar, its people not as sweet or as kind. But it was home, and I was learning its crevices too because I lived there for four years (and then some).

Now, because of the gears of life and age, I am completely separated from that place. Sometimes, I visit, but it's different than when I see you.

With you, everything changed.

Gentrification hit you hard with glittering streets and avenues of bars with wooden tables and dim lights.

But with the other place? Nothing. Nothing changed except maybe a street sign here or shorter hours of operation there. Its as if the very force that ripped that place away from me did not phase it. The place continued as normal, and though I never considered it as my own, I stand at its sidewalk as a complete stranger because I am no longer part of its rhythm. I am...

A stranger that never had their first date at its Italian restaurant with the buttery garlic bread.

A stranger that never got boba milk tea on a hot summer's day in its plaza.

A stranger that never bought late night tacos at the yellow truck parked in the car wash.

At a place where I've never felt truly home, it hurt to become the stranger because nothing changed in it-- but me.

It got me thinking that if you never changed, I don't think I would love you the same.

I love the new you and everything you can be without mingling every single memory that I have already made in you.

With the other place, everything overlaps each other and it pokes at my growing pains.

Thanks for changing.

Maybe it was for the best you did…

Maybe.