Edinburgh, My Love

I sat there in that familiar Starbucks looking out on the Royal Mile wandering what it was about this city that was giving me goose bumps.

My fingers were numb from the cold and I hadn’t felt my toes since I’d gotten off the train. Yet I silently asked myself if I could ever move back here. To the life of sensible shoes and waterproof jackets. To a life where wearing make-up was pointless because the rain would just wash it off and fixing your hair was just a waste of time because the wind would inevitably turn you into Tarzan.

What was it about this city that brought me to life and why was it so hard for me to put my finger on it.

I loved London but London was a sensible love. I knew why I loved it, I could name the reasons, quantify them. And they were good reasons. London was fast and it matched my personality. It had opportunities no other city could offer. It was a place the type A me could thrive in, where my hunger for success was not frowned upon, if anything, it was necessary for my survival.

And yes, there were times where I needed to run away from London, to go hide away in the woods somewhere with minimal internet and very few people. But I always came back, and London always welcomed me with open arms. And our relationship would often be stronger as a result.

Ours was a healthy relationship, we pushed each other but also knew how to take space to heal, recharge and find our way back to each other.

While Edinburgh… Edinburgh pushed me to my limits and not always in a good way. It froze my face and made me lose sense of where I was. The cobles destroyed my shoes and the weather stopped me from ever having a fashion-sense. It limited me to the sole desire to stay in and drink pints of hot tea, or maybe a wee dram of whisky. But I loved it anyway.

I loved the wind that numbed me to the bone.

I loved the snow that made everything muddy up to my kneecaps.

I loved the sing-song of the Scottish accent and the random sounds of bagpipes.

I loved that every corner held a memory for me. I loved that the city had melted me into a puddle of emotions, of wonder and amazement. I loved that through going back to where I’d made my biggest mistakes and learned my most fundamental life lessons, I could finally see how far I’d come.

And of course, I loved the whisky and the man who taught me about it.

And nothing could show me the distance I’d travelled more than that man.

The gorgeous man that was just slightly too tall for his own good. With his deep voice and Scottish accent. With his nervousness and insecurities.

~

The next evening I walked into the bar — the members’ club — thinking how appropriate it was to meet here, the perfect merger of my past and present. Somewhere posh and fancy that smelled of whisky. With the comfortable leather chairs that screamed of forced sophistication.

I almost lost my words walking in. How do you say hi to someone you haven’t seen in almost 4 years?

And yet, the moment I sat down, it was natural. Something about the thickness of his accent and his low voice pulled me back, back to the “catacombs” where we sat and studied. It took me back to the group works where I would dote over him. It took me back to the spontaneous Venice trip I booked to get away from it all. To the mental breakdown I had when I thought he had a girlfriend. To the abysmal first date. And to the months that followed that would lead me down my best love story to date. The story that for all intents and purposes, brought me out of the darkness I was in.

One thing was clear, I still loved him.

And even clearer than that was the fact that despite the love, I had fully and truly let him go.

He was Edinburgh. Beautiful and a bit grumpy, old fashioned and simple, safe and comfortable. And my heart yearned for it — him, and it always would.

~

I watched the seasons change the more we moved south. The rain calmed down and the sky turned blue. There was something poetic about going into the heart of the storm and then leaving it as it calmed down (just to get ready for the next one).

I sat on the train taking in the vastness of the British countryside, vowing to myself that one day I would buy a house in a place by a seashore. Maybe not the British coast but somewhere warmer.

I scanned over the last 4 days and allowed the nostalgia to settle. I watched as small pieces of me that had been rattled fell back into place, maybe they just needed a bit of wind to put them back.

And once the nostalgia settled, what I was left with was a deep sense of satisfaction. Just like how quantum particles observed behave differently, I felt like the week had been a massive self-exploration into my past. And for the first time in years I could see why I had developed the habit of loving the things that weren’t good for me. The penny finally dropped.

And for the first time, I felt like by figuring out where it came from, I could finally move past it. The same way that I left Edinburgh for London.

My London was out there, just beyond the storm.

Originally published at https://www.onebreathlondon.co.uk on February 13, 2020.