Someplace to be missed - Part 2

 

Photo by Ambidexy (flickr.com/photos/59068872@N00/2661414188)

I have had the opportunity now to move to two separate cities of which I had no previous knowledge of before moving there. First Albuquerque and now Knoxville. It’s interesting because I can still remember vivid details of my first ever experience in Albuquerque and I'm wondering what my first memory will be of Knoxville when I look back in a few years. 

My mom and I made a trip to the southwest to look at colleges.  I can remember when we first drove into Albuquerque – it was very dark and must have been pretty late. We hadn’t planned on where we were going to stay so we just started looking for hotels.  We made it to this street called Central Avenue. Hm, I thought, surely now that we've found the main drag, we can find a nice hotel? For those of you who know Albuquerque, you know that this is the last place you want to find a hotel. You can find your hookers, your local drug dealers, runaways looking for whatever runaways are looking for, the latest homeless man, and other sorts of hoodlums up to no good. It's not too bad during the day but at night, it was never really somewhere I planned on being. People die there.

Needless to say my first impression of Albuquerque was not really ideal. We definitely did not see any suitable lodging, let alone actual hotels, on Central that night, thank goodness.  Actually it might have made this story a little more interesting had we decided to rent a room at the Aztec Motel in all its rundown glory. But alas, we ended up finding a nice Red Roof Inn somewhere along the interestate which I would pass by often during the next 7 years. The location would always cause a flashback to that fateful night when I drove into ABQ not yet knowing that I would make that my home the next 7 years OF MY LIFE. It turned out to be a great 7 years, in spite of my apprehensions thanks mainly to some pretty stinkin' amazing friends. They are what kept me there. More on them soon! And if it's not already apparent why I chose that dingy, lurking, dark city, it was because of a certain dark and handsome (and not dingy at all) 18 year-old boy that had stolen my heart.

Also just for the record, the picture I chose to show above is really truly the Albuquerque that I will remember but aren't first impressions fun to recall?

Someplace to be missed

Have you ever heard that quote from some movie (or maybe it was a book) where... A man looks deeply into a woman's eyes and says

"You (she waits anxiously)... are someone (oh yes, he's going to say it!)... to be loved."

What??

What does that mean??

I'm someone to be loved?

Don't you love me?

All these things are rushing through the girl's mind. I guess the man thought that saying THAT would make the woman feel good, you know all warm and tingly and such. I mean she's so great, SOME one will love her.

But the fact of the matter is the woman wants that man to love her and instead he just provides her with what really amounts to an insult. Ugh.

Well even if you haven't heard of that one, that's ok.

I had a point.

Yes I did.

Uhh...

Oh yes, my point is that Albuquerque is like that. The city looked me in the eyes 7 years ago, told me I was someone to be loved, I was insulted and then I cried. I didn't feel like the city really LOVED me back then and so I was insulted.

I mean really insulted,

by the crime rate,

the far far distance from my family (which I guess wasn't the Q's fault but I still blamed it),

the lack of personal connection with the people you see on the street,

the lack of seasonal diversity,

the different looking people (I mean , come on I was used to all-white, no color, from those parts up yonder wheres I come from).

Yes I was feeling unloved by that mean ol' Albuquerque.

But now we've built a relationship. Even though Albuquerque told me up yours (in not so many words), I decided that wasn't going to stop me from making it love me. And now here we are and we are breaking up.

After all these years of trying to make it work, I am moving on. But now I have to go through the painful process of reliving all the fun moments in my head, the heart-warming memories, the compliments that Albuquerque has paid me over the years. I will be sharing these over the course of the next few posts. Through pictures, through stories.

They will be precious memories that I will create closure with.