People look at me funny when I say that Baltimore is my favorite city in the world - even above Paris. It’s true, though. I may have been raised in Delaware, but I am growing up in Baltimore. I am experiencing things here that I never could anywhere else. I am living on my own, making my own money, making my own way here. I am knowing wonderful, beautiful people who could never exist in another city in the world because that is what Baltimore does.
It gets inside you and makes you who you are. If I had to define myself without Baltimore, I don't know if I would like who I would be.
Everyone needs to know a city that does that to them.
And here I have lived for five years. They have been, by far, the best five years of my entire life. and I know I am still young, and I have not been everywhere in the world, but I know that before I lived in this city I was sad until something made me happy, but here I am happy first and longest.
I look out my window and feel a surge of pleasure to see the rooftops and light posts and signs of Waverly and Charles Village in the distance.
Baltimore has its faults, for certain. High drug use, high STD infection, high gang-related deaths. But that in itself does not define the people inside. We are people. We are nurses and artists and doctors and writers and actors and lovers and haters and people with dreams. We are Baltimoreans. And anyone who looks at me funny for that can't know what it is to be in love with a city.
I love you, Baltimore.
