i will always love you like a long goodbye.

Nashville has been my home for 10 years. It is the longest I have lived anywhere and will probably remain that way. Not only has Nashville been the place in which I've resided, but it has been my home. This coming from an Air Force brat is kind of a big deal. I have a home...and I'm leaving that home on Thursday.

I spent tonight with a couple of the closest friends I've made here. All of them from Sewanee, and say what you will about that, but I literally teared up on the way home. I would love to regale you with fantastical descriptions of these friends that are, of course, well deserved but I think I would leave something out, and the fact that I just left them makes me too emotional to do them justice.

But no, this post is about my city, my home.

One of Ellyn's friends, I don't know who, put the song "Nashville" by David Mead on a mix that was in her car when I was driving it tonight. I'm not really sure if the song's about leaving Nashville or coming home to it, but I listened to it on repeat while I drove around tonight. I kept coming back to the last line in the song... "I will always love you like a long goodbye." That really truly is the way I feel about leaving this place.

I've never really had to leave home before. Firstly, because I didn't really have one. I have moved every three years for basically my entire life. And secondly, because I went to college about an hour and a half away from here...then promptly moved back. So now that I am going off to teach overseas, I am leaving home for the very first time. I think that's a good thing, though...don't misunderstand. But I love Nashville.

I love lower Broad. I love the Titans. I love Karl Dean. I love country music (seriously.). I love the Flying Saucer. I love the neighborhoods. I love the hipsters in East Nashville. I love the weird restaurants that think they're in Portland. I love Baja Burrito. I love how Old Hickory Blvd. is one road, but really is like 10 different ones. I love how all the roads have 3 different names, but are all actually the same road. I love Brentwood High. I love Vaughn's Gap. I love that the Parthenon is made of concrete. I love that you can drive 20 minutes in any direction and end up in the country. I love the Ryman. I love that my AP English teacher sang for the Opry. I love that my friends came here from all over and all of them love it. I love the name Nashthrill. I love the Batman building. I love the concerts on the river.

I've spent so much of my life here and it's hard to think of how I'm going to be anywhere else. Am I the same Tyler taken out of the context of this city? I think I'll always be the same guy...but shaped by the city that I've lived in and loved for 10 years of my life. Nashville, you will forever be my home...and I will always love you like a long goodbye.

Vicariously yours,