I didn’t think it would get to me.

Yes, I run, but I’m not what you would call a runner.

Yes, I lived part of my life in Boston, but I have not called the Hub home in nearly 12 years.

And yes, of course I empathized with my former, adopted home last week — anyone with a semblance of a heart did — but it was hard to truly understand the reason for that empathy.

Until Wednesday.

What started as a fun trip designed around a visit to hallowed ground at Fenway Park turned into a trip to Fenway Park by way of the hallowed ground that is Copley Square and Boylston Street.

Boston officials opened Boylston Street to foot traffic and to residents and business owners Tuesday, and to the rest of the world Wednesday. For many, opening the street was a return to normalcy — you could, finally, get there from here, again. Traffic, though still snarled as ever in Back Bay, had one its major arteries to once again fill with traffic jams and incessant horn-honking.

But officials left part of the barricade that had excluded traffic for better than a week, in tact, and moved it to a corner of Copley Square, across Dartmouth Street from the entrance to the Boston Public Library.

It is here that the city’s scars are still blatantly visible; here where the tears are still wet, where mourners by the hundreds — and gawkers, for sure — congregated. Some people knew those who died last week; others know those who survived. And still others have no earthly connection to anyone directly affected by the tragedy.

And yet here they are. Here I am, drawn to this spot in part by my passion for news and history, but also by my heart strings.

The walk to Copley from North Station, where the Amtrak Downeaster dropped us off on this brisk morning, was business as usual. Bars that thrive on Garden traffic were opening their doors for the early-morning stragglers. The Government Center business crowd bustled to and from trains, cabs and buildings without looking up from their smartphones, to-go breakfasts and coffee. Even Boston Common was back to normal, with school tours showing off old cemeteries, the start of the Freedom Trail and the Common.

But after crossing the park and seeing the swan boats peacefully adrift in the Public Gardens amid the blooming banks of tulips and flowering trees, and despite the sun baking its way through the morning cloud cover, a chill shivered up my spine.

Here on Boylston Street, despite the return of the traffic and declaration of business as usual, it was quiet. Not a small-town-in-Maine-at-night kind of quiet, of course, but the kind of quiet that stuns you because it shouldn’t be.

The walk from Boylston and Berkeley — a corner that used to house a giant metal bear in front of world-renowned toy company F.A.O. Schwarz — to the square between Clarendon and Dartmouth Streets was somber. I worked at that toy store for three years. I’d walked this stretch of road many times. But this time was different.

CNN is still set up outside the Westin at one corner of the square, the Hancock Building still towers over another.

But in one corner, where Boylston meets Dartmouth, where people enter and exit the Copley Square ‘T’ station, stands the makeshift memorial, moved from the middle of the road after it reopened to traffic.

T-shirts and jerseys, many of them race-worn, are draped across the u-shaped metal barricades. Many of these pieces of clothing are signed — by runners, fans, family — and are laden with messages of support for the victims, for the dead, injured and all those affected.

At the base of the barricades are flowers — in some places five or six bouquets deep — teddy bears, and a collection of ball caps, American flags and crosses.

Dozens of people filtered in and out of the brick-and-concrete-covered area within the barricades, some with cameras and video cameras in their hands, others with tears in their eyes, many with both.

At the center, three white, wooden crosses bear the names of the three individuals killed in the bombings.

A block away, near Exeter Steet, a smaller crowd gathered outside the entrance of the library. It was on that part of the street, across from the main entrance, that the carnage began when the first bomb exploded.

A faded version of the most famous finish line in all of road racing still shows its yellow and blue colors on the otherwise faded black pavement. On the side of the street opposite the library, boarded up windows mark the buildings, while scattered flowers lay reverently on the sidewalk. This is where people died, where several were injured, and where a city’s confidence was temporarily shaken.

It’s also where a city’s swagger was reborn; where law enforcement officials began an investigation that led to the death of one and the capture of a second suspect and where in less than one year, a populous will celebrate an end to one of the more terrifying experiences in the city’s history.

People at this site were also somber — a Boston kind of somber that has a particular defiance built in.

Two blocks away, where the second bomb exploded, between Fairfield and Gloucester streets, there was a smaller crowd. Reclamation crews were already hard at work on Abe and Louie’s and the adjoining businesses. But people fell silent still as they walked by. Next door, people ate lunch on restaurant patios. They spoke, but I swear they did so more softly than usual. They, too, felt a reverence.

We all did, everyone who was on Boylston Street on Wednesday.

And that got to me. As it should have.

The rest of the day went as scheduled.

And what started as a trip to hallowed ground ended the same way, though the very definition of that mission changed midstream.

Yes, I run. Yes, I am a kind of transplanted Bostonian.

And yes, now more than I ever thought possible, I empathize with the citizens and visitors of this great city.

I always will.