2020 & The Return

It is a cold and wet Saturday night. A few remaining leaves hold tightly to the trees outside our window. Their battle is just a matter of time. Watching the rainfall over the valley from our third-floor apartment, I contemplate how typical this scene is for the Pacific Northwest this time of the year. I foolishly fumble for my phone. I am alone within these walls. Brandon is working or out with friends. It is becoming increasingly hard for me to tell the difference between the two. I find myself wishing longingly for a text or a call to break the silence. I am not twenty anymore, so I don’t need the conversation to lead to immediate plans. I just need to know someone/anyone is thinking of me. The call never comes. The vibration is never felt. My presence isn’t needed anywhere in the city tonight. Much like the weather this time of year, this too has become typical of my return to Seattle.

2020 was intended to be an anomaly. In the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic, I knew Seattle would not be able to show me the best version of herself. Social distancing, stay-at-home orders, and an abundance of caution meant our homes would have to hold us longer than anyone ever intended. On the other side of this experience would be a return to normal. At the end of this tunnel would be a Seattle more familiar to me, or so I thought.

While the end of this pandemic still seems a few curves in the road away, I bear witness to friends who I once called my own in Seattle returning to lives mirroring those lived before this collective cloud began hanging over our heads. Yet, my phone hibernates. Never one to wait for others, I have lived through several rounds of attempting to initiate opportunities to draw near. Calls are never returned. Text messages go unanswered. The Seattle freeze has frozen me once again. Seeking warmth, I am left deeply pondering the decisions I have made that delivered me to this place in time.

I have been back in the confines of this city (a place I called home for six years) for almost two years. In that span of time, I have spent more authentic time with friends from Los Angeles passing through than I have with people I knew before I left. While I was initially excited to leave LA and return to the Emerald City, it has become profoundly clear to me where home truly is. It took leaving once again to understand where I would rather be. Now, I know the truth.

I am not happy in Seattle, perhaps I never was. I don’t want to live here anymore. I want to return to Southern California.

This realization feels weighty like an epiphany, though the realization was anything but sudden. Looking into the rearview mirror with the added benefit of reflection, I am beginning to realize I didn’t begin to love this place until a friend from Oklahoma became a roommate a year after my arrival in 2011. From there, I carved a network out of connections from my Seattle U cohort and made dear friends thanks to my work in South King County (I would eventually follow these friends to Los Angeles). As a family of my choosing, I found the confidence to start dating. I met an amazing human being. With him by my side, I honestly believed I could make this home. Yet, as a household, we found ourselves restless and needing a change. We followed I-5 to Los Angeles.

The work I accepted in Los Angeles was beyond challenging on multiple levels, but it revealed a mission near and dear to my heart; a mission I believe to be the cause of my life. Brandon’s LA journey would end sooner than mine. In his absence, I would build a social network that was everything I had been searching for since leaving Oklahoma. I would leave them to chase a dream, but a pandemic would silence those plans. In its wake, I would discover that LA was home. It is where I want to make my stand. It is where I feel most comfortable. It is where I want to plant some roots.

Now, sitting in the shadow of my truth on a couch in my third-floor apartment, I am watching the rainfall. I hate every drop that falls from the sky. I wish I was anywhere else but here. Yet, I am not on this journey alone. Not anymore. My partner has a story to tell. His script mirrors mine but the locations are flipped. I am willing to sacrifice so that he may be happy, but I can’t pretend to be strong forever. Cracks are starting to reveal themselves, and I know he notices.

Seattle will not kill me. It will not break me. Somewhere else will save me. Hopefully, it can save us.

Be good to each other,

Nathan