Walking down my street in Seattle, I’m thinking of Baltimore again. I liked my street there, the way all the brick glowed when the sun set in the summer. Kunal and I had everything we needed there: the Brewer’s Art two blocks away for a weekly cocktail date, Viccino’s around the corner for a two-dollar slice, the patch of park around the Monument for taking in fall foliage. At Dooby’s, you could watch the students and remember how it felt to end classes at noon on a Friday.
When Kunal got into medical school in Seattle, where we both grew up, I decided that it made sense for me to move with him. My D.C.-based job gave me the option to work completely remotely, and I was excited about the idea of being near my family and dearest friends again. When I visit Seattle for the holidays, I always feel that I am accessing a part of myself that is innate, something immovably true about me. I’ll stand at my old bus stop and feel rainwater seeping through my impractical and worn down shoes, thinking how nice it is that I possess some intrinsic force within me that has stopped me from buying rainboots all of these years. Kunal was quite earnest and kind as we packed up our apartment. “I’m excited for us to start a new phase of our lives together,” he said. We hauled our five enormous suitcases down the rickety spiral staircase in our walkup. Someone walked by us while we were waiting for our Uber and gestured at the little mountain of belongings encircling us. “Y’all are going on a LONG vacation, aren’t you?” she chirped. “See you in September!” Kunal rubbed my back. My mother used to scold me for being too sentimental as a child.
Time seems to collapse on itself this summer. I am 17 and 19 and 12 and 23. I am in Seattle, and the buses smell the same as they did when I was a child. One afternoon, I see a Boy I Had A Crush On In High School outside the window of the diner I’m in. He walks past, the diner another unremarkable contribution to his scenery. When I leave the diner, I glance into the same window and realize he wouldn’t have been able to see me if he looked in anyway.
Tucked away amongst lush greenery and paddleboarding and pink salmon, I log into my East Coast job. I am in D.C. and Baltimore. My coworkers make small talk about sweltering in the D.C. heat, mosquitos eating them alive. I imagine life there: I’m at the Dupont Circle Farmers Market, buying flowers with caterpillars that will infest my apartment, getting a heat rash on my thighs. Gazing out my window toward Pike Street, I picture myself becoming a high-powered D.C. career woman that struts through the Gallery Place station with AirPods in ear and leather tote bag on arm. There is something alluring about the thought of establishing a new life for myself in a city where it always feels you are just a few steps away from something of consequence. I’m trying to escape the feeling that someone has picked me up and chucked me across the country. Perhaps I would have even been a better feminist for being in D.C.
I have dreams of my best friend from college (she definitely would have called me a bad feminist). You could blame the downfall of our friendship on the strains of the pandemic, or you could be honest. I remember us stumbling up and down St. Paul Street in Baltimore – at 2 AM from house parties, on Saturday afternoons going for coffee – and all the permission we gave each other to be horrible and overbearingly generous and miserable. In March of 2020, we told each other we would be back in a few weeks but knew we were writing our endings: our last stale pastries in the library, our last seltzer on the lawn, our last hug. We penned these stories as if we could see ourselves tearing up telling them later on. I reflect on the things that I am no longer: a person that takes trains, a person that hasn’t had “last” of pretty much anything. A person that is her friend. I wake up angry and bitter: the spring I was 19 seems to seep into my flesh, corroding my bones. Did she ruin me? Am I ruined without her?
At weddings, you can wear a pretty dress and let alcohol flow through your laughter. You talk to these ghosts that have visited you in your dreams for seven years: the high school sweethearts, the Chinese school teacher’s pets, the church friends you’ve started avoiding – they are your best friends for the night. A kid I used to flirt with in biology asks me if he’s the same as I remember him. He and all those other orchestra boys have used their insane amounts of newfound tech money to buy more fashionable glasses. “You’re the same,” I say, hearing affection in my voice. “Am I the same?” “You’re different.” He doesn’t skip a beat. Heartbreak, just like you’re 16 again. At the end of the night, I imagine all of us going back to identical apartments with identical vinyl floors and identical IKEA coffee tables. I sit on the floor of my shower, still squeaky clean after two weeks of use. I don’t know how anyone moves on from anything when it’s so much easier to imagine yourself 16 and beautiful. I am worried that if things keep changing, I will no longer be able to recognize myself. I fall asleep exhausted.
I’m living in the same city as my two best friends for the first time since high school. My moving back has almost felt like a test – have we changed too much in the past seven years? On a Friday night, we’re cooking a stew together before we go out. We’ve never cooked a meal together before, and I’m moved that we are doing it now, a confluence of independence from our families and renewed community with one another bubbling this stew into existence. I explain to them that I’m trying to watch films, read books, go to therapy. There is some secret in all of this, surely. There must be some guarantee of emotional intellect. “What do you want out of all of this?” Sabrina asks. She fiddles with a sauce mixture. Jessica is tossing in cabbage to the pot. “Maybe, like, a sense of self or something. I want to feel good about living here,” I say. It’s inconsequential as I say it, of course: the closest any of us will ever come to a “sense of self” is staying best friends with the girl you met when you were 11.
Over dinner, we complain about office politics. Jessica is a civil engineer and she’s building a whole building – imagine that! – off of I-5. What an interesting accomplishment, but it gives her stress migraines. She is getting married. When we were 14, we huddled around Sabrina’s computer and picked out taffetas for some distant and strange future. Today, we dissect deposit policies and venue logistics. There will be lots of ballroom dancing, a hobby Jessica picked up in college. She has always loved a red dress. We’re in danger of dozing off at the dinner table, wine and pork warm in our bellies.
It has been six years since I first left Seattle. I’ve been thinking about that day a lot recently. My parents took me to a hot pot restaurant to say goodbye, and I sobbed uncontrollably, fearing I was too much of the type of person that cried in public (after orchestra seating auditions in 8th grade, after I forgot to turn on my microphone for my marching band solo in 10th grade) to make something of myself on an opposite coast. “I’m sorry, she’s going to college,” my mother muttered to the waitress.
I don’t have many answers. It is scary to unwrite all your mythologies, and it still drives me crazy that you have to walk around with all of your severances, that you can see yourself in other worlds, other lives, that you are always perched on a precipice of impossibility. But mostly, I am tired of thinking about all of this. I am tired of watching all the beautiful films about memory and splintered dreams and lost chances. I am tired of my impractical shoes that let rain in. It’s a blessing that I don’t cry in public as much anymore and that my days in crowded basements with sticky floors are done (though, how beautiful are the memories of emerging from those parties into the cold, deafening silence of the night, the streetlights harsh against white blossom trees). It is a blessing that Sabrina and Jessica are getting older. Forward, then, toward the ones we love. Kunal fills up my water bottle at the end of the night and makes the bed for me while I brush my teeth. He kisses me goodnight, he asks if I need a Zyrtec before bed. I have a 6 AM Zoom. I told my mother that I haven’t used any melatonin lately, that I’ve been falling asleep easily, exhausted by the early mornings. “Well,” she said. “It’s because you’re happy.”
*****
Victoria Chen graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering. She currently resides in Seattle, Washington, where she originally grew up. She has received writing instruction at Hugo House in Seattle, a nonprofit organization that offers classes and workshops.