Seattle Time Warp

A few weeks ago, I spontaneously bought a plane ticket to Seattle. I can’t remember what made me both angry and sad (how many choices are there, between my dad or my mom), but I was emotionally aching for some semblance of sanity. I clicked ‘purchase,’ and immediately felt better since I now had something to look forward to.

The past two months have been crazy and I’m questioning whether my life makes any sense or if there’s any connection to the person I was two months before. When I lived in Seattle, a friend once told me he was jealous of me, that in his eyes, I was the quintessential “guy to be.” I had a really good job, made good money, had a lot of friends and was well-liked. I even went to church, even if I didn’t love it, and I’d probably find a wife soon and get married. Add on the activities I was into, like the great outdoors, or helping others in local communities, or how I pursued creative hobbies on the side. Only two months later, to varying degrees I’m not any of those things anymore. For some of them, maybe I never was.

Some of the change is simply a byproduct of circumstance. I’m a “dad” now. It’s hard to find time to go hiking, play guitar, or go out and have a drink with friends. Sometimes it’s hard to find energy to even write. There’s a huge part of me that wants to reconnect with all of those old things, those activities and characteristics that I remember being a part of who I was. Some of which are anchored to Seattle, some aren’t.

But Seattle is the most recently closed chapter of my life, and so while I want to get away from my life now, I also want to find out if I’m still the same person I was before—and if there’s a way to reconcile the two if they’re not.

I touch down in Sea-Tac, an airport I’ve spent so much of my life in over the past few years that in total, it’s probably been days if not a couple of weeks. Everything is instantly familiar and exactly as I left it in Terminal C: the Starbucks under renovation, the massage parlor, that one place selling Beecher’s cheese. Immediately I wonder if I ever really “left.”

Like habit, I exit the security doors reminding me I’m leaving a sanitized zone, down an escalator but only one floor and not two, so that I can go to the light rail. I walk like I’m automated, and running on one hundred percent habit.

I’m back, everyone.

Which, is what I actually say when I see my first friend.

“Dan!” come the yells in response.

There’s a hug, no, an embrace. An emotional exclamation recognizing that this moment is special. I’m not supposed to be here anymore, and yet, I am.

“It's so good to see you!” she adds once we let go and can actually see each other’s faces.

The conversation evolves into a mix of deep sentiment and light-hearted jokes. How’s it going? Do you remember this place? It’s been so long. It’s like you haven’t left.

Hasn’t it, though? Because I feel like I left.

Even if this is just one conversation in particular, most reintroductions to old friends are some variation on this. Most people look the same. I look the same. Seattle looks the same.

Because really, it’s only been two months since I’ve been gone. Not even two months.

“It’s only been slightly longer than usual since I last saw you,” one friend says. But that seems impossible. How? People ask me how things have been and I have a billion things to say. I’m adjusting to a new city, a new job, trying to reconnect with old friends, trying to make new ones, and trying to figure out this whole taking care of my parents thing, and suddenly I feel like I’ve been gone for at least six months, maybe a year. Maybe even two.

But no, it hasn’t even been two full months.

Of all scientific concepts, time dilation is probably the one I’ve found the most mind boggling. Time isn’t just perceived differently, but literally passes differently depending on how fast you move and the strength of the forces of gravity. If you’re in the International Space Station and I’m on Earth and we both wear watches, they will at some point, be out of sync.

This seems like one of those physics concepts that belongs only in movies like Interstellar, which you can put on the shelf next to anti-matter, multiverses, wormholes and other things that scream “well...maaaaaybe.” Except that time dilation is both measurable and has already been observed.

It blows my mind, that time is not a solid thing every being in the universe experiences the same way.

I wonder if that’s true for perceived time here on earth too.

When I was traveling around Europe last fall, I told my brother about how every day seemed so long and that a week had felt like forever. He sent me article which I can’t find anymore, about how time seems to slow down when your experiences are new. This would be why time seems to progress at a snail’s pace when we’re young—everything, is new. But as we get older, we find rhythms and for better or worse, often stop having new experiences. Hence, time feels like it moves faster.

I wonder if that’s why I feel the way I do. Almost every week, something crazy happens, and I’m often forced to reconsider much of what I hold to be true about the world.

But weirdly, as soon as my friends and I get past the “how have things been” questions, all of that doesn’t seem to matter. The past two months, the Bay Area, it feels like it was a dream. I’ve woken up, and it’s like we go straight back into old topics, inside jokes, and over analyzing the current state of the world. We even relive some of my fondest memories.

Like snacking in Gas Works Park, basking in the sun.

Like going out for drinks in familiar neighbourhoods. I get a little drunk and knock over a glass of water. Thankfully it’s water, and thankfully, we’re already about to call it a night. We recognize maybe we’ve gone a bit too far celebrating my return.

I even grab a coffee in the morning with my friend Bobby, just like we used to.

“It’s you!” a barista exclaims when I step up to the counter.

“He’s back!” my friend Bobby joins in. “But, just for today.”

The barista's smile flips to a downtrodden sigh. “What? Why?”

“I moved to the Bay Area.”

“Awww….we miss you.”

“I’ve missed you guys too,” I say. In retrospect, it seems fake to tell the baristas that I miss them, but in the moment I really do. I miss what the morning moment meant, and what it means to me to be able to experience it, and my Seattle life again right now.

Every conversation I have is either deep or fun. No games. No mental mind tricks. No metaphorical shielding other people from elder zaniness. For once in what feels like forever, my brain actually deactivates.

It feels right. It feels like me. That former version of Dan, was real.

Every so often though, the current, Bay Area version of Dan also shows his signs.

Business or interpersonal drama that would’ve bothered me before, barely registers on my emotional radar today. I used to love to talk all things tech; now I’ll do it if it seems relevant, but sometimes I try to avoid it. Even discussions about ideals and morals don’t work the same way as they used to, and how can they? Dealing with mental health issues breaks a lot of those easily-defined boundaries of what’s right and wrong.

For however much I fit into the old version of my life, it becomes clear that I’m not quite the same person anymore. But surprisingly, there are signs that Seattle is not quite the same city either. One friends talks about potentially moving away. Another is quitting their job within a week. Another is starting to go through some family drama.

Part of me wants to beg my friends to stop. That no, you’re not allowed to change. You can’t, because after some time, I’m going to be done with this caretaking business and be back in town and we’ll go back to how things were.

But that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of it works.

I’ve never been one to be afraid about friends moving on, and often encourage them to do so. I know that in the future, we can get back together and pick up right where we left off. That’s why we’re friends. But we will still have to evolve and acknowledge the differences of who we’ve become. Some people find that fun. Some, find that reason enough to end friendships.

I hope I’m rarely the latter.

Something bothers me as I reflect on my trip as a friend drives me back to Sea-Tac, as I watch the grey mist float over the green hills that turn to Boeing field that turn to Southcenter. This whole weekend, I feel like I’ve stepped into a time machine and gotten a front-row seat watching my old life again right in front of my eyes. It’s a life I loved, a life I deeply miss and often find myself longing to return to.

But when I figuratively reach out my hand to grab my old life back, to have it be a part of me again, my hand hits cold glass. And suddenly I realize I'm just an observer to my old life, and that that’s all I can do. It is beautiful, it was beautiful. For all the questions I have about whether or not the “old Dan” was real, he is. My Seattle life is a part of me and I am forever grateful for it.

But I can never have it back. And I’m not sure I really want to either.

Take your pick for what analogy suits best: experiencing college, a honeymoon, maybe reading a book. You can’t ever reread a chapter once you’ve reread it. It’s not the same experience. You can try to relive a memory exactly as you remember it, and you’ll always end up disappointed because it comes with expectations and it’s not the same point in time. You can never actually have the same experience twice. That’s time. It’s a function of how we live, for better and worse.

I think it's worth looking back at the past, but only when you do so to be grateful. When you look back to long for, and pine for, and even try to break through the looking glass to have what you had once again, I find you end up hurting yourself. And maybe others around you.

And so I say my last goodbye as Sea-Tac’s automatic doors beckon me inside, and as I think about, once again, returning to the Bay Area.

I can’t say I really wanted to come home to the Bay Area. But then again, I also did. It wasn’t duty that drove me back, but then again, it also was. Maybe in the same way my mom cares for my dad for some weird mix of desire and duty, is exactly also how I feel about having moved back. Maybe it’s not. I can’t really tell. All I know is, I wanted to spend some quality time with my parents, to help them transition into another stage of life, and to do something new along the way. I do wish there was another way to have done this, any other way. If I could’ve moved them to Seattle. If I could’ve flown home every weekend. If I could’ve paid for some crazy medical procedures to prolong their life and delay my needing to move back.

But there's only this way. Maybe there only ever was.

I experience sadness, wandering the hallways of Sea-Tac and taking in the sights and even the silly advertising banners hanging from the ceiling, wondering when I might be back here next. I feel an extra pang in my chest, still tasting the residual flavour of my prior life on my tongue.

And yet, the right thing, the thing I want right now, it’s back in my current life in the Bay. It’s hard, but it’s also meaningful.

I breeze through security and head back to Terminal C, just like always. People on one side rush by to make their flight, and on the other, rush to meet their friends and family. I make it to C17 only to look at the information board and see one of the most depressing notices.

My flight’s been delayed. By several hours. Of course it has.

I laugh, because things are only truly bad when you know you can’t laugh at them. It’s like life noticed how painful it was for me to leave Seattle one more time, and said: “Alright. You can sit and enjoy this for a little bit longer.”