A year ago last April, sitting cross-legged in a hotel room in Dubai, I was told I’d move west. Towards the water, maybe. Not the ocean, but a large body of water, nonetheless. A more temperate climate. Seattle, maybe.
I’d never been.
Two months later, I went for work. Fell in love with a French wine bar. Ate too many tomatoes. Woke early in the morning with the summer light.
And then one job became another, and Seattle became a what-if, just out of reach.
Until this spring. Until a phone call and a coffee chat and a bit of luck. And almost exactly a year to that day in Dubai, I packed my car and drove through Utah and into Idaho and then Oregon and Washington, Mount Rainier visible for nearly three hours before I drove up the hill and pulled into the place I’d call home.
I can see the water when I open the door to my apartment. I can see it when I sit at my desk. And when I sink into one of the two small, leather chairs that I got from a consignment shop in Park City. The blue of the Sound, a lesson in movement, a testament to impermanence. Storms roll in. Storms roll out. Boats pass. The world keeps spinning.
It feels like a nearly impossible amount of life happened between that hotel room and this apartment. And much of that life was quiet and cool, and weirdly inevitable. But not all of it. Some of it was really big and really messy and really heartbreaking. Wins and losses in equal measure.
I read something recently about how the opposite of depression isn't feeling happiness, so much as feeling all of the feelings. It’s not the singular opposite, it’s the expansion. The light and the dark. The full human experience. I think about that a lot now. And about how that full human experience is never bounded or neat. How it refuses to adhere to rules and guidelines and expectations. How it spills out and makes a mess and occasionally really hurts.
But the storms roll in. And the storms roll out. And the boats pass. And the world keeps spinning. And in the full expression, we find ourselves.