The hotel lobby is too busy. You can barely hear what she’s saying, a foot away from you on a teetering chair, as you lean in, craning your head toward her. You haven’t talked to each other in a while, not in a few years.
It seems like something big has shifted for you, she said. And I’m so glad. She tries to say more, but can’t quite find it. Everyone is tired. I’m not articulating any of this very well.
No, no, you say, I get it. Because you do. And then, before she leaves: Thank you. Because you’re grateful that someone can see.
She goes off to get some rest. You stay awake.
You get a message, a few hours before, a text notification on your phone as you walk to meet someone at the hotel bar: you have reached your data roaming limit. You don’t know how this is possible, given how much you paid for, but the phone is insistent. You turn your internet connection off.
After the meeting, you use the hotel wifi to figure out where you’re supposed to meet everyone later. People offer to come find you — you can use their hotspots. You say no. You leave the hotel, walking with no map, because you already know where you’re going.
You were 20 the first time you did this, 21 the last time before now. The long rides down in the grim buses. You had no data roaming. You had no cell service and barely any money. All you had were your tickets and intermittent coffee shop internet and this place, a different country, everything bigger and louder, and you walked and you walked and you walked until it was time for the game and then time for the long grim bus ride home in the middle of the night. You were alone, here, completely alone. You couldn’t reach anyone even if you wanted to. If you needed help, you’d never get it.
But you never felt afraid. You felt the absence of fear, its veil lifting, and in its place was every detail, the towering buildings and the cold tunnels between, the echoing of strange sounds and the particular texture of sky. You always knew where you were going, even when you didn’t. Your whole life you’ve oriented yourself toward the ocean, and you know it without needing to think, know the gentle distant sound and the smell and the pale light in the west. As long as you could find the ocean, you could find your way home.
From the hotel, down the street, it becomes familiar again, and you remember how it felt to be that person, wan and slender, unfinished, your jacket too thin then as it is now. You remember how it felt to be afraid all the time. To know — with greater certainty than you’d ever felt about anything — that there was no better. This was what better looked like: fourteen hours of silent wandering, then the inevitable return to what you knew. Lethal doses poured in your hands every night just to see if you could do it this time. Just one more time. One more.
But you never could make it stop. There was no hope for you. There was just Seattle.
You find the ocean, just as you always did. You lean over the pier railing. Through the clouds that have chilled you this entire week, the sun is shining, an impossibly bright sliver, and its rays pour out over the ocean. Like a dream, or a painting, or a miracle. A sign. Something too good, too meaningful, to be true.
You stand there for a few minutes, watching the sun grow bigger, brighter by the moment, until it illuminates everything, the whole sky, the ferry over the ocean, the waves alight, and it feels like the sun now lives behind your eyes. You don’t want to go back. But you got what you needed. It was given to you for reasons you’ll never understand, a debt your gratitude can never repay.
You turn your back to the sea. You start walking back to the hotel.
At the top of the stairs, you turn around again. The sun, suddenly, is gone. Only a dim crack in the grey sky remains.
And it is the same, isn’t it? More than you want to believe it is. You and your one thin jacket and your dead-eyed face, your words that move too slowly, the pain in your feet, your presence like lead pellets in a sagging balloon. You can dress it up however you want. You can build a fortress around it, busy your hands, decorate it beautifully. This, the hard, tiny, ugly stone at the center of you. With a touch, anyone can tell it’s still there.
The conversation in the hotel lobby spins around you, faster and faster, and the pressure only makes the stone harder, tinier, uglier. You know— you knew. You knew. But you’re here, anyway, still here, even with the knowing.
At least someone saw, if only for a second.
You must have known, you realize, as you watch beams of light dance on the water. Even then. Not that you hated yourself. Not that you wanted to be dead. You must have known that you wanted to live. Why else would you have come here?