February Sun

    Despite my frequent moisturizing, the skin on my hands is peeling away in small, fine flakes, giving the tips of my fingers a faintly fuzzy feeling and making the webbing between my fingers feel scaly and dry. It’s driving me crazy. In response to my complaints, my coworkers have assured me that, for climbers, peeling skin is normal. “You’re putting your hands in chalk – an extremely dehydrating environment – then climbing plastic rocks that have the texture of sandpaper,” they say. “What do you expect?”

    If I climb regularly, the skin on my fingers and palms stays relatively intact. The kicker is when I take a break from climbing – at that point, my calluses, much like an appendix, are no longer useful. The most recent instance was when I caught Covid while visiting Boston this month; during quarantine, I watched in dismay as my calluses sloughed off my hands in droves.

    Other than Covid cutting my social plans short, I had a lovely time in Boston. Having exclusively navigated through Seattle using Google Maps for the last 6 months, it was so comforting to remember the shortcuts around BU as if I’d never left.

    My trip was a much-needed break from being lonely in Seattle. I couldn’t believe the number of people I still knew and recognized on campus. With each interaction between myself and an old friend, I felt increasingly enveloped by love and familiarity. It is so, so nice to be known.

    On day four of my trip I found myself sitting in one of the many dorm-specific libraries dotted around Harvard’s campus (it’s really just a medium-sized room with ancient-looking leather-bound books lining the bookshelves, punctuated with antique globes and academia-style lamps on wide, wooden study tables. Ah, Harvard). Bente, the friend I’m visiting, sits next to me: laptop open, earbuds in. Scattered throughout the room are her fellow dormmates in various states of dishevelment. There’s an air of silent desperation I’ve only experienced in college libraries before exam period – or, in this case, senior thesis deadlines. No one paid me any attention as I idly paged through the Harvard Crimson and spun the globe around a few times. I looked around at everyone entrenched in their work, then at my phone, which was playing a podcast on celebrity gossip, and felt rather free.

    Whenever I’m asked how I feel to be out of college, the short answer is easy: it’s lonely at times, but it beats doing homework.

    The long answer: leaving a community designed for connection and easy access was hard. I miss how easily all my needs were met in college, from eating at the dining hall to seeing my friends. However, being in a competitive environment with other young adults made small problems feel extreme. Test scores. Internship applications. Spring break plans. My need for external validation was at an all-time high, as well as the constant anxiety and stress that came with it. My time out of school, despite all the emotional turmoil that comes with growing up, has allowed me to understand myself better than I ever have.

    To wrap up Boston: my Covid symptoms hit me hard that Monday morning. I spent the rest of my trip quarantined in the guest bedroom of another friend’s house, reading, drawing, and peeling calluses off my hands. I started thinking wistfully of Seattle. I wanted to be in my own bed, listening to the sounds of my roommates moving around the house. I wanted to be back on my work routine. I thought about The Pacific Ocean, the moss-covered trees, and my Seattle friends.

    Early on Thursday morning, I left for my flight and said goodbye to Boston in the dark.

    When I touched down at the SeaTac airport, the sun was shining. I took the light rail home and watched sunlight glint off the Cascades in the distance. At that moment, I realized: that for the first time, I was glad to be back.

How to love a city

Step 1: Recognize and accept that you will not love a city for the first six months (at least).

Step 2: Allow yourself to stay in your comfort zone until you’re ready to step out of it.

Step 3: Survive the dark and dreary winter months. 

Step 4: Whenever the sun is out, go outside!

Step 5: Spend time by the water, the trees, in public spaces.

Step 6: Bike everywhere, as much as possible.

Step 7: Live with your loneliness until it no longer stings.

Step 8: Feel reluctant when you think about moving away.

Step 9: When someone asks you, “do you like Seattle?”, say yes, and mean it.