williamwataru

I moved to Portland in late August 2020 when I was 22 years old.

I had just graduated from college, the country was in the early stages of the pandemic, and I really had no idea what I was doing with my life. I had spent the previous few months living with my parents after returning from a year studying abroad in Thailand, and I remember feeling incredibly restless. I knew that one part of my life had ended, but I had no idea what the next part was supposed to look like. I needed to begin building an adult life, whatever that meant, but mostly, I just wanted to go somewhere far away again.

A close childhood friend of mine, Donte, had recently moved to Portland, and another friend, Riley, and I drove up to visit him that summer. I had technically been to Portland before, but this was the first time I experienced the city independently as a young adult. The weather was beautiful. We went to food trucks and parks, wandered around Powell’s, drove into the Columbia River Gorge, and climbed Multnomah Falls.

Something about that week woke me up.

It reminded me of how I had felt while living in Thailand, that sense that the world was enormous and that my life could still become almost anything.

Donte told me there was enough room in his apartment for another person. Apparently, he had made this offer to several friends and no one had taken him up on it, but a few weeks later, I packed everything into my car and drove nine hours north. The apartment was old and inconvenient. There was barely any parking, people lived on the sidewalk outside our building, and protests and riots regularly moved through our street. I slept on the floor for the first couple weeks before buying a futon that became both my bed and couch.

Donte and I drove DoorDash in the afternoons and evenings to pay our bills. At night, we would stay up late watching TV, playing games, or just drinking and talking. In the morning, we would walk to Safeway and buy cheap deli wraps because one purchase could be two meals.

Looking back, there is very little about that life that I would try to recreate today, but I remember being incredibly happy. I think there was freedom in having so little established. We had almost nothing to protect, and there was nowhere we were supposed to be.

Eventually, Portland stopped feeling new. I found my first professional job at a small manufacturing company in Hillsboro, and I remember how proud I was just to have a badge with my name on it. Sometimes I would stop at the grocery store after work without taking it off, secretly enjoying the feeling of being an employed adult living on my own.

Over time, the unfamiliar became familiar again. I developed routines. Coworkers became friends. I learned which breweries I enjoyed and which parts of town I preferred. I stopped needing directions everywhere I went. Restaurants became places I returned to over and over again instead of places I was trying for the first time. Eventually, I bought a condo. I found a community. I met Sara and she moved to Oregon, and Portland became the place where we began building our married life together.

The space became a place.

I think the same thing happened to Portland itself. When I arrived, to me, the city was just a collection of buildings and streets. Then my life started to happen inside of them. A brewery became the place where someone bought me my first beer flight. An office became the place where I found my first working community. I discovered new restaurants, cafes, bars, and hiking spots. An old condo became the first home I owned. None of these places were important when I first saw them, but they became important because of what happened there.

I think that is one of the strange things about living somewhere for a long time. At first, you notice everything because everything is unfamiliar. Then, slowly, the places around you become so normal that you stop noticing them at all. You start to take things for granted, like the beautiful scenery while driving into Portland from the west side, or the endless amount of hiking spots and outdoor activities. Then, when you know you are leaving, somehow you begin noticing everything again.

Near the end of our time in Oregon, most of the furniture in our condo had already been sold. One evening, I sat outside on the patio after a run, drinking a beer on the concrete because the table and chairs that had been there for years were gone. The summer evening was perfect, the kind I would dream about growing up in the extreme heat of northern California.

I remember sitting there and thinking about how much I had loved that patio when I first moved into the condo. Living alone at that time had given me a sense of freedom and independence I had never experienced before. Over time, that feeling faded into normal life without me realizing it, but sitting on the ground in an almost-empty home, it came back for a moment.

It struck me that when I first moved to Portland, I was sleeping on the floor because I had not built a life yet. Now I was sitting on the floor again because I was in the process of taking that life apart.

I sometimes think about the idea that I am saying goodbye to my twenties, but I don’t think that’s quite right. What I am really saying goodbye to is a particular arrangement of life. These people, in this city, at this time, under these circumstances. I can come back to Portland someday. I can drive the same roads, eat at the same restaurants, visit the same parks, and see many of the same people, but I don’t think I can ever really come back to this version of Portland. The city will be there, but I will be different.

For years, I was so focused on what was next that I sometimes failed to recognize what was happening while it was happening. I worried about whether I was growing quickly enough, whether my work was meaningful enough, and whether I was making the right choices. Those questions felt very important when I was living through them. Now, looking backward, they seem less important than I once thought.

What I will remember most about this time are the people I met, the places I visited, and of course, all of the delicious food I ate. I will remember drinking with Donte in our apartment, coworkers becoming friends, evening walks with Sara, and happy hour meet ups that went on longer than expected. It is strange to realize that while I was spending so much energy wondering if my life was going in the right direction, my life was already happening.

Portland became home so gradually that I barely noticed it happening. Now, as I leave, I notice. I came here at 22 because I wanted to see what my life could become. Six years later, I am leaving with no clearer understanding of exactly what comes next, but with a much better understanding of what happened while I was here. Portland held my first real years of adulthood. It held the person I was when I arrived, and the person I became along the way, as well as the life Sara and I have built together here.

I don’t know when I will come back or what the city will feel like when I do, but I know it will never just be a collection of buildings and streets to me again.