I went to my grandmother's old office building for a dinner event last night. She used to take me with her to work sometimes, when I was little. I remember running through the empty halls, looking at the towering glass ceiling, the plants in the lobby, the various office supplies lying around.

She hasn't worked there for quite sometime and I think the last time I entered that building would've been in 2009. Yet somehow when I stepped inside, it felt like no time had even passed. Something stange and yet familiar came back to me and I felt my body settle back into space, as if 2009 is where it had always belonged.

The building was vastly different from what I remembered though. The ceilings weren't as high, and the geenery in the lobby was no where to be found. In my mind, I'll remember the vast and bright spaces in the common spaces and hallways. The space seemed tighter now, darker and duller.

After arrving at the office we went into an attrium, I've never seen it before. It was just this giant concrete dome with winding hallways and ramps that I don't think actually went anywhere.

A lot of people from my past were there. My cousins, my mom's friends sons, some childhood friends. People I thought I left behind at some point in my life. My grandma told me to go say hi to an old coworker of hers: Kim. I hadn't seen her in so long I didn't even know who she was. Well something in my mind told me I knew her as well. She was someone I had left behind, so I felt like I was obligated to look for her.

It took me a while but eventually I found her somewhere in the endless mazes of office cubicles. I don't really remember what we talked about, but she was happy to see me. And that made me feel even more guilty. It didn't really feel like she had changed, she somehow was exactly the same the familiar face that flashed in my mind when my grandmother first said her name. I felt closer to 2009 in that momemnt more than ever, and I suddenly felt like I needed to run.

The people around me had all changed to a degree, but when I looked at them I found myself in the times I was running away from in the first place. And that guilt just grew, these people didn't deserve that abandonment, and I realized that I just...missed them.

Maybe what it really is, is that a part of me never left 2009 and that part of me is constatly yearning for the remenants of that time. The places we come from are always destroyed by time, but if we're lucky the people remain. I think that part of me was scared of watching those people continue to grow father and farther from me, their lives moving forward without me in it. Mentally, I'm removed from the fast, constantly running towards the future with no time to look back, but my body; I guess it does belong in 2009.