The Bridge I Forgot I Remembered

When a memory returns not to remind you where you were, but who you’re becoming.

Note: Contains spoilers for Season 1 of Lazarus on Prime Video.

I was sitting on the couch in my apartment in Saigon, wearing a pair of olive-green shorts, laptop open beside me, watching the final episode of Lazarus. Scooters murmured below on the street. Nothing special about the moment. I was just relaxing.

Then the scene cut to the protagonist Laz walking across a bridge at night, four towers rising behind him like dark punctuation marks in the skyline.

I know that bridge.

Screengrab from Lazarus Season 1 on Prime Video

I paused the show and opened my camera roll.

Scrolled back to 2021.

And there it was.

Dozens of photos of that exact spot. The walkway. The architecture. Those four towers leaning up out of Manchester’s low brick cityscape.

And photos of me — navy peacoat, wool hat, the cold coloring my face, and a full, unguarded smile. The kind you don’t even know you made until years later when it looks back at you.

And I teared up. I hadn’t thought about that day in years.

The bridge that appeared in Lazarus, four years later

At the time, I was seven months into my first ever long stretch of traveling alone outside the United States. I had just lived in Edinburgh for a month and wanted to stop in Manchester for a few weeks before returning to London. I remember seeing those towers from somewhere else in the city and deciding I needed to get closer. I followed the sightline until it led me to that bridge. Afternoon light. People passing through on their way home. And then of course there was me, setting up a tripod, and documenting everything.

I didn’t know it then, but that could be the moment I began learning who I was when not in familiar rooms.

Lazarus is a show about a man who discovers his father was a serial killer. His father tells him time isn’t linear. That it’s cyclical. Sons become their fathers. Patterns repeat. Laz tries to break the pattern. When this scene happens, he has just learned his father’s secret and calling a woman he cares about while standing on that very bridge.

The bridge is the moment between believing you are becoming someone new, and realizing you already have. Or haven’t. Or that the choice is not clean.

And maybe that’s why seeing myself there hit me so hard. Because I was watching two people on the same bridge, both of us in our own “between” moments. Both already in motion. Mine toward the willingness to keep moving. To keep exploring.

Manchester, February 10, 2021 — I saw this scene in Lazarus on November 10, 2025 (The walkway is to the left)

I realize I wasn’t emotional about the show. I wasn’t tearing up over Manchester. I was recognizing the person I was in that moment, the person I am now, and realizing we are the same.

Since that day, my life has unfolded in so many directions. I returned to the U.S. I earned degrees. I took a job I thought I wanted and left when I realized I didn’t. I moved to Dublin. I spent time in Paris. I learned how to leave what didn’t fit. I learned how to follow the part of myself that looks at a skyline and decides to go toward it.

And now I’m here in Vietnam.
Another first time.
Another beginning.

Vietnam is not Manchester. But it carries the same frequency of curiosity, openness, and the sense of stepping into a life with both hands free.

That version of me on the bridge wasn’t someone I outgrew. He is still here.

Still moving.
Still choosing.
Still willing to see himself in a new light.

The bridge didn’t return to show me where I was. It returned to show me who I’ve been becoming all along.

Maybe Laz’s father was right. Time isn’t linear. It loops. And sometimes it loops back to let you recognize yourself. ⁂