In October 2025, I packed up my 15-pound hairless Xoloitzcuintli, Troy, and the remainder of my belongings and moved from the north of England back to my hometown in California. I was exhausted, relieved, excited, heartbroken, and so hopeful.
I'd been living exterior the US for 14 years — a twelvemonth in Taiwan instruction English, followed by 13 in York. I was there for complete a third of my life. I had no idea I'd remain so long. Those years brought growth and difficult choices: a master's degree, gathering and marrying a local, and a cord of jobs unrelated to what I wanted, until I established activity I cared about. I built a existence through work, rugby, and volunteering, and could stroll the medieval streets of York and run into person I knew most days.
But underneath that friendliness, I was expanding lonelier. Every new conversation brought the identical questions: Where are you from? Why did you depart California? Will you move back? It took years to comprehend why. It was the emotion of continually being othered, continually fair outside complete belonging, no matter how difficult I'd worked to build a existence there.
What I idea I wanted versus what I really needed
I hit several dreary times and retreated inward for a few years. It was partially the pandemic, but mostly since existence came at me all at once. My marriage hit a reckoning, and between May 2023 and May 2024, I misplaced four family members, including my eldest brother. Just as I gained the bravery for a big alter to move to Wales, I learned that an aunt was facing serious health issues. I flew residence to attention for her, pausing my move. I was abruptly living between two countries. It was additionally the longest I'd spent in my hometown since 2011, and I was forced to visage what really made me happy, versus what I'd convinced myself I wanted.
I told myself California was temporary, I was fair there for a few months to assistance out. But I started hiking the hills, observing the sun set complete Monterey Bay, and spending period alongside friends, my mom, dad, sister, brother, nieces, and nephews. I began penning again following years of emotion stuck. I hadn't wanted to move rear to the US and had resisted the idea for years. But whenever I got honest alongside myself, I realized that although I can create anyplace a home, I really fair wanted to be "home home."
I made a few trips rear and forth, packing what mattered and leaving the rest. I threw myself a goodbye party, remaining a safe job alongside nothing lined up, and spent my final two and a fractional months traveling the UK and continental Europe, decision out my to-do list, grieving, and hugging group goodbye without knowing whenever I'd see them again.
There is no location akin "home home"
Back in the US, it's been hard. job hunting in, formerly again, among the toughest markets my generation has faced, relearning systems another countries create simple, and reckoning regular alongside what it method to be American. But I'm motionless hiking and observing sunsets, learning to solo camp, reconnecting alongside distant family, and construction new friendships through local imaginative and rugby communities. I'm taking highway trips throughout the West alongside my dog, beginning my eyes to places that had felt so far distant for so long.
It's not the existence I expected, and there's motionless so much I don't know. But whenever group ask why I moved rear correct now, I inform them the truth: I fair knew I needed to be here, at smallest for now. And I cognize it was the correct call, since notwithstanding everything, I'm somehow the happiest I've been in years.
