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 used to be exhausted, relieved, excited, heartbroken, and so hopeful.
I would been residing outdoors the US for 14 years — a yr in Taiwan instructing English, adopted by 13 in York. I used to be there for over a 3rd of my life. I had no thought I would keep so lengthy. These years introduced progress and laborious selections: a master’s degree, assembly and marrying a neighborhood, and a string of jobs unrelated to what I needed, till I discovered work I cared about. I constructed a life via work, rugby, and volunteering, and will stroll the medieval streets of York and run into somebody I knew most days.
However beneath that friendliness, I used to be rising lonelier. Each new dialog introduced the identical questions: The place are you from? Why did you allow California? Will you progress again? It took years to grasp why. It was the sensation of at all times being othered, at all times simply outside full belonging, regardless of how laborious I would labored to construct a life there.
Courtesy of Rebecca Mendoza.
What I assumed I needed versus what I really wanted
I hit some darkish occasions and retreated inward for a number of years. It was partly the pandemic, however largely as a result of life got here at me . My marriage hit a reckoning, and between Might 2023 and Might 2024, I misplaced 4 relations, together with my eldest brother. Simply as I gained the braveness for an enormous change to maneuver to Wales, I realized that an aunt was dealing with serious health issues. I flew dwelling to take care of her, pausing my transfer. I used to be out of the blue residing between two international locations. It was additionally the longest I would spent in my hometown since 2011, and I used to be compelled to confront what really made me joyful, versus what I would satisfied myself I needed.
I informed myself California was momentary, I used to be simply there for a number of months to assist out. However I began mountaineering the hills, watching the solar set over Monterey Bay, and spending time with associates, my mother, dad, sister, brother, nieces, and nephews. I started writing once more after years of feeling caught. I hadn’t needed to maneuver again to the US and had resisted the thought for years. However once I acquired trustworthy with myself, I spotted that though I could make wherever a house, I actually simply needed to be “dwelling dwelling.”
I made a number of journeys backwards and forwards, packing what mattered and leaving the remainder. I threw myself a goodbye celebration, left a safe job with nothing lined up, and spent my final two and a half months touring the UK and continental Europe, closing out my to-do checklist, grieving, and hugging individuals goodbye with out understanding once I’d see them once more.
There is no such thing as a place like “dwelling dwelling”
Again within the US, it has been laborious. job hunting in, as soon as once more, one of many hardest markets my technology has confronted, relearning techniques different international locations make easy, and reckoning every day with what it means to be American. However I am nonetheless mountaineering and watching sunsets, studying to solo camp, reconnecting with distant household, and constructing new friendships via native artistic and rugby communities. I am taking highway journeys throughout the West with my canine, opening my eyes to locations that had felt so distant for thus lengthy.
It is not the life I anticipated, and there is nonetheless a lot I do not know. However when individuals ask why I moved again proper now, I inform them the reality: I simply knew I wanted to be right here, at the very least for now. And I do know it was the suitable name, as a result of regardless of every part, I am one way or the other the happiest I have been in years.
