Home has morphed into something else, it is a different thing for me now; it carries a new meaning. It has changed with no warning, it did not have the decency to announce its moment of transition suddenly but instead decided to appear in a moment of revelation and beg the question, how did you not notice before?
Recently I returned home and I have to catch myself on whether that implies my trip to Ireland or my journey back to London. Both, I suppose, are as a true as each other. But in the sense that one has always been my home, one has always been the first place that would come to mind when I think of it as an identity, I am beginning to think that my idea of home is starting to shift to another thing and I am uncertain how to feel. I have evolved so much in the little time since I’ve emigrated and my hometown has changed too, the grass beneath my feet introducing itself as a new path, the whispering wind carrying a different tune in its song. Its transformation is one that has pushed in an opposite way to mine.
I returned home to find my longest friends speaking in a language of mortgages I do not understand. A language that feels as foreign to me as Japanese. I returned home to find the bed I’ve spent so many years growing in a different shape to the one I carved myself into. How can that be? It is the same bed; it is the same as it has always been. Except, it no longer is. The weight of its meaning has changed. Which means then, as a fact, that I am not the same as I was. London has sunk its teeth into me and I have moulded myself willingly to its pace and its rhythm. How joyous, how terrifying. I open my mouth and sing its song. I go home and cannot fathom having to wait an hour between each bus to Dublin—sometimes two on a Sunday—because I have gotten so used to being able to leave my London doorstep and being spoiled for choice on getting to wherever it is I desire.
I have shed the skin of my hometown without realising, becoming so accustomed to my new city and my new home that I have forgotten how to entirely exist in the same place I have existed for the majority of my life. A rebirth, a betrayal, torn between the two. I believed that both places could exist as one and the same, and though both can exist as two places I call home, both are not equal. They sit on a balancing scales but one side will always be heavier.
That is not to say that it does not feel like home anymore, because I don’t think that is something that can ever go away, not truly. I miss my family and friends and dogs and think of them often. If anything, moving away has made me ten times more patriotic, as if I have to force myself to maintain my culture. I practice Irish daily on Duolingo despite moaning about it constantly when we were made to study and use it in school. I advocate more for Irish fiction, I crave for a scorching weekend in Stradbally and the messiness that Electric Picnic brings. I bought a Guinness coaster from a trinkety tourist trap in town to bring back to London and I don’t even drink Guinness, I don’t even like the thing.
But in moving to London, I have curated my own new family, my own community. There is love for me here in the city in abundance, just as there is at home in Ireland. There is a thrilling feeling at the thought of losing myself in this city’s embrace. I walk in the street with an assurance that this is exactly where I’m meant to be. It is alluring to be enraptured by this city’s freedom—it is a city that is so terribly easy to love. A city that can take time to settle and to find your place; a city that can chew you up and spit you out; a city in which you need the drive and ambition to keep up with.
But it is also a city of opportunity, of community, of identity. It is a city that feels unbearably rewarding when it finally feels like home.
Hey Ross, this is great -- happy to hear that London has been so welcoming for you. I've been thinking a lot about home and whether Dublin is always going to be that for me, so reading this has resonated. I'm writing my own piece on this kind of topic. Is it okay if I include a link to this piece? I'd like to mention a line or two you've written.
moving soon and feeling this immensely 🥹💗 what a real portrayal of the weight of a new city, bringing you closer to your past, bringing you closer to yourself