(That was always going to be the title.)
This essay, or whatever it is, has been both an inevitability and an impossibility for five long years. I’ve written and rewritten it in my head countless somnolently-challenged nights these last seven months, from that day I learned that Tom really finally actually was going to get his green card. That I could go home.
Now it’s 12:12 am on a Thursday night, or technically a Friday morning, and I’m still in Australia and nothing feels real, both in the literal sense that I’ve been struggling with depersonalization derealization disorder for the past ten months or so since it was maybe triggered by a minor concussion or maybe just anxiety as usual (lol) and also that it doesn’t feel real that I’m moving back home, to New York City, in three short weeks.
I honestly don’t know what to do with myself.
Here I’m going to pull a little trick called “inserting something I mostly wrote at an earlier date when I wasn’t delirious with tiredness and on a quarter of a temazepam” and see if anyone notices. Maybe I’ll edit out this semi-embarassing intro later. Maybe this is just what I’m like now.
I moved to New York at the age of 20, after a false start earlier that year attending a university I couldn’t afford and six months spent stewing in resentment in my northern California hometown. Upon arrival at the apartment my friend’s mom graciously let me crash at for a few weeks on the Upper East Side, I immediately got a stomach illness and needed to lie down and take antibiotics for a few days, delaying the start of my barely-paid internship that was my excuse to move back.
Thirteen years later, I’m about to move back there, again, this time from one of the furthest locations from the American east coast you can get to.
I didn’t leave New York on purpose. It left me. (That’s dramatic, but it sounds right.) My partner’s health and visa limitations made leaving the best option in 2018, but neither of us thought we would be gone so long. We didn’t think there’d be a global pandemic that would trap us in these borders and inside our home. We never really know what’s going to happen, it turns out.
Leaving the city truly broke my heart. I grieved the life I lived there for years. I despaired and hated my new home unfairly. Melbourne is a nice place, I realized with time. But it still isn’t home.
Now I’m going back, and I am overwhelmed. I’m not as young as I was. I’ve grown up. I know how to make poached eggs now. We have all survived a lot of shit, unless we didn’t.
There have been plenty of moments (there still are) where I wonder if we should return. Why go back to a country that is so fucked up, that treats people so badly?
But NYC is the only place that makes me feel real. I hope that’s still the case.
I can’t wait. I’m so afraid, and I’m so tired and confused. I need to go to sleep. See you soon.
No reason to deny that this is A LOT and by writing this you've made that acknowledgment to yourself. New York has changed. New York is the same. New York will be happy to have you and Tom back. Good luck over the next few weeks!