I knew that when the summer started and I packed up and put my life in DC on hold for a few months that the time would fly by. When I got on that flight to London from DC at the beginning of the summer, I knew that before long, it would be time to head back. I knew that during that first summer weekend in London when I went to the farmers market and sat in a sunny park, that what felt like an endless stretch of time in front of me would be gone in a blink. And here I am, sitting here getting ready to spend my last final days in London before I head back to DC. This goodbye to London feels more monumental than usual, I think because it will probably be around a year before I come back here next. So, as Taylor Swift says, So Long, London.

This summer in London held a lot of expectations for me. I wrote about it in a blog post a while back, but I had hoped that this summer would be one of frolicking in the sun and spending endless amounts of time doing my favorite things like reading, running, and of course, eating. Quickly the summer caught up with me, and I realized that there were other things on my plate that took up time and unfortunately the terrible British summer weather got in the way of those frolicking plans. 

However, I still made a lot of lasting memories in my final summer of freedom. I went to Spain and stayed in a random cottage in the middle of nowhere, I went to Slovenia for the first time and swam in (what’s in my opinion) the most beautiful lake in the world, I went to Amsterdam for the first time and fell in love with the city, I went to the Olympics with friends, I went to Wimbledon for the first time, and I went back to my childhood vacation spot that I haven’t been back to since I was in high school. It’s been a summer that I’ve been very lucky to have, filled with adventures that I’m going to remember for a long time. 

It’s also been a summer of realizations. The main realization being that going home will no longer be the same. Not in a dramatic “I don’t fit in anymore, I can’t go home” way. But truly, I’m a different person and I can’t fit neatly into the lines that I did before I moved to DC and decided to stay there. It’s a realization that I didn’t make earlier because I hadn’t had the opportunity to; for years, I would come back to London for a maximum of a week at a time and try and fit every possible activity and social event into those days – it didn’t leave much time for deep pondering and realizations. However this summer, I had a lot of time to myself and more time to attempt to live out the life that I did before I moved. It made me realize that not everything fits just like it used to. Not only have I grown up quite a bit which means that I like to spend my time in different ways than when I last lived here, but I’ve also developed my own views and preferences over the years which don’t exactly fall into the same neat boxes as everyone else who I grew up with.

It’s kind of a scary thing to come to this realization. It can sort of feel a bit isloating and it made me second guess myself and wonder if I’ve been making the wrong decisions if it’s so hard for me to fit in in the place where I used to so easliy. Was I wrong to decide to try and pursue moving to the US long term? A place where I don’t even know if I can stay permanently because I’m not a citizen here? It’s not like it’s easy to move to America so sometimes I find myself wondering if I’m forcing something that just doesn’t fit.

Now, when people ask me where home is to me, I think I’ve come to the point where I’d have to say DC. It feels as though my current life and my key developmental years were spent in DC; my friends, the school I went to, and my work are all in DC and that’s where I currently feel like is home to me. As much as I love London and identify as being from there, there’s absolutely no way I could see myself living there right now. So, I’m sort of in this limbo where I feel like where I end up living in the next few years will define where feels most like home to me.

And so as I take my flight back to the US, it seems like a symbolic trip. I’m heading back as an adult getting ready to start the postgrad work life and with lots of hope and excitement for the life that I’m trying to carve out for myself there. It feels as though I’m starting my adult adventure of figuring out where I belong. And while that terrifies me a little bit, I can say that another realization that I’ve come to this summer is that I’d much rather embrace that scary feeling than live in a space where I didn’t have to take that risk but didn’t feel like I was living out my dreams. So here we go embarking on that adventure and rest assured I’ll be taking this blog along with that!

See you next week,