I shouldn’t need to reiterate the background of this by now, but I will - thanks to emotions, an engagement, and an incredibly brilliant person, I’m currently a prospective immigrant to another country. By this time next year, I will be with my partner in Massachusetts, unlikely to leave any time soon. That’s a funny thing to think about. Obviously, it’s exciting, and wonderful, and the next twelve months are likely to be some of the most emotional and intense of my life, but as with any complex, excellent thing, it also throws up a few other feelings and thoughts.
I had a period where I had my heart set on emigrating. It probably hit a peak during 2008 - I’d come out of a long-term relationship, and as the haze cleared and I found myself at university with few friends and a startlingly clear mind, wanderlust set in. I saved and went to visit someone I had only ever met online, and spent two weeks on an American college campus that differed wildly from my own. I spent a fortnight in Morocco on the pretense of volunteering, only to find myself getting high on a rooftop, making friends with a postman-turned-teacher, sleeping under the stars and getting lost in a coastal resort town. I went on one last family holiday to Spain, where everything felt a little forced and it became clear that our tastes were too divergent for a close-knit excursion to have the same cohesion as in previous years.
And then, I travelled to Boston, and if there were any lingering doubts in my mind as to whether I was ready to fall in love again, that set them straight. The next year, I broke a trend, and went back again. In a few months, I’ll be going back for the last time, and staying - and that’s huge.
I’ve been trying to get a handle on what exactly it is that I’m leaving behind. Family is the obvious one. Our family is far from perfect, but it’s still very conventional. I have a little sister, and my mother and father are part of the small collective of 50-year-olds that have managed to get so far without a divorce. Open declarations of affection might as well be banned in this household, and it’s often displayed in the form of harsh pragmatism. I was pushed hard to find a job, not because they needed me to contribute, but to teach me to be self-sufficient. I was scorned during open displays of hysteria, because responding to it would only encourage me to lose grip on my life. A lot of care was put into my upbringing, and while my parents definitely got a few things wrong (something that becomes more apparent the older I get), they’re still two people that I love.
With my sister, it’s the sort of love that’s defined negatively - as in, the rage that flares up when I think of someone hurting her, or the pangs I get when I think of losing her. As it is, we’re content, and as most younger siblings are, she’s a lot cooler than me. She’ll be graduating university in 2014, assuming things don’t turn sour (and they likely won’t), and it’s odd to think that she’ll be learning to become an adult thousands of miles away from me.
There’s Joe, of course - my best friend, with whom I have an often-odd relationship, but he’s someone that I cherish and will miss no matter how often we can arrange visits and calls. I never saw myself as the sort of person who’d have decade-spanning friendships, but Joe’s become that. We stuck fast when I was twelve, and things haven’t changed since. When I think about leaving, it’s one of the things that hits me the hardest - for the first time, I’ll be more than an hour’s journey away from him.
And then there are others - a few friends who I see every week or so, and then the ones that I don’t. There are two friends in particular, both very different in terms of the way we interact and their own attitudes, and I only see them every few months. I’ll still miss them both, though. There are some friends where your relationship to them isn’t exactly defined by the frequency of your encounters.
There are little things, too. I should know how to drive by the time I arrive, but I won’t have a car, so the convenience of heading down the road for five minutes to grab a drink or some food will be lost. Normal staples will be reduced to curios and imports. I won’t have a guaranteed personal income. And there’s something bigger - there’s this curiously British atmosphere that discourages reactionary thinking and advocates caution, and it’s more of a fringe concept in the USA. In no other country on the planet have I seen a nation of people who demand that it’s their turn to be heard, without concerning themselves with things like expertise, or rationality, or diversity of opinion. I’ve been lucky to meet a few people who stray from that stereotype, but I’ve also met a plethora of people who don’t.
All of this sounds like I’m going to miss everything about this place, though, and that’s not true. Living here kind of feels like playing a broken record - if I was staying, even if I chose to progress, or train in some profession or other, there’d be this weird hollowness to it all. Of course, there are things you can fill your time with, but they’re more transient. Before Morocco, I was having the first of a few bouts of depression, and once the afterglow disappeared it came back twice as hard. With Arden, I get that same glow - except it’s a person I’m exploring, rather than a place, and the fact that we both want to get out and see the world means there’s no feeling that I’m tying myself down.
There are people, too, that I won’t miss. This isn’t quite as biting as it comes across - some, I lost contact with years ago, but I still face the paradox of living twenty minutes’ walk from them. With that, there’s a weird sense of discomfort that creeps in every now and then. A fortnight ago, I walked past someone who I hadn’t spoken to in around four years, and just kept going; the silent question was why did we stop talking? I could never go to a high school reunion. There are too many long-dead uncomfortable friendships too count, and more than a few rivalries and bitter endings. Most of them are still within walking distance, and while it doesn’t make me scared to leave my house, it does make me feel like I’m living in a town that my personality left a while ago.
Leaving, though, with all of its ups and downs, means that I’m currently in a weird state, veering between ecstatically happy and quietly introspective, abundantly happy and more decisive than ever and with creeping sadness on the fringes. I am expecting homesickness. I am expecting relief. I am expecting that leaving home will be so sweet that I won’t be forced to focus on the sometimes-bitter aftertaste, but I’ll still know that it’s there. I’m not sure I want to forget it. Some things hurt, but forgetting them can be a worse offence.
