Becoming An Island: Returning Home While Moving Away

I FaceTimed my parents yesterday, as we have done many times before. It was 10pm here, in London. Through the screen, they sat together eating oysters from a can, basking in the Ontario sun at 5pm. We talked about our weekends, the heat, and how the next time we were going to see each other was in October – in Japan. In the background, my childhood cat pawed at the screen door and my brother finished packing his bag to head back to Toronto. It was the closest our family — a tangled web woven through plane rides and phone calls — had been in months. We hung up the phone and I sat in silence for a moment, in my little flat on the other side of the Atlantic. I felt like an island, kilometres and oceans away from the people who I have known the longest.

When I first arrived in Berlin two years ago, sandwiched between my emotional parents, it rained every day for a week. Still, we ate traditional German meals, toured the Berlin Wall (which my dad filmed in its entirety – all 1.3 kilometres of it), and unpacked my complete bedroom’s worth of IKEA purchases into my new apartment. We hugged for longer than usual, and they left. I was thrilled, at first. It was my life’s dream to live in Europe; to plant my feet firmly and independently somewhere far away. I exhaled, walked around my new neighbourhood mouth agape, and called my closest friend that same night in tears.

Suddenly alone, I confessed that for the first time, I felt like my own personal island. He, who had also just moved across the world, said he felt the exact same way. We stayed on the phone for hours that night.

There we were, two islands separated by vast waters, yet somehow holding hands under the sea.

Naturally, the emotional experience of moving abroad is turbulent. While the first few weeks are often romantic and exciting, the lure of a new place inevitably dwindles. A building you once took photos of in passing becomes the grocery store you visit weekly, and the public transit that once amazed you becomes chronically delayed. The magic fades.

Instead, you are met with the unavoidable, real-life, difficult-to-solve problems that come with living in an unfamiliar place. In Berlin, these issues almost exclusively involved the fact that I spoke absolutely no German. I was left to frustratingly Google translate everything, from the type of meat that I was buying to the train I was taking. When I moved to London a year later, I began to adjust yet again to an entirely new set of real-life, difficult-to-solve problems: a commute that quadrupled in length, the exchange rate on the Canadian dollar, fast walkers (without a dedicated side of the sidewalk), and hardest of all, British humour.

In any new city, it often feels as though you don’t speak the language at all. I felt like a small child knocking on the glass of a fish tank, trying to capture anyone’s attention.

Two years and two moves later, I have accumulated and lost many pieces of myself in pursuit of my future. These are the honest reflections I’ve made along the way about moving away from home.

As an island, you are tasked with building your own infrastructure to survive; community being the main power supply. Making new friends in your 20s is awkward, but essential. You meet new people in new places, bringing your entire life’s shadow with you, and hope that something will click. At times it does, but more often it doesn’t. I had never quite understood the value of having people who knew me well, and who I knew well, until I was retelling the nuanced intricacies of my previous 24 years to a stranger over coffee. To not have to explain yourself, for someone to simply understand, is a privilege. In the pursuit of building my power supply, I realized that my community is scattered — some on the phone on the other side of the ocean, others like my newest friend from a dance class — but it is my community nonetheless, and I need it.

The infrastructure of your island cannot be built in a day. It takes time to lay the roads and bridges that will support you, often stumbling into a job that you don’t like or a mouldy flat along the way. Settling into your new life, wherever it is, goes far beyond unpacking your bags. Creating meaningful relationships, finding a doctor, and memorizing your new transit routes are all a part of the lengthy, tedious process. In many ways, I feel as though I am still landing, still building.

The fear of being forgotten — of letting go and being let go of — is natural. As my life continued abroad, so did the lives of the many people that I knew before I left. Through FaceTimes and Instagram stories, I became a spectator of the life I once lived. As I watched my roommates of 4 years move into a two-bedroom apartment without me, I felt like I was becoming less important. And I was terrified.

With this, I learned that the most important people will never, and could never, forget. Instead, the definition of closeness simply evolves. While some relationships drift over time, many grow stronger and more resilient. These relationships, once a product of proximity, become intentional connections. It is a different type of closeness when it requires effort to remain close. As I found myself grasping for familiarity, there they were, always on the other side of the phone. I wondered how it was possible that I felt more connected to my people now thousands of miles away, than I had when we lived under the same roof, in the same city.

The privilege of having a home to leave in the first place is easily forgotten. Having a home, having the opportunity to leave, and equally being able to return, provides a cushion of self-assurance that is often overlooked. At times when I felt lost, orbiting nowhere and grounded to nothing, I was reminded of the world that was built for me, and how fortunate I was to be able to return to it. No problem that I faced in my new home would take away the home that was always there, ready to catch me.

Amidst the chaos, you always find your way back to yourself. It’s easy to reflect on the experience of moving away and think of everything that has gone wrong (a night in a German emergency room, dragging a suitcase down seven flights of stairs and breaking the handle, falling asleep on the train). However, the reality is that somehow, despite whatever odds, you always manage. In doing so, you learn to rely on yourself and celebrate each victory with pride, knowing that it is entirely yours. You build the world around you brick by brick, and sit quietly at the top with yourself.

In the end, moving away has simultaneously broadened my horizons and narrowed my priorities. It has shown me everything that the great, unknown world has to offer and allowed me to choose so much of what I already have. It is a messy feat, a turbulent exercise in trial and error, and a tender departure. Friendships fade, birthdays are missed, and the chaos lingers. It is also the opportunity of a lifetime, as you make friends that you feel you have known forever, rely on yourself more, and grow closer to those you left behind. In many ways, I returned home, only after moving away.

I am still an island. We all are, I guess. Only now, on days where I am engulfed by the vast, empty sea around me, I am reminded that somewhere beneath the surface, I belong to a tangled web of people and places all holding each other together.