I've Never Gone Back. Here's What That Means.

People keep asking when I'm going home. I don't know how to tell them I already am.

It's the end of May here in the United Kingdom. The evenings are getting longer, that particular British gold light that stretches past 9pm like it's trying to convince you summer is real and permanent. And somewhere in the back of my head, I'm aware that back home, Memorial Day just passed. That somebody grilled something. That somebody drove somewhere. That people I used to know went about the whole ritual of it without me.

And I didn't go.

I haven't gone. Not once. Not since we left the United States.

Most people assume that's temporary. That the ticket is just… in a drawer somewhere. That at some point I'll land at JFK or Newark International and cry the kind of ugly cry that means something important is still intact. I used to assume that too. I don't anymore. And explaining why requires more honesty than most conversations have room for.

I Haven't Been Back to the USA In 3 Years.

The People I Left Behind

I want to be careful here, because this isn't a grievance. It's just a fact.

Most of my family stayed. All of my friends stayed. And what I didn't fully understand when I left is that "staying in touch" is a story we tell ourselves to make the leaving feel less permanent. It isn't permanent in the dramatic sense — nobody sat me down and said you're done. It was quieter than that. A slower withdrawal. Fewer messages. Longer gaps. The intimacy that comes from proximity, the easy drop-ins, the knowing someone's week without having to be briefed — all of that evaporated.

And here's the thing I don't say out loud enough: that's partly on me. Not because I stopped caring, but because I couldn't keep up with two lives at once. You choose, even when you're pretending you're not choosing.

What I didn't anticipate is how much that loss would reframe the idea of going back. When I imagine returning, I'm not walking back into my old life. That life doesn't exist anymore. I'd be a visitor. And there's something about confirming that in person — standing in a place that used to be yours and feeling nothing lock into place — that I'm not sure I'm ready for.

The US I Left Isn't The US I'd Return To

I watch the news, obviously. Everyone does. And I'll be honest — the economic picture is not what it was.

The cost of a grocery run, a medical bill, a tank of gas. The quiet normalization of working two jobs and still not feeling solid. The anxiety that seems to live permanently in the voices of people from back home, this background hum that was always there, but seems to get louder and louder on the daily in the USA.

I'm not making a political argument here. I'm saying that the practical calculus of visiting — flights, accommodation, the day-to-day of just being there — feels harder to justify against a backdrop that is visibly more strained than when I left. And the United States in my head, the one I'd theoretically be returning to, is a version that may not be accurate anymore.

Distance doesn't just sharpen perception. It also freezes a picture. And I'm aware I might be holding a photograph.

Time Marches On

The Practicalities Nobody Tells You

There are things that make the idea of returning less simple than it sounds.

My partner was previously a green card holder. That status has a complicated relationship with extended periods of absence, with re-entry, with paperwork that has a way of becoming its own full-time occupation. When you've built a life somewhere else and one of you has an immigration history in the US, "popping home for a visit" stops being a casual phrase. It becomes a calculation.

And then there's the newer thing, the thing I've been watching with increasing unease: phone searches at the US border. Customs agents asking to review devices. The erosion of the assumption that your private life stays private at the point of entry. I carry my work on my phone. I carry my children's photographs on my phone. The idea of handing that to a stranger at a checkpoint — even briefly, even theoretically — introduces a friction that didn't used to exist.

These aren't dramatic obstacles. They're just real ones. And they have a way of quietly shifting "when" into "whether."

 What I Know Without Going Back

Here's what I've realized: I don't need to return to understand what I've lost. I understand it from here. I understand it in the FaceTime calls where I can see someone's kitchen and know I've never stood in it. I understand it every time something significant happens in someone's life — a diagnosis, a move, a divorce — and I find out months later on social media.

The distance is already doing its work. The grief is already present. I'm not waiting for a flight to access it.

What going back would give me is confirmation. And I think the question I'm sitting with, at the end of May, with the long light coming through the window, is whether I want to confirm the thing I already suspect.

That I don't fit there anymore. That the space I vacated filled itself in.

That I made a choice, a real one, with real weight — and I am still, in some ways, in the middle of understanding what that means.

I don't have a clean ending for this. I'm not sure I'm supposed to. 💝

If this resonates, I'd love to hear from you in the comments below. Especially if you're sitting somewhere between two worlds and not quite at home in either.