Somewhere between where I came from and where I’m going.

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I left home nearly a decade ago, carrying something I didn’t have language for yet.

First stop: the capital.
I told my mom it was just for my undergrad.
She wasn’t thrilled, but I promised I’d be back after graduating.
(Spoiler: I did not.)

The capital was exactly what happens when a small-town island girl gets dropped into big-city chaos.
Loud. Fast. Overwhelming. Somehow a little sexy.

I broke out everywhere, panicked a little, adapted fast.
I got good at reading the room.
At adjusting my volume.
At becoming whatever it needed.
Just enough of myself to blend.
To be liked.
To not stand out in the wrong way.

I’d return home during the summers,
just long enough to remember, not long enough to reattach.
Present, but limited.
I liked that rhythm.

Somewhere along the way, my friends started using me as their get-out-of-jail-free card.
With me around, the rules relaxed.
Be messy. Be reckless. Just for a while.

I didn’t mind.
Not at first.

Then came the “just a few years” in finance and investment banking.
Not the desk-job kind.
The sales kind. Client dinners. Shiny outfits. Borrowed confidence.

From the outside: impressive.
From the inside: not fully in my own body.

I didn’t know it then.
This was when I stopped noticing myself.

Then the UK for a Master’s.
New country, same pattern.

The likable international student.
The social chameleon who always felt a little mysterious, a little out of reach, even to herself.

I made real friends. Real memories.
I loved being a little wild, a little lost, a little free.

After graduating, I made new promises to my mom.
“Just one more year.”

Instead, I fought hard for a work visa and stayed long enough to build an actual life in London.
Almost a decade of it.

This became my polished expat era.
On paper, everything looked great.

In real life, I was still whispering English sentences under my breath before speaking.
By the time I found the words, the conversation had usually already moved on.

I job-hopped a lot.
Not the cool, building-my-brand kind.
More like the still-don’t-know-where-I-fit kind.

I felt like a kid in oversized heels, cosplaying an adult.

Then came California.
Post-pandemic.
Post near-death.

Everything after felt like borrowed time.

The glossy version of me started to peel.
The upgrades stopped sticking.
The Instagram updates faded.
So did the shine.

I was already stepping off the performance.

What surfaced instead was the quiet, unglamorous grief I’d been shoving into a corner for years.

I chose this life.
So I told myself I didn’t get to grieve it.

Until the missed weddings and holidays piled up.
Until the babies I loved were suddenly in primary school.
Until the group chats went quiet and I realized I hadn’t been in a family photo in years.

Eventually, the check-ins stopped.

I felt like a ghost in the town that built me.
Everyone had moved on…

No one tells you about this part.

This kind of grief isn’t cinematic.
It doesn’t arrive dramatically.

It’s slow. Polite.
Almost gentle in the way it erodes you.

It shows up when I drop a reference no one gets.
When I overthink a sentence before speaking.
When something makes sense only in the place I left behind.

I used to chase difference like it was written into me, not noticing what collected in the space between who I was and who I was trying to be.

“New” used to mean growth.
Proof I was doing life right.

And even when I felt like a misfit in Asia,
people still understood me.

I miss that kind of understanding,
the kind where one glance says everything.

This is the life I chased.
And it has given me plenty.

New holidays.
A chosen family.
New ways to belong.

Still, some nights, when everything goes quiet, I wonder:

Did I choose this life,
or did it choose me?