Homecomings and goings
How it feels to live two lives on opposite sides of the planet
Hey friends,
I wrote this a few days ago. It was too late to make up for missing last week and felt too early for this one, but I've been in a bit of a jetlagged grief bubble since I got back to Australia on Tuesday.
As I haven't really been able to write or give words to any of my thoughts (a bit of a strange feeling for a writer, but I’m trying to roll with it), I figured I'd just share what I have and resume normal service next week.
Hopefully I'll feel a bit more normal by then, too.
This is my last letter from the road - well, technically the air. I've just waved goodbye to the motherland (and the mother, potentially for the last time) and begun the long journey back to Aus.
I feel… conflicted.
It's been a whistle-stop few weeks and although I'm excited to get back to my home and my cat (and having more time and space to write these), I'm also sad about leaving again. These trips always bring up a lot of emotions. They're equal parts rewarding, challenging, cathartic, and stressful.
I spend months trying to prepare myself for them and then weeks trying to wind down and integrate after them.
It's a lot.
It's been 11 years since I left the UK, but somehow every time I come back the reality of living two lives on opposite sides of the planet seems to hit me on a deeper level.
Now, I'm not just coming “home”; I'm also rediscovering and finding all the invisible things I inadvertently left behind when I packed up my bag and jumped on a one-way flight to Asia all those years ago.
When I left, I gave away pretty much everything I owned. I was so desperate to leave and ready to go and see the world and set out on my own that I didn't think as much about all the other intangible things I was leaving behind, too; like a home, friends, and/or family.
While I don't regret it - that wouldn't do me any favours and I'm very grateful for the life I've lived and the adventures I've had - it also hasn't been an easy journey of reconciliation to rediscover and pick up those things again, either.
Though, if I'm totally honest, that probably has a lot to do with the circumstances of it all, as well.
Before this dementia journey began, my trips back were very different.
Home was a place I could return to anytime and pick up where I left off. I'd breeze in every couple of years and spend a few days in my parents’ house visiting relatives and catching up with everyone and then breeze off again, like a leaf in the wind.
Since covid, my grandma's passing, my mum's diagnosis and descent into young-onset Alzheimer’s, and my settling down in Australia, however, things have changed a lot.
In many ways, these ideas of home and family have become more important than ever. With me now being so far away, too, it's like there's now a real element of making the most of our time together and a pressing sense of urgency whenever I do make it back.
One silver lining of the shitshow we've been on this past few years is that we've definitely become closer, with weekly zooms, Whatsapp chats, and yearly “grown up” family holidays, like the one we've just been on.
Still, as fun as they are, these trips have also shifted from easy breezy visits to weighted ones. They give us something to look forward to and bring us together, but they’re also heavy and tough at times, too.
This year's was also our first ever trip without my mum, which in itself was a relief, but one that also was tinged with guilt and sadness.
I know she wouldn't have been able to cope. She doesn't know who any of us are, can't easily deal with changes in environment and routines, would have struggled with the long car journeys, and can't walk properly or even feed herself. But it was still strange to be together as a family for the first time without her.
In many ways it felt like unlocking another sad, shitty level on this Alzheimer’s journey - especially now we have a new baby in the family, too. My mum always wanted to be a grandma, but unfortunately by the time my niece was born, she was too far gone to realise she was.
It was hard, but it was so special, too. For the first time in years, all of us were finally able show up fully in our individual roles as granddad, dad, brother, sisters, aunts, uncles, parents, and partners without all of us having to don the role of caregiver and have to worry about my mum or constantly keep an eye on her.
This year's “homecoming” was also extra strange, for another reason, too. I not only came home to a mum much further in the depths of Alzheimer’s and a new niece (it was utterly surreal to end up spoonfeeding them both on the same day), but this year's trip also took us to the Peak District, which is where I lived before I left the UK.
It was so weird to spend a week walking in the footsteps of the version of me I was before I left in 2013, and to notice how much me and my life have changed since I last called that place home.
Long before I left the UK, I spent years both running away from and towards an idea of home. I lived in something like eight houses in six years before I left, and didn't feel like I'd ever properly settle down anywhere.
Even though technically I have a home now - and it's a home I love and I'm on my way back to as I write this - I still feel like home will always be a little bit here, there, and everywhere. Like no matter where I end up, I'll always be homesick for all the other lives and places I've ever lived.
I wonder if that's just the curse of the immigrant/emigrant, too, though. If, no matter what our reasons are for leaving or arriving somewhere, we'll always feel a little torn. We'll always have to leave versions of ourselves behind and have to make visible and invisible sacrifices and choices.
I know a lot of my friends are on similar journeys, both emotionally and physically.
Some, like me, have ailing parents and are having to make tough decisions. Others have families of their own and are raising children and making lives on the other side of the planet from the people and places that raised them.
It isn't easy.
And yet, as I sit here, making my way from one world to another, unsure what awaits me or what will happen in the world that I'm leaving behind, I feel simultaneously sad, anxious, and filled with love for it all.
I love my homes: my current home, my homeland, and all the other places I've ever called home.
I love my family.
I love that all this bad stuff has brought us closer together and some good has come from it.
I love that we have these trips, but I also love that I get to live in Australia, in my little cottage between the bush and the beach with my cat.
I love that I get to write these letters to you.
I love that I get to mentor and work with incredible humans across the planet and help them as they navigate big changes and hard things.
I love that I get to work for myself and have this amazing career that would never have come about if I hadn't left in the first place.
And most of all, I love that I'm able to feel it all, even when it hurts.
This whole thing sucks in so many ways, but it hurts because it means something, and I'd much rather feel the pain and the love than not feel anything at all.
Thanks for being on this journey with me.
All my love,
Cx
Oh, Cassie, beautiful and heartbreaking. I always have so much to feel when I read your writing, in ways I am left feeling so grateful for everything. Thank you for vulnerably sharing another part of your journey. Beautiful writing. Thanks.
Love seeing the pics of you and your mom! I know exactly how to I feel about living in between. I feel it too, alllll the time. But it has positives as well, as you mentioned! ❤️