I came home, but my heart remains across the Atlantic
I’ve always thought that London possessed a certain romantic quality. Maybe it’s in the rainy days, maybe it’s the lovely British lady telling me to mind the gap between the train and the platform. Maybe it’s in the busyness of the high streets, or the red double-decker buses traveling to and fro. Maybe it’s the fact that everyone always looks like they have somewhere to be, or maybe it’s the charm I find in British vernacular. Whatever it is, I truly believed that just being there, standing there, would inherently mean I’d feel that romance too. But after traveling abroad and living in the heart of London for a semester, I found that the city I have idolized my entire life is so much more than those trivial things, and that feeling isn’t passive. London is not just a city on a map to me. It is a scrapbook of the places I’ve been, the people I’ve loved and the version of myself I found along the way.
Jan. 7, 2026. That’s when I hugged my parents goodbye and went to bag-check at O’Hare International Airport. I placed my suitcase on the scale, and I can remember the exact thoughts that polluted my mind: This is a horrible idea. I’m not cut out for this. The self-doubt of navigating a foreign country by myself was deafening, and the imposter syndrome I felt in that moment was suffocating. My yearning, then, was for a city I barely knew. Leaving was brash and naive, but it turned out to be the best brash, naive decision I’ve ever made.
After a while, I wasn’t navigating on my own anymore. I met people and established relationships I couldn’t even begin to express my gratitude for. Perhaps they are the ones who gave me the courage to keep calm and carry on. I opened my heart to them and kept it open, such a foreign but beautiful thing. I learned to approach people I might have once been too afraid to, and in doing so, found some of the most joyous lights of humans who made my world a whole lot warmer during the cold months.
The city also taught me to enjoy my own company. I have always played well by myself, but being alone was never something I particularly looked forward to. In London, I cherished it. Afternoons spent wandering a new borough alone, on my own time, finding something to discover on the most mundane of days, are some of the memories I hold dearest.
Everywhere I went seemed to have a story. The punks of Camden, the history tucked into the streets of Soho, Brixton and Brick Lane, the nightclubs scattered throughout Mayfair, where aristocrats once gathered for lavish balls. I loved knowing that the places I passed through had belonged to so many lives before mine. It made me feel beautifully small.
I found such comfort in feeling like a speck on a floating rock. All around me were people whose lives had begun in places I had never been, carrying stories I couldn’t even begin to imagine. And, for a little while, we were all there together: crossing the same streets, waiting for the same tubes, finding our own ways through the same city. I belonged to that. I loved belonging to that, even if just briefly. I loved knowing there was so much beyond the little life I had known, and I feel so much pride that I had the courage to be a part of it.
So, dear London, I feel it’s important you know that I miss you, most ardently.