To miss a place

A few days ago I realised how much I will miss London. I have never missed a city before. As with most other things, knowing it is a temporary goodbye doesn't seem to help. It first hit me in Regent's Park, when the slow accumulation of observations made me realise it was nearly autumn. The roses were wilting, the sun hung low, muted orange leaves sweeped and rattled over the pavement.

I find my hands casually grazing against black cast iron fences, flicking between the pegs and feeling the tremor running all the way up my arm into my shoulder, like a drumming. I find my eyes straying to the sky and its fast-moving advancements of clouds. I get caught out in violent rain showers and duck under trees to keep myself from soaking to the bone and observe how others too take refuge, come to a standstill, and how we all peer at each other from underneath our trees, jealously wondering if someone else's tree is better suited as a wholly natural umbrella. And then I think, how it will not rain like this anyplace else.

I have had to come face to face yet again with the feeling of not having a home. It is a rootless, unsettling feeling. Like you're midway somewhere, knowing the places you left behind were not right and not knowing what the next stop will be like. Wondering if anywhere, any city or country, any person, any occupation will ever feel right enough. I think I can live with the uncertainty of that but I cannot live with being unhappy. That is why I have resolved to stop doing things that make me unhappy and start doing things that make me happy. That is where I am headed. And luckily, London will still be here when I get back.