Today I broke up with London.

As the train moved up the hill somewhere between Clifton Hill and Northcote, I saw the Melbourne skyline surrounded by clouds and sunshine. Unsure of what it wanted to be: sunny or rainy — very Melbourne.
And it came to me, that I’m in Melbourne.

That I have been for the last three maybe four months — a quarter of a year, certainly over 120 days and at least 8 weeks.
Long enough to know that I’m in Melbourne.
At least physically.

Except, I wasn’t.

A funny thing happens to you when you leave your home country for “travel” and “adventure”.

You leave with the small possessions that simply can’t be left behind — the rest, you tell yourself; you can buy when you get there.
You never do.

And off you go, with an open mind, naïve almost, but always ready to take on whatever comes your way.

You don’t come back that way.
You come back with more luggage then when you left, most of it shippable and the majority invisible.

The experience changes you, the memories follow you and that person that left — is not the same one that comes back.

So you try to do both.
You try to live the life that you built for yourself overseas and import it to the life that you left behind.

Only to find that you’re neither living here nor there, but rather in the purgatory of nostalgia.

I’ve tried to hold on to my “London self”, with my “London life” and even my “London job” and tried to amalgamate it with a different time, a different space and a closed mind.

I didn’t come back, like I left — ready to take on whatever the world brings.
I came back with a preconceived notion of what I wanted things to be — it never works that way.

So today, I decided it was over.
Today, I broke up with London.

Left behind that London life that can only happen in London and soon that London job that left me feeling trapped, more often than it left me feeling free.

What I won’t break up with, is the people that I met and the person that travelling has made me become.

You probably don’t know this London, but you were good to me.
A firm but fair teacher that gave me maturity; knowledge, courage, confidence and the backdrop for the city where I met the love of my life.

But it’s time.

Please don’t take our breakup personally — it’s not you, it’s me.