Two years seemed such a long time.

Two years ago was a Monday. With the time difference, I was likely sat on the lip of the bed in the spare room of the home I grew up in. It would have been something around 6:00am, and my parents were about to drive me south to Heathrow. I’d spent the day before in their company, doing nothing specific but enjoy being with them.

I had lived in London for almost a full year. Prior to that, just seven doomed months in Birmingham after I graduated.

Two years seemed such a long time.

The week before I had said goodbye to dear friends in London. They sang to me in the street outside the pub. One played the tune on a little keyboard. It was sad, but happy.

Crushing clothes into my case for the early morning flight, I truly believed that I would be returning home after two years.

I had never considered living abroad until the opportunity was presented. “Just popping out for an adventure!” is how I plan to portray the event in a later dramatization of my life. “Do you want anything from the shop?” The reality wasn’t so blasé, but perhaps comparatively naïve.

Two years seemed such a long time.

At moments like this I look back and I wonder—had my temporal comprehension been a little more mature—if I would’ve had the balls to make the move at all. If I’d realized that I’d be away from people indeterminately as I am, would I have been too terrified?

This little adventure has thrown up a lot. Most taken in stride; not everything met so well; some I may as well have been on a different planet. But here I am: Contemplative, exploratory calm, 6000 miles from England at a time when I once thought I would be all done, satisfied, adventured, packed up and ready to go home. Really.

Instead the very idea of home is questionable when I sit in a room I’ve made my own and lived in longer than anywhere else since childhood. The definitions of nationality and citizenship are eroding, too; the very tenets of identity. But that’s a different matter I’m in no hurry to conclude.

What I will conclude with certainty is that I no longer hold the burden of what constitutes ‘such a long time.’