Can You Still Call Somewhere Home After You Leave?

I had another thought after my recent Toronto trip, and especially given that my 10th anniversary of moving to LA is coming up very soon (expect a big essay for that one!). Are you still allowed to call a place your home, even if you don’t live there anymore? I’m not sure this one is going to relate to everybody, for anyone who has moved away from where they grew up, I’m sure this has crossed your mind.

For me, this recent trip was my first to Toronto since Christmas… about 8 months. While I’ve been away for longer (thanks green card rules), it still felt long enough that I was yearning for it. The time spent with family, friends, and just taking in all the things that used to comprise my daily life. 6 days is how long we were there, and then we eventually packed our suitcases and went home.

Except, I was already home? That’s the strange part. Canada has always been home, and Los Angeles is where I live… but somewhere over those 10 years, Los Angeles has become home too. I’m now leaving home, to visit home which absolutely sounds ridiculous as I type this, but it’s something I feel every time I take this trip.

Everything Is Familiar, but You Are Different

There’s an instant comfort that happens every time I go home given the history. I know my way around, I understand the references, and I can connect all the restaurants & neighbourhoods to times in my life. Certain places remind me of who I was with, what I was doing at that point in my life, and the dreams I had at that time. All of this familiarity makes me feel as though nothing has changed, but there are subtle reminders that almost everything has: businesses disappearing, a friend has children now, Cliff and Janis are older now, my old neighbourhood looks completely different, and friends aren’t there anymore.

The places remain recognizable, while the life I had slowly becomes inaccessible. That’s what makes these trips emotionally complicated for me, because while I can return to the geography, I can’t completely return to that life.

The Place That Built Me vs. the Place Where I Built Myself

Canada contains the majority of the story of how I became the person behind this screen typing. My childhood, the teenage years, and the young adult with dreams of making it big. All of those Tyrell’s are rooted in Canada. Los Angeles contains something completely different.

It contains the person I chose to become once I was able to build a life independently. My career skyrocketed here. I bought my first home here. I met Isa here. Cosmos and Aslan are here. A lot of my adult life has been spent here, where I experienced incredible highs, very painful failures, and everything in between. There’s a version of Tyrell rooted here that the other versions could have never imagined. What’s complicated is that neither place feels lesser than the other.

Canada built me, Los Angeles is where I built myself. I think that’s why leaving one creates a strange feeling of homesickness for the other. When I’m away from LA, I start to miss my routine, our cats, and my day-to-day life. When I’m away from Canada, I really miss my friends & family and wish I didn’t have to take a 5 hour flight to see them.

No matter what, there’s always a yearning for something on the other side.

Leaving Changes the Relationship

I think one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from moving away is that you lose the ability to participate casually. When you live nearby, you can spontaneously have dinner with friends because someone texts you that afternoon. I can go and visit my family for an afternoon because it’s not that far and I had nothing going on anyway. I am able to participate in the ‘small’ events because I’m around for them.

When you live thousands of miles away, visits become extremely concentrated. Ask Isa, every trip is jam-packed with plans as I try to fit a month's worth of connections into less than a week. The upside to this is that I get to be more intentional with who I see and what I do… like our sibling day in Niagara Falls. It probably happened because my time in Canada is scarce, so it’s treated more valuably.

The problem is the other side of ‘ordinary’ life that I miss out on. The dinners I don’t get to attend. The birthdays I’m not around for. The small moments that nobody thinks to tell me about because in the moment, they don’t seem that important. These are the things that can make it tough living so far away. Every time I go home and see people, I realize that their lives have continued to move on while I was gone (as they should) but it still stings.

Maybe Home Can Be Multiple Places

I think the younger version of me thought that I had to choose a side. Am I a Canadian living in America? Am I a man from Toronto (or a man in the 6ix as this blog used to be called)? Can I consider myself an Angeleno now given it’s been 10 years and I’ve lived here longer than I did in Toronto? Ultimately, which place am I supposed to call home?

I’ve stopped trying to pick, as I think it’s truly unnecessary. Home isn’t a title that only one place can hold, because I think all of us can admit that different places probably contain different versions of it. Canada feels like home because I can sit with the people who knew me before most of the things I now use to define myself existed. Los Angeles feels like home because it contains the majority of the life that I’ve spent a decade choosing and building. No matter what, going back to Canada doesn’t erase the life I created here and coming back to LA doesn’t make Canada any less important.

If anything, leaving has made me appreciate both more. That’s the strange consequence for those of us building a life far away… some part of us will probably always be missing something. Although, the more positive way to look at that is that we’ve been lucky enough to build a life where there are multiple places that we’re excited to return to.

So if you’ve been building your life somewhere else, this is something for you to think about. Maybe home isn’t where you were born, and maybe it isn’t where you sleep. Maybe home is any place where enough pieces of your life have accumulated that leaving makes you miss them.