I don’t think I’ve spent this much time with them since I was in my late teens. It was difficult to be in the same space continuously for so long, by the end. I’ve just gotten so used to having my own space that it’s hard to revert into a space and time where they clearly still perceive me to be this 18 year old child.

There’s also the added pressure of me being.. sort of the golden child, so it sometimes feels like a mask of perfectionism that I can’t take off. They also had to contend with seeing and existing around the ways in which my gay married life works in a part of the world where I no longer have to hide myself (they are evangelical Christian).

At the end of the day, I know they care for me a lot, but saying goodbye today also made it glaringly obvious that there are parts of me that have moved on way beyond them, beyond the city / country I grew up in, and any idea of a life I might have had there.

We spoke a bit about the upcoming elections back home. I’m still very involved, but the ties are fading. It’s eight years away for good this year.

Before this, I lived elsewhere in many other parts of the world but it always felt like I was going to go home to them soon after.

I don’t feel that way now, and they know it.

‘Don’t write too much stuff on the internet until you become a citizen,’ they said.

Knowing full well that because I am not allowed another (citizenship), this would mean giving up everything I have back home.

This time, it seems they are settled in the knowledge that this is my home, and where I need to be.

It wasn’t an easy thing to accept, because obviously it means that I’ll only get to see them what, less than 10 more times in the next 10 years.

And then I’ll truly have nothing back there to go home to.