I’m sitting on a commuter train surrounded by English nattering and the smell of Cornish pasties. We are nowhere near Cornwall but, apparently, these are a snack synonymous with this overground line heading northeast out of London – or maybe just British public transport in general. My seat is facing backward and so my view of the August European sun that is just beginning to dip behind the flat, tree-lined fields seems to be slowly shrinking into a pinhole, rather than flashing by. In less than ten minutes, I will hug my mother for the first time in exactly 589 days.

I’ve dreamed so often throughout the last 20 months about what this moment would be like. It’s been a long haul of uncertainty, city-hopping, planes, trains, and sub-satisfactory sleep to get here. I find myself in a mix of anxious anticipation and surreal detachment. Is this really happening, or is it just another dream? I decide to ask my brother, Luke, who I know I just gave a huge hug to (I think I know?) when he met me at the station and is now sitting opposite me, to which he responds with his cute boyish laugh and, “Um, no Jasmine. It’s not a dream.” Even he, my brother, with who I share DNA and a childhood, in the same bedroom, with the same toys, same schools, same holidays, same memories from different perspectives, feels like part of who I am and also something of a stranger.

I notice the smeary windows of these trains, which I have ridden countless times before, appear to be made of two thick layers of some kind of plastic, as opposed to glass, and wonder if that means I’m any safer from harm were we to derail. It probably made them easier for engraving “TWAT FxCK” and “Emma 4 Jake” and all the other frantic scratches of expression I’m currently witness to, at least. As I glance out to my right, I momentarily mistake my own reflection for that of my father’s. Masked face, dirty hair tied back so it looks short, worrying about things that have never happened to me. It’s a jarring surprise but not entirely unfathomable.

It has been a decade since I have not lived in this country I call home but, despite the choice I made to remain mostly at a distance, I have never gone longer than five months without visiting, usually coming back three or four times every year. About the same amount of times my brother, who lives a mere hour away from my parents, tends to visit them too. The distance makes it different. I’ve hopped across not only a pond but a bloody massive country too. Each time I return to this place I was born and bred, I feel a bit more fond of it and a bit more like a foreigner.

My move, first to New York City, where I spent seven years in the East Village, and then even further to Los Angeles came naturally. I can’t quite pinpoint a defining moment, but my teenage years served as more of a gradual realization that I didn’t quite fit in in the place I had been put. The place was Chelmsford, Essex – a Roman town, the birthplace of radio, once comprised a cluster of quaint villages, recently officially upgraded to city status, sitting 30 miles from central London and, for the moment, still adorned with sprawling countryside and a lot of pubs. It wasn’t a shitty place, by any means, but it simply wasn’t quite enough.

The qualities I was teased for at school: extreme lanky-ness, out of proportion gangly limbs on a skinny torso, coupled with some (apparently) appropriately placed features, turned out to serve me well. At 13 years old, I started working with a top London modeling agency, and at 16, I graduated high school with decent grades and the absolute certainty I did not want to study any further. I was ready for the big, adult world of experience. And so, with Debbie Harry, Freddie Mercury, and Arthur Miller as my idols, off I went: Commuting to work in London every day, hopping all over Europe, and doing two-month-long stints alone in Tokyo and Sydney, all before I turned seventeen.

Chelmsford remained my base due to a romantic relationship I was heavily committed to and heavily stifled by. At 19, I met Manhattan for the first time, and my world opened further than I had ever imagined. It took two more years to gain the courage to escape the miserable relationship I thought I was trapped in. NYC was my true escape to freedom, where I could live any life I wanted, 24/7, and be whoever I wanted to be.

I sometimes mull over whether snobbery played a role in me moving to a different country. I haven’t ruled it out but generally feel confident it was more a sense of feeling different, needing something different, than being better than where I came from. That being said, there were many things back then which I found utterly detestable. The slangy way people spoke, their double negatives, and changing of ‘Th’ to “Ff’:

“Becky, I fought you said you ‘ad free more?”, “Nah, Stacey, I ain’t got no more! I ain’t got nuffin!”

Argh! It would drive me up the wall to sit on a bus or train and listen to that kind of conversation drivel on. And now? I come back and sit there fascinated, hanging on to every word, in awe of how it sounds almost like a different language that I mostly understand but do not speak. I say mostly because things like language and slang here in England seem to evolve at a pace I can not keep up with when being so far removed from it. The same way new businesses appear and old ones close down. New TV personalities become household names, and fields become filled with concrete and glass buildings. To those who never leave, it is growth within the same. To I who am returning, it is all new and strange.

I have held on to a handful of old and close friends in my homeland, who I try my best to see as many as possible of each time I visit. Most are in London. There is one in my home town. Even those who live in the same kind of world as I do (creatives, in fashion or art or music) leave me gasping for air as I try to keep up. In my head, my accent sounds the epitome of English, and even more so a few hours after being here in person, but I cannot count the number of times a fellow Brit has asked me where in Australia I’m from. I put it down to such frequent traveling since I was so young and affect-able, often speaking to colleagues whose first language wasn’t English, coupled with a bit of old Essex twang fighting through, but in truth, I have no idea what went wrong along the way there. Something strange must have stirred me as I’ve met countless Brits living abroad who still, after decades, sound nothing short of Michael Cane. Apparently, not I. My accent is a mess! I listen to BBC radio and watch the London news every day in order to try and retain a stronger semblance of it and become especially aware when talking to a fellow Brit. It has created something of an imposter syndrome within me – something I have experienced both in the straightforward sense and also in reverse:

Moving to America, establishing my place there as a local and a professional, living in houses I couldn’t believe I deserved, and floating in circles of people I deeply admired had its typical sensations of awe, inferiority, and foreignness. There, I made efforts to hide things like how little money I had or came from, how fascinated, and unused I really was to what I was surrounded with. Feigning my experience in adult life. I learned to rephrase everyday sentences in a way that would give me a better chance at being understood. When you have to resort to asking for H2O after repeating ‘water’ seven times, I suppose you begin to manipulate your pronunciation too. All of those little isms become automatic and multiply over time, and here I am, back in England, noticing I’m giving myself a little pep-talk before I ask someone where the toilets are or if I can throw my crisp packet in the rubbish bin, just in case restrooms, or bag of chips, or trash can accidentally slips out. I’ve forgotten how to be English, and I’m desperately trying to hide it!

This time, this train, and this “hello” holds extra significance. I have been gone for a few months short of two years, and these were no ordinary days gone by. As likely most of us did in unison, I’ve had to worry about and miss my family in a way so far out of my control that it almost became fictitious. The initial uncertainty and fear that Covid-19 brought with it, the differences in local peaks, rules, and developments brought on an entirely new level of separation and discomfort. There were times when this moment felt like it might never arise. Even in the last few weeks and days before getting here, unforeseen obstacles had to be overcome. Border restrictions were only just relaxed to allow entry without mandatory quarantine, and I came down pretty hard with the illness myself just three weeks before I was due to travel. I am filled with gratitude that not only was I able to fight it off in time, but even more so that I am returning to a family that still exists in the same world as me. I know for so many, this is heartbreakingly not the case.

I am reentering a changed place. It has never once been the same, like I also, will not. I might never quite catch up. I might never know exactly what or where “home” is but, as I continue to seek it desperately, I hope I always remember well what it once was.