the other side

I have been processing a lot of grief lately as summer comes to a close. 2026 was not the year I imagined it to be, yet it has been a year of revelation at to where I see myself in the years to come. Today I was wrestling with the following question: 

How do you grieve a home that never truly felt like home no matter how hard you tried? 

Growing up as third-culture/cross-cultural I have learnt to code switch between my various personas through the spaces I have learnt to adapt and belong to, and perhaps as a result in the last few years, I have come to reflect on what it means to be authentic in who you are, and who you want to be, and I realized because of my nomadic upbringing, I became what my environment demanded of me, and not who I actually wanted to become. 

As I unlearn and relearn the person I thought I was to the person I am and/or want to be, I have come to realize that perhaps my question and wrestle of what is home, was less about a physical space, but an internal, intrapersonal being of who I wanted to exist as. 

My last 14 years in Toronto, have somehow taught me more than I can imagine. It was the social experiment I had in learning all the things many people take for granted: 

How to stay. 

How to build community.

How to love. 

How to grow attachment.

How to be. 

How to belong.

When I first moved to Canada, it was to run away from a past that hurt and hurt me. It was to run away from relationships that were complicated and messy. I fell apart emotionally and psychologically. I was in the emergency room twice within the span of 6 months out of exhaustion, fear and restlessness. Yet I wrestled, because I knew I needed to unpack the boxes that I had kept pushed and locked away in the corners of my mind. Over time, and through trial and error, I found myself again and I grew into discomfort and found gratitude in the process of becoming. Overtime the voices became softer, and the fog became clearer, and I began to recall and remember the faint whispers of joy once again, and the excitement of the sun as it shone. 

Yet, there was something off that I could not shake. 

I’ve been thinking about the analogy of my time wearing Toronto as wearing a pair of shoes that was one size too small. It still fit for the most part, yet over time, I realized I was bending over to accommodate myself to fit in the shoe, not realizing what else I was trying to do to “make it work.” 

Until I realized I didn’t have to. 

There was nothing wrong with the space I have come to make for myself in this city, from my routines to my community and people. I continue to tell everyone that I have loved every moment I have had in this city, good, bad and ugly. Yet I have never truly felt that I could be myself and it wasn’t until my last trip home, that I realized that I was perhaps running away from a part of me that I had left behind in Asia some 14 years ago. Toronto will always be the city I became, and the space where I learnt to come home to myself. It wasn’t till after the pandemic that I realized this perhaps, that I discovered behind the code switching the heart of who I truly wanted to exist as and be. 

I have come to realize for a while now that I have entered a season of finishing and completion that perhaps a series of personal and life changes have kicked the final act to its close. It took me a while to admit it to myself, and I only did it after a slight trigger sent me spiralling after work, that I needed to find the courage to grow strong enough to choose to leave a city that has taught me how to be safe. 

The past 14 years have taught me to grow into my feet, and perhaps it is time to walk. Perhaps this is the 100%, after weeks of wrestle to “what if” to “maybe yes”, and now “yes I am going to do it scared” - the decision to fully commit and submit to the idea of leaving Toronto indefinitely.

I was talking to my therapist a few weeks back about my life being a puzzle piece of random knickknacks, but he challenged me to see it as a collage and scrapbook of memories and encounters. I have come to realize in the years of code-switching, I no longer want to exist in the exhaustion of what environments demand of me. I want to exist as me in the environments that contain me. 

Perhaps the journey in my next 14 years, is integrating the various parts of me so that I can exist within a life that is a sum of my parts, and that perhaps Toronto has served its purpose - that it has stopped being the space I needed it to be. 

Back in 2018 I ran back to Asia anxious and exhausted, ready to give up at a life that I couldn’t be bothered to work through. Yet, through prayer, wise counsel and a gentle (read: forceful) nudge from the Holy Spirit, I found myself returning back to finish a work that I believe was started when I first moved here in 2012. Ironically that was 6 years from when I first moved to the city, and now I find myself writing this 6 years from when I chose to return. I knew I came back to serve a higher purpose, but I didn’t realize that that purpose came through a reconciliation between my past and my future both spiritually and emotionally. My move towards home, could perhaps be that final physical push towards reconciliation with family. 

I had a moment a while back in a church service where I was reminded that the place I was called to serve and build, was not necessarily the place I would be called to plant myself in completely, but perhaps a place where I needed to learn obedience and repentance in the Lord, and ultimately pave the way for a new season whatever it would look like. It would be home until He called me otherwise to leave, and that until then I would need to be rooted in and faithful to. 

Two years ago, I felt the nudge as if to say that my exit was coming up, and that I needed to prepare my heart accordingly. Three months ago, I finally started having the conversation. Last week, I felt it shift, as relationships around me changed, and I realized that doors were beginning to close in ways I did not expect them to. 

My move back to Asia will not necessarily be an exploration or reintegration of who I am as the sum of my parts. I know that my belonging is found in Christ, yet what does that look like tested in an environment that requires reconciliation. What does being a Child of the Most High, look like in a space where it requires me to walk out my faith in fear and trembling? Yet, it is a reintegration and restoration of the parts of me, that until now I have tried to keep separate. Perhaps to dismantle the binary that arose through continual code switching. How can I collage and reintegrate the person I was, into the person I am, and the person I want to be, without feeling like I am running while anchored in who I have been called to be in faith. 

Perhaps the next 6-8 months will be my love letter to a city that has served me well. The months where I will chase love, and community harder, because I want to pass on what was given to me and grow with the gratitude that what I am leaving behind is something worth celebrating. I have never been one to go well, and perhaps that is the final assignment to leave with a heart full of love, at what I have got to accomplish and the stories I have got to live, just by choosing to exist in the tension of grace and gratitude. I am reminded to not linger too much in the bitterness and the sorrow of everything to come, but to exist in this. To not indulge the flesh but to serve humbly my community here, with however much longer I have, as I have always tried to - in love.