last week i told a new friend that i'm from Toronto. that's only sort of true but i've never stopped saying it; it's not my hometown but it is the place where i grew up in all the ways that matter—Toronto is the place where i learned to fall in love, get my heart broken and put it back together again, ride a bicycle, host a coffee tour which is really just an excuse to have a party in broad daylight, quit my job, build a startup from the ground up, make magic happen with my own two hands. it is still the only city i could throw a party in and have enough friends come for it to not be sad, though that's becoming less true these days. it is still the only city which feels like home when i step off the airplane.

i started to write that i came home recently but then caught myself because these days the word home is ambiguous. Toronto is home whenever i'm in on the west coast but my actual real hometown is home whenever i'm in Toronto. San Francisco has never been home to me in the entire two years i've lived there, though there was a moment flying into SFO when i almost believed that it could've been. what i mean is, i came back to Toronto recently and sat down with S in one of those shiny new upscale food halls which are popping up all over the city, and after the small talk, he told me that he had made up his mind to leave Toronto—because he has lived here his whole life, and even though he could see himself here forever, he has to choose it, and he couldn't do that if he had never lived anywhere else—and i understood immediately, because Toronto has my whole heart—and yet.

when i moved to California i said that i was going to spend two years in the United States and come back; i told my parents this with a lot of certainty, actually—whether that was for me or them, now i'm not so sure. well, it's been two years, and it turns out that i can't come back, actually, but i also can't stay in San Francisco. i love all sorts of things about the west coast—the proximity to the mountains, the ocean, the desert, to Asia. i love everything about California except for living in San Francisco. i was so cold and so lonely in San Francisco that i had convinced myself that i was doomed to be friendless forever, and then i came to New York City and made more friends in two weeks than i'd made in two years in San Francisco and fell in love with the city instantly, with the same immediacy as Brooklyn in September the first time around. i always knew that California wasn't forever but it was never about whether i was ready to move back to Toronto; it was about whether i was ready to leave California, and i wasn't ready, but i am now.

last week i came home (okay, but this time i do mean home) and told my dad that i'm moving back to the east coast. the certainty with which i said it made it real; i'm not sure that i was absolutely certain until i said the words out loud. two cross-continent moves in two-and-a-half years feels deranged but it also feels correct. this week i told a friend that i made up my mind to stay in New York and they said, okay, but you can't keep booking flights to San Francisco and leaving for months at a time. they're right, but that scares me, too—to not be able to escape my problems by booking a cross-continent flight. i've wondered if i am bad at love but to be honest what i'm bad at is staying. love, in fact, comes easy to me—someone once complained that everything i write makes it sound like i'm a little bit in love with all of my subjects but maybe that's because i am; maybe i believe that anyone who wants to write about love has to be openhearted enough to be instantly, entirely moved by it. i say that i spent two years unsuccessfully trying to fall in love with California but now i don't think that's true—i loved it from the very beginning, actually; i've just always known that it was impermanent, and that meant that i missed the things that you do in California when you know you're going to stay forever.

this entire time i've kept an apartment here in Toronto and this tiny box in the sky has kept me tethered me to something which feels very real. Toronto has been one of the only permanent things in my life; a place to come home to. now it's no longer permanent and i feel unmoored; these days my Toronto apartment is very empty, when i play sadgirl songs out loud they echo. i love this city with everything i have; i have a map of Toronto permanently imprinted on my heart—i can get myself home from anywhere in this city; i know all the best parking lots to watch sunset, where to go on the waterfront at midnight, every bike lane, that the best minute of any given day is golden hour when the Bloor-Danforth subway line passes over the Don Valley. i love showing people around Toronto; taking new friends around the city is really me pouring out my heart and being like, here's this place i adore with everything i am; can you see it the way i do?

i've always been wildly, hopelessly restless but maybe i'm tired of having active bikeshare memberships in four different cities and a Canadian driver's license which is technically outdated and does not actually qualify me to drive literally anywhere. maybe i'm coming around to the idea you can only actually be in one place at a time. maybe i'm writing all this down as if the act of doing so could codify this commitment into existence, because i've always felt like i could write whatever i needed into existence if only i found the right words. i've always said that i never wanted to settle for settling down but maybe settling down means being finally ready to learn how to stay. maybe i'm coming around to the idea that you can't just learn to fall in love; you also have to learn how to stay.

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