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People have asked me if I'm going back abroad.
Some ask because they're excited for me. Others ask because they know how much lighter I seemed when I was there.
And then there are the people closest to me, the ones who know the answer isn't really about flights, visas or finding another place to live.
It's about trying to decide where my life is supposed to be.
I've spent weeks going backwards and forwards in my own head.
Should I go? Should I stay? (there is a song in there somewhere)
Some days I convince myself I owe it to my family to stay close.
Other days I wonder whether I'm slowly disappearing by doing exactly that.
The thought of boarding another plane fills me with two emotions that don't seem like they should exist together.
Excitement and relief.
Relief…
Even writing that word makes me feel guilty.
Because how can leaving the people you love most also feel like breathing again?
I think that's the part that's hardest to explain.
When I'm abroad, I'm nobody.
And I mean that in the nicest possible way.
Nobody knows me. Nobody knows my name. Nobody knows the headline. Nobody knows the conviction.
I'm just another person ordering a coffee, playing a round of golf, getting lost in a city, making conversation with someone I'll probably never see again.
For a little while, I'm whoever I choose to be.
Or maybe...
I'm simply who I always was.
Back home, that feeling never completely arrives.
Even on the good days.
Even surrounded by people who love me.
There's always a small part of my mind quietly scanning the room, reminding me that someone could know.
Maybe they don't. But maybe they do.
That possibility never really leaves.
Neither does the knock at the door.
It's strange how one sound can change your body.
My heart starts racing before I've even stood up.
Everything around me seems to go quiet, as though my brain is turning the volume down on the world just so it can work out who's outside.
For a few seconds, nothing else exists.
My mind immediately jumps to the worst possible explanation.
But most of the time, it’s nothing.
A delivery, a neighbour or a sales rep trying to sell new windows.
But my body doesn't seem interested in logic anymore.
It only remembers what fear feels like.
When I travelled recently, I realised something that caught me off guard.
That feeling disappeared.
Not forever.
But enough.
I wasn't waiting for the next knock.
I wasn't wondering who might recognise me.
I wasn't calculating every conversation before it happened.
I was just... living.
And I'd forgotten what ordinary felt like.
My sister says I'm hiding.
Maybe she's right.
I understand why she'd say it.
From where she's standing, it probably does look like I'm trying to put thousands of miles between myself and everything that's happened.
But that's not quite how it feels from here.
I'm not hiding from life.
I'm hiding from living every day as someone else's version of me.
There's a difference.
The hardest part is that my family are the reason I stay.
They've become my definition of home.
Not Scotland. Them.
When everything else fell away, they were still there.
They became the place I landed.
The place I still land.
But families aren't supposed to be permanent addresses.
One day I'll have to live on my own again.
And if I'm honest, that thought frightens me more than I'd like to admit.
Not because I can't cook for myself or pay bills.
Because I don't know what it's like to sit alone with this version of my life.
At least not here.
People sometimes assume I feel guilty for enjoying myself abroad.
I don't.
I feel guilty that I have to travel thousands of miles to remember what enjoying myself even feels like.
That's a very different kind of guilt.
My parents have never tried to tell me what to do.
They just want me to be happy.
Although I know they hate that this is even a decision I have to make.
I hate it too.
The strange thing is, I loved travelling long before any of this happened.
I've always wondered what life might look like somewhere else.
So this isn't about running away from Scotland.
That feeling existed before.
What's changed is why another country now feels different.
It isn't just somewhere new.
It's somewhere I don't have to introduce myself to my past before anyone gets to know me.
I keep coming back to the same question.
What is home?
Is it where the people you love are?
Or is it where your shoulders finally relax?
Because for the first time in my life, those aren't the same place.
And maybe that's what grief really is.
Not losing one home.
But discovering that your heart and your peace now live in different countries.
I don't know what I'll decide.
Maybe I'll stay.
Maybe I'll go.
Maybe I'll spend years trying to build a life somewhere between the two.
But I do know this.
No one should ever have to choose between being close to the people who make them feel loved and living somewhere that makes them feel free.
So I'll leave you with this.
If the place that holds your heart isn't the same place that lets you breathe...
Where do you call home?
