Since leaving the UK in 2014, I always thought it was temporary.
A few years abroad. Some travel. A bit of life experience before I did the “normal” things people like me are meant to do — get a job, buy a house, settle down somewhere predictable.
That was the plan.
Until my first daughter was born in 2016.
Everything changed after that.
Not instantly. But slowly. Subtly.
I’d still look at living abroad as a phase, something I’d grow out of. And every time I travelled or lived somewhere new, I saw it through the lens of a Brit abroad — curious, appreciative, but always with the feeling that the UK was still better.
Less corruption. More freedom. Safer streets. Fewer deadly animals (yes, Australia — I’m looking at you).
It was always the place I’d return to.
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I remember landing in Cebu years ago and hearing Oasis playing in the taxi from the airport.
It filled me with pride. A silly kind of joy. That was my country’s music. A sound from the 1990s that made me feel like home was still close, even from halfway around the world.
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Even as Sofia grew up here in the Philippines, I kept telling myself we’d end up back in the UK eventually.
For the schools. For the NHS. For the opportunities.
In fact, during all the COVID madness, we actually moved back to the UK for two years.
But we didn’t stay.
We came back to our home here in Cebu.
And that’s when things really started to shift.
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As I write this, I’ve just landed at Birmingham airport on what will likely be my final trip to the UK.
My return journey is next week.
So this trip is a kind of goodbye.
You see, I’m not travelling alone this time.
I’m flying back to bring my mum to live with us here in the Philippines.
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We’ve always been incredibly close.
But since my dad passed away so suddenly in 2023, the distance between us has grown harder to live with. She’s getting older, and every year I’d make the trip home to spend time with her — no matter what else was happening.
That annual trip to the UK was my anchor.
It kept me tied to my roots.
To the version of me that never quite let go of the idea of “home.”
But that’s changed now.
She’s coming here.
To live near us. To be part of our daily lives. To be with her granddaughters as they grow up.
And while that brings me an enormous sense of peace and joy — it also brings a very strange kind of sadness.
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Because it means I’m finally letting go of the idea that I’ll ever live in the UK again.
Not just for now.
But ever.
That’s a hard thing to wrap my head around.
To know that the country I grew up in — the place where my memories and friendships and old dreams live — is no longer where I belong.
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The last time I was there, something felt different.
The country I once loved so fiercely just didn’t feel the same.
Maybe it changed. Maybe I did. Probably both.
But for the first time, I didn’t feel like it offered a better life.
Not for me.
Not for my daughters.
Not anymore.
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Letting go of that felt like losing a friend.
Not in a dramatic or angry way — just a quiet sort of mourning.
I’ll never be Filipino. But in some ways, I’m no longer fully British either.
At least, not in the way I used to be.
Isn’t it strange how life twists like that?
How what we thought would be a chapter becomes the whole book?