This week, I returned to NYC after having been away for four months. It has been interesting.

We flew back on Monday. It was an excessively nice, sunny spring day in New York. I had lugged my things up the stairs to my apartment in Brooklyn. I opened the door to find that my roommates were not home and that my plants in the living room were doing well. My room was just as I had left it.

I took the subway to my favorite Brooklyn sandwich shop, where I ordered my favorite sandwich. It was good. I walked to the pottery studio, turned on the wheel, made some bowls. I called my mom on my walk home and when she asked, I told her it was nice to be back.

The next morning, I went to my neighborhood coffee shop. I ordered my single shot oat latte. The barista still remembered my name, and I hers. I sat there at the little coffee shop table with my coffee, journaling and catching up on texts. On my walk back to the apartment, I ran into my downstairs neighbor. She was now pregnant with twins. I congratulated her and when she asked, I told her it was nice to be back.

To be truthful, I’m not sure if it is nice to be back. It is disorienting to jump into familiar routines as if no time had passed. Everything is the same, but a little different.

I feel like I am playing the part of Nisha in Brooklyn, rather than … I’m not sure what.

Maybe this is an adjustment period, I thought to myself. It seems natural to be inspired to reflection when one returns somewhere. Perhaps I am still needing to “catch up”. But there’s so much to do. There’s a client meeting to prepare for, drinks I am invited to, friends I haven’t seen in months, and the next thing I know, I’m eating a $18 burrito that doesn’t even taste good.

What is it exactly that I want to be doing? Is this okay?

New York can certainly be dazzling. I have lived here now for eleven years. It has always felt like the center of the world to me. As I took the train into Manhattan yesterday, I found myself paying attention to the faces of the people on the subway. Is NYC their home too? Would I miss the city if I were to move away? I felt sick to my stomach suddenly and overwhelmed. It became difficult to breathe.

Home. It’s a word I have thought a lot about in recent years. Is home here in Brooklyn, where I keep my mailing address? Is it in Los Angeles, where I can lay on the grey carpet in the living room of the house where I grew up? Is it anywhere that I am with Petr, the person that I feel knows me most, and with whom I have been having conversations about potentially moving to another city with?

I texted my friend Yin to share my confusion. She understood. She said, “You are home. You are always home.”

And I felt better.