Uproot, for the time being...

❤️

Dear friends,

I am writing to you from a desk in Wuhan. Outside my window is luscious summer green. Overgrown sycamores line the streets I used to tread on to the kindergarten downhill from my mom’s old apartment. The trill of the cicadas can be heard through the low hum of my AC still.

On July 14th, the day of my outbound flight, London felt more like home than any place I’ve ever lived. In the past year, I’ve made so many beautiful memories with people who have come to mean the world to me: hearty food and deep conversations with Phoebe on the couch into midnight, café dates with Aditi embracing serendipity, fun times bonding with my LSE besties –– Thaïs & Aliz, curious chats with Lin, Kriss, Tianyu, Jake, and Ling –– who have inspired me so much, meeting Francesca and sharing our love for a lifetime of learning, and finding a sister –– Lili –– in this city through all the laughs and tears. London will always be a special home that has given me the space to grow in scopes unimaginable, and I cannot wait to return.

When I was little, farewell was the most painful part of my life. I cried so much whenever it was time to leave a homely place: my grandparents’ place, my aunt’s house during the holidays, my friends’ flats where their parents made me feel like a sibling… Growing up with an estranged mother has made home a difficult place to return to. To my younger self, leaving someone else’s home was always heartbreaking because anyone’s home felt better than my own. Everything good I knew was through searching for and peeking into others’ lives because I was too little and incapable of making it on my own.

Things finally changed after I moved to college. My individuality began to grow, and I loved the community I nurtured. Self-authorship is the best feeling a young adult can experience –– it’s a slow but empowering realization that the self now has the power to build something that will last, something that houses all the things to long for in life: happiness, learning, love, hope, trust, growth… On this journey, I’m lucky to have met some of the best people on Earth –– and, amazingly, they like me back. :)

In this city, I’ve fallen so deeply in love with life, and that love will travel with me wherever I go. Every day, I wake up amazed by how many wonderful people there are in my life.

Last year around the same time, I reflected on my decision to move to London from the US. The second-to-last paragraph still rings true today, “Moving is so hard. No matter how much I tell myself that moving means embracing better opportunities, I am walking away from the good life that I already have, a home I’ve built with all the people I love in it. In fact, it’s so good that sometimes I don’t know how I could ever ask for more.”

Love and hugs,
Erica