Vancouver piece by piece.

The city is returning like pieces fitting into a puzzle inside me – those that comfort, those that irk, and those which just make me raise an eyebrow at how can people be this crazy? My car has returned to being the east-van loaner, the 7 am line in front of United We Can is as anarchic as ever, and I’m back to grousing about the dearth of buses going to the east end with the others in my downtown lineup… Like slipping back into an old skin, I wait for the weather to become a bit warmer so I can trace my favourite urban hikes past Strathcona gardens and La Casa Gelato and onto the train tracks towards home. In the meantime, I take a little solace in the fact my coffeeshop is still staffed with the same people it was when I moved away 2 and a half years ago.

Although I moved – I never really left the city – but I never really moved to the country either – and instead, I lived in a limbo between places and travel, not committing to anything. It’s very likely that the most I got out of the Sunshine Coast was during the first few months I lived there, suing the solitude to engage with my depression and work my way out of it – for those are the most distinctive months in my memory of there. The rest being a blur of doors opening and shutting, suitcases in and out of the car, ferries delayed and cursed.

Re-orientating to being rooted in a place that I live 24 hours a day, my work is no more than a short hike from my home, and my friends accessible by more than a phone call. Not to mention living in a neighbourhood where being single at 33 isn’t seen as suspect, where I’m not viewed as an outsider, and where my neighbours are filmmakers, web developers and musicians rather than loggers and homemakers. Not that I have anything against the latter, but I will admit a natural affinity for the former.

I feel like I fit again. Each piece of the city returning reminds me of the picture I tried to dismantle when I moved away – and every passing day is bringing it to a completion I’m finding myself very reassured by.