Town Mouse Country Mouse

On trying to find my way back to the city

I miss the city.

I started missing the city a few days after I left it - sixteen years ago - and the ache of longing has never left me. I’ve started spending more time beyond my little town recently, drawn to a new person who lives right in the beating heart of a huge city. We spend hours walking streets that he knows intimately, circling immaculate crescents and staring into tenements dotted with different lives. Sometimes in the morning I step out onto the pavement with sleepy eyes, his clothes pulled onto my still-waking body, watch buses come and go as I amble up to the supermarket for milk or bread or nothing at all.

After almost a year of resistance, I find myself creeping back onto Rightmove, typing in different city names, wrangling with impossible sums of money that won’t match the dream in my head. And then I am annoyed with myself for being ungrateful, and frustrated that my itchy feet won’t stop dancing.

I have children who need things to be slow and consistent. No surprises. How do I reconcile that with my racing mind and impulsive heart?