The trip that should have been easy

Six years after leaving Mexico City for the US and then the UK, he went back after his longest gap yet, two years. He expected nostalgia. He got exhaustion.

“I expected the trip to feel nostalgic and effortless.”

The city had moved on

New restaurants, more international businesses, more English in the street, far more foreigners. Neighbourhoods he once knew by instinct now belonged to a newer version of the place.

Asking the questions locals don't

He was the one asking what had opened, what had closed, where everyone goes now. For the first time he was not the person who knew how the city worked.

“it surprised me how quickly I started feeling like someone who had missed a chapter”

He assumed home stayed still

Because he was the one who left, part of him had expected Mexico City to wait, roughly as he had last seen it. It hadn't.

Friends were oddly preserved

Weddings, babies, new jobs, partners moved in with. And still the same stories, the same frustrations, the same worries he remembered from years before.

“I often recognized not just the people themselves, but the exact patterns I remembered.”

Maybe he was the change

The city sped up while his social world sat still. That contrast pointed somewhere uncomfortable: the thing that had shifted most was him.

“Maybe I had.”

London is home now

What he missed was not landmarks. It was his apartment, his work routine, evenings with his partner, the ordinary shared habits he had built over two years.

“the center of my everyday existence had shifted somewhere else”