This was never the plan.
In fact, if you’d asked me at almost any point in my adult life where I saw myself ending up, I’d have confidently told you it wouldn’t be here.
And yet, here I am.
Must Get Away
Growing up in a medium sized town, near a vibrant big city (Glasgow), is nothing unique, satellite towns exist all over the world and no doubt inspire the same emotions of their teenagers: I must get away from this small place.
I can’t remember exactly when that feeling began. Somewhere in my mid-teens perhaps, but I can still remember that growing sense of there being “more” to the world than the place where I grew up.
By then I’d already seen glimpses of a bigger world. I’d been on holiday to France. I’d been to Ibiza as a sixteen-year-old, which was certainly an eye opener, and I’d had my first dalliances with alcohol and girls, music, late nights, and I spent more and more time out of the family home for no other reason than there was so much MORE to do OUT THERE. I was experiencing all the things that convince teenagers they’re becoming worldly and sophisticated. I knew everything.
How naive I was. No—how young.
But the feeling was real. The gap between the here I had grown up with and the there I had imagined, and was now starting to live, was growing wider every year, that underlying feeling was growing stronger.
Eventually it became a kind of heartbeat, a constant quiet yearning. I don’t think I fully realised it at the time, it’s only now in hindsight that I can see how it tempered all my decisions and thoughts.
As it does, life moved on and I found myself twenty-two years old, married, with our own flat and with a sudden opportunity to move to England.
We jumped at the chance.
Aylesbury
We moved to a large town sitting within the orbit of an even larger vibrant city. London felt close enough to touch, and for a while that was exciting. We explored the area, visited the capital when we could, and enjoyed the novelty of building a life somewhere entirely different.
But after a couple of years, we came back to Scotland but NOT back home and to me, that distinction felt important.
My memories of those years are beginning to soften around the edges, but I remember enjoying them. I remember starting to realise that simply moving somewhere new doesn’t necessarily answer the questions that made you move in the first place.
Yet I still had the sense that I wasn’t quite in the right place, that I was standing adjacent to the place I was meant to be.
Glasgow
We had settled in Hamilton when we moved back to Scotland, and a few years later life changed direction once again.
My marriage ended, on good terms thankfully, and I found myself living in Glasgow.
Not quite the city centre, but the West End, within walking distance of the Clockwork Orange. For the first time, I felt immersed in the city rather than merely visiting. It was a time of further exploration as I re-learned my home city, largely through being a part of the Yelp Elite programme with many hours spent exploring bars, restaurants and more hidden corners than I realised existed.
And, for the first time, I felt close to finding what I had been searching for.
Almost.
The place felt right, but I was starting to realise that place alone wasn’t enough.
Those realisations eventually led to the end of two relationships. We were polyamorous at the time, and while endings are never easy, I found myself unexpectedly content on my own for a couple of years.
Then I met Becca.
We met in Glasgow, fell hopelessly in love, had a child, got married, and built a life together. Just like that. No, really, pretty much just like that. It has always been a source of comfort to us both, that it’s weird that it’s all been so obvious, like this is where we were both supposed to have ended up.
Alas a sudden notice from our landlord pushed us from our rented flat and into Bothwell, and then, some years later, an opportunity arose to move, back, to Dumbarton.
Dumbarton
Becca grew up here too, although our paths never crossed, and I admit that the idea of moving back made me a little nervous.
Returning to the town I’d spent most of my life trying to escape felt strangely circular. I’d invested years convincing myself that happiness existed elsewhere. That life happened somewhere bigger, brighter, busier.
So why would I willingly come back?
It was very much a heart-over-head decision, something I’m prone to. Although experience has taught me that eventually the head usually catches up and demands its say and things stacked up in favour of the move.
We left Bothwell and moved home.
Through the Eyes of a Child
I’m writing all this while my wife and son are away.
They’re spending a few days at Alton Towers alongside two of Jack’s nursery friends. One final adventure before school begins and another chapter quietly closes.
And sitting here alone I realised something; they’re the reason this has worked.
For years I thought I was searching for the right place. The right town. The right city. The right postcode. In hindsight I think I was a little too caught up in status, coupled with that sense of being anywhere that wasn’t my hometown, for reasons I didn’t fully understand. Reasons I’d carried with me since my teenage years, never stopping to examine them.
But now, with everything laid before me I see that what I was actually searching for was a feeling. I was hunting for contentment, belonging.
Home.
And home, as it turns out, has very little to do with geography.
The life we’ve built together is the thing that finally settled something inside me. The simple routines. The family dinners. The nursery drop-offs. The quiet evenings. The ordinary moments that somehow become the important ones.
That this life happens to exist in my hometown is partly circumstance but now I find myself realising that it may not have been entirely accidental.
There is a comfort in being back here in a town I know so well. It has a familiarity that asks nothing of me.
I don’t need to figure this place out. I already know it. I carry its map somewhere deep in my memory. Every street holds echoes of a previous life. Every shortcut has a story etched on the pathway. Walking through town sometimes feels like stepping across layers of my own life.
As a teenager, I couldn’t see any of this.
Like every teenager before me, I mistook familiarity for limitation. I looked beyond the town’s borders and imagined that everything worthwhile existed elsewhere, I didn’t appreciate the place while it was quietly shaping me.
It gave me freedom, friendships, experiences, and a foundation sturdy enough to build a life upon. Then, without complaint, it watched me leave.
It never tried to persuade me to stay. It never reminded me what I was overlooking. It simply let me go and discover those things for myself.
And when I eventually came back, older and hopefully a little wiser, it was still here waiting for me and with open eyes I have started to appreciate it and all the good things it has to offer.
What are your thoughts?