Toronto was an easy city for me to fall in love with. Sweaty, tired, and lugging three bags, I felt it already as my taxi hurtled downtown from the airport. The lake on one side, the high-rises of the Financial District ahead of me. For the all the initial stress and uncertainty that moving here brought, there was no moment of hesitation in the place I’d chosen. Toronto was love at first sight.

I’ve spoken before of my love for cities in general. But as the past spring dragged on and all I saw of the city was the few blocks of my neighbourhood, it was easy to forget why I loved this one so much. My world shrunk down to the area around me. Even though I was still in it, I felt miles away from the city. I snatched glances of the CN Tower from up here on the hill and wondered when I would next see the waterfront, or gaze at the colourful restaurant fronts of King West, or get on the subway just to go somewhere.

In early July, I left the city for a few weeks and quietly went to see my family in Scotland. The journey was something rather different to normal, as you might imagine given the current state of things, but that is a story for another time. I hadn’t been feeling myself: anxious with the anticipation of seeing my parents for the first time in so long; anxious to navigate this new world outside of what had become my regular parameters.

I thought that would go away when I arrived, that I would find some sense of myself in being back in the city I grew up in (admittedly, a city I saw basically nothing of between a two week quarantine and just generally precautions). If anything, I felt more lost. This was the place of an older version of myself, a version that grew up and moved on a long time ago. My mother commented, offhand, that it was eight years since I’d left home. It seems much longer. The girl who left home with pillows stuffed under one arm and a sense of trepidation was a shadow of the woman I am today.

For the first time since I moved to Toronto two years ago, leaving Scotland felt difficult. Usually by such time, I’d be desperate to return, to rejoin my life and my friends and my vibrant day-to-day. This time, I had no such feeling: all I could feel was the weight of my reality. A sense that I had nothing to come back to. I didn’t have a job. Several of my friends were moving away. My immigration situation was—and still is, a bit—shaky.

I knew I didn’t want to stay, either. No decision felt like the right one, nor left me with that blissfully satisfying sense of, yes, that’s it. This is the one. I hugged my mother goodbye under dawn’s early light of 4am and told myself I wasn’t going to cry. (I cried in a deserted Amsterdam airport on a nine hour layover, instead).

It was no reassurance to my sense of instability to spend two weeks shut up alone in my apartment as I quarantined on my return. I joked to friends the other night that days eight to eleven were the worst: the point at which, over a week in and with the end not quite yet in sight, I frequently found myself staring at the walls and wondering what my life’s purpose was. Nothing like the soliloquy of existential crisis to keep you company.

People kept asking me what was next for me. I said I didn’t know. In part, because I really didn’t, and still don’t. In part, because I didn’t even know exactly what it was I wanted to do next. I didn’t know where to start figuring that out, let alone how to get there when I did.

I started wondering if it was a mistake to even try to stay in Toronto. Maybe, it was time for another fresh start. It had been two years, my feet were a little itchy. I could pack up and move again. Maybe Stockholm, I’ve always wanted to live in Stockholm. Well, my Swedish needs work and I don’t know anyone there. Helsinki, then. I’d been there dozens of times, I speak the language, and I have a scattering of friends and family in or around the city. I could set up a life there.

It was good to have a back-up plan, I reminded myself. If my immigration application didn’t go through, the last thing I wanted to do was end up moving back in with my parents for any length of time. So, I had a back-up plan. A back-up plan that, as the days in quarantine dragged on, seemed almost more appealing than the main plan. But I didn’t trust my desires. How much was a desire to actually move, and how much was just my flight instinct kicking in. How many times, when unsure what to do next, have I just booked a ticket and packed a bag, whether to travel or to move? One of those was out of the picture for the time being. But the other…

Within the confines of my apartment, I couldn’t see the city. I couldn’t feel the presence of the Toronto I loved so much; couldn’t even walk as far as to catch that glimpse of the CN Tower. Summer was still in full swing as my quarantine came to an end and I headed back out into the world. I spent the week rediscovering my Toronto, the one that I had so easily fallen for.

I trekked the length of the islands with a friend, hopping in pain as the soft sand at the beach burned the undersides of our feet. I sat on the subway and felt the familiar rattle of the car as it took me through the city. I walked down Bloor West: past my first, crappy apartment I’d lived in where I spent everyday facing off against cockroaches; past the pub I used to work out of on winter’s days when I was freelancing; past the wonderful eclectic mix of people that make up this city.

It took me all of a heartbeat to remember why I love Toronto so much. I don’t have to go downtown or to some tucked away patio to feel it (although eating my favourite dish at one of my favourite spots opposite the Lightbox on a Friday evening was a near-perfect sensation). I see it in my own neighbourhood, too.

The past few days, I’ve taken to moving my office outside for the last part of the day, lying out in my patch of grass with my writing and my notes. I am frequently distracted by the evening routine that unfolds around me. The elderly gentleman who runs laps of the field, undaunted by the scorching humidity. The couple who play badminton, even on the days that the wind grabs their shuttlecock and sends it flying into the trees. The young man walking his dog who pauses on the bench to watch golden hour hitting the red stone buildings. The lady who reads under the shade of a tree but seems just as distracted as I am by life going on around her.

I don’t know exactly how long I’ll stay in Toronto. I know one day I’ll return to Europe, for the proximity to my family, for the architecture, and, frankly, for the food. I might be here six months, if the immigration officials decide as much. I might be here several years. What I do know is that no matter where I move, or how long I call Toronto home, I will never lose that love for this city.

In and Out of Love