For as long as I've been here, or almost, I've been thinking about going home. Maybe not the first six or eight months, but after the first year it was definitely something that I considered. "A year abroad is nice!" I thought, and tried to see how it would feel to leave it at that. But life is funny and as I followed its twisting path I saw the years begin to pile up, two then three then four and five and soon six. The idea was always in the back of my mind though. I pictured a life for myself back at home, snowy winters and sweltering summers and being near friends and family and bagels. But it always remained a back-burner plan, something nice to think about but unlikely to actually happen... Until this year, when the back-of-the-mind part of the whole thing melted away, little by little, until suddenly it was very much at the front of my mind, and I knew that the decision was being made slowly, slowly, slowly somewhere inside me and that one day, unexpectedly, I would have made it without realizing.

That's how I found myself booking a ticket home one day a few months ago.

The weekend that I booked it, I cried a lot. Having an end date to the life that I've made over here feels strange and sometimes wrong and all the time scary and sometimes exciting. I haven't come here to write about it yet because it feels impossible to even try to find the words, but I think I have to start somewhere.

So I'll start here, on a sunny Sunday, sitting on my bed surrounded by heaps of clothes, trying to sort and organize and make lists and piles and plans. How do you pack up almost-six years of your life and move it all halfway across the world?

I've grown attached to the silliest things over the years. I have made my life here by myself, for myself, with no one but myself, and I think that this results in strange attachments to mundane objects.

My bathrobe, for example. Not the new fluffy one. The old scrappy pink one. I remember the day I bought it in 2012, taking the métro out to La Défense to visit the big Auchan store to stock up on cheap necessities for my closet-sized first apartment. Kitchen knives, tupperware, batteries, extension cords... And, a visibly cheap bathrobe. It felt silly at the time in such a small space, but when I saw it I knew I had to have it. It is bright pink, and feels and looks completely like it's made of polyster or plastic or, I don't know, worse, but I have loved it so well. The silly ugly robe has kept me warm on so many occasions over the years. Over sweatshirts and under blankets, hood up and belt pulled tight. I'd put it on when I got home from work in my first shoebox, I'd pull the space heater close to me and keep one hand in a pocket while I made dinner and tried to think warmer. In my big cherrywood four poster bed in the eighth, in my much nicer second apartment, I'd still wear it. A beautiful bedroom with parquet and a marble fireplace and a gilded mirror and a Juliette balcony, and this increasingly-threadbare pink robe that didn't fit in at all. Here now, in this third and last Paris apartment, is where I finally replaced it a few months back. (Before I knew there wasn't much point). I bought a new robe, a longer, softer, cozier, white one with a blue pattern.

I've still got the old one, though. It has hung faithfully on the back of my bathroom door, a reminder of all the other places it's been. It reminds me of cold nights in the 7th and the 8th, of lazy mornings making brunch and coffee, of the just-out-of-the-shower feeling that is so good no matter where you are. It reminds me of home.

Today I folded it up, fingering the ripped seams and the threads hanging from the belt loops and checking the pockets to see if I'd left something behind. It's in a black trash bag now, waiting to go to someone else or somewhere else. My heart feels really sad to say goodbye to it.

The pink robe won't be the last thing to make my heart lurch. As I continue to sort and sift and get my mind around the piles of things I've accumulated, I'm sure there will be many more similar moments. That's life, though, isn't it? Marie Kondo would be disappointed, but I truly wish I could take all the things that have been with me on this journey, and bring them to my next home.

I'll take some of them. I'll take the quirky flower pots that my mother and I carefully hunted out at country garage sales and antique stores. I'll take the leather bag that my dad and I got for 10 Euros, even though the salesman's wife wanted 40. I'll take the little white bowl with whirling dervishes painted on it that I bought on my solo trip to Istanbul. I'll take the blue and white china plates, the le creuset espresso mugs, the books that have changed me, the photos and prints and cards that have made me smile.  I'll take the jacket I wore when I ran the half marathon in freezing sideways rain a few years ago, the shirt I wore on my first day of work at Disney, the Ireland football scarf I got at the Euro Cup tournament. I'll take the tiger-striped cat.

The next few weeks promise to be emotional, and I think I'll be back soon as I try to work it out in writing or at least to record this time of great change. There is so much to look forward to, though I am leaving so much behind. Like the pink bathrobe, I'll be leaving behind little pieces of my story here and there, tied into bags and dropped off for somewhere and someone else. I'll miss that stupid bathrobe.

I think the bathrobes in America are pretty nice, though. xx