Happiness is a Compromise

I keep getting sharp, unexpected pangs of missing my home, or more specifically, my family. Not when I am lonely. Not when something goes wrong. It’s triggered by small things. Getting dressed for work in the outfit we picked together before I left. Hearing the song that seemed to play everywhere in the weeks before I moved. Moments that felt insignificant at the time, but now return with surprising force.

It was the last week in the UK that stays with me most. We were in Chester, visiting family and making the final preparations before I left. Everything was becoming real. There was a quiet awareness between us, like we were all paying closer attention. Ophelia by Taylor Swift followed us everywhere: shops, cafés, radios. It became the soundtrack to that week, unchosen but persistent.

We were looking for the final work outfit to complete my suitcase. Back at the Airbnb, I tried it on. I remember standing there and seeing not just new clothes, but a version of myself already beginning to separate from the job I had left behind. My mum saw it too. We didn’t say much, but the significance was clear. It was just clothing, but we both understood what it represented.

Other moments return as well. The cold nights. The cold itself I don’t miss. What I remember is coming home late from a job I had grown to resent, carrying a tiredness that settled deeper than physical exhaustion. Cooking, which had once energised me, had narrowed into something tense and draining. By that point, my relief came when I walked through the door and my parents were there.

I would ask if they were going out that evening, always meaning the same small coastal town. The answer was rarely definite, but we always went. We walked by the sea, wrapped up against the wind, sometimes in drizzle, usually in comfortable silence. I would break it with small comments, often about how strange it felt that in a few months I would be somewhere warm just as it became coldest here.

Those walks were quiet and familiar, but they were also rare. Not because they were exciting, but because they were shared, unforced, and uninterrupted.

Looking back, much of my happiness in the UK came from being with my parents. It lived in repetition and familiarity, but that didn’t make it ordinary. It made it safe. It meant there was somewhere I could return to without explanation.

I think about my student years and how, in my first year, walking back to my flat filled me with anxiety, especially if the kitchen lights were on. That light meant my flatmates were there, and for reasons I don’t need to unpack here, that filled me with dread.

By my final year, that feeling had gone. Not because I had changed dramatically, but because it had taken time to find the right people. I began to look forward to the light being on. It meant familiarity, ease, people who felt like my people. It took at least two years for that to happen.

Coming home to my parents, though, the light on had always meant something else entirely. It never took time to earn. It meant comfort immediately. It meant ease without effort. And even now, looking back, that light shines brightest.

I didn’t have many close connections in the UK, but the ones I did have were strong. I learned early on that keeping people in your life out of habit rather than care eventually costs more than it gives.

I didn’t see my sister often in the UK. Not because of distance in miles, but because of life. Work schedules, exhaustion, the quiet logistics that make plans feel heavier than they should. We spoke less than people might expect. But when I did visit her, it felt like stepping into a different version of myself.

Those weekends felt like holidays. Not in any grand sense, but in the way they lifted me out of my normal life and showed me what ease could look like.

Our time together was simple. Brunch somewhere unremarkable. A farmers’ market to buy ingredients for dinner. Cooking together without the urgency my job required. A few games of Scrabble, slightly drunk, no real attention paid to whatever was on the television. None of it would have looked exciting from the outside. But it felt like the best holiday.

What made those weekends powerful was not what we did, but the contrast. I would arrive carrying the weight of my life as a chef, tired and tightly wound. And I would leave knowing I had to return to it. The happiness came in a concentrated burst, followed by the crash back into routine. In hindsight, it was a smaller version of what I am experiencing now on a larger scale.

Those memories carry the same sharpness as the ones with my parents. The pain isn’t in their loss, but in how clearly they revealed everything else.

Now, that distance is no longer theoretical. Seeing my sister is no longer a question of finding a free weekend. It is flights, drives, time zones. Two flights, a five-hour drive, seven hours behind. The ease is gone. What remains is the knowledge of how rare and complete those moments were.

Vietnam has given me a different kind of happiness. Here, I live alone. I have space, independence, and control over my days. Food excites me in a way it never quite did in the UK. The aromatics, the sauces, the noodles, the variety. Supermarkets feel like places of possibility, keeping the chef part of me alive in a new way.

I’ve found archery and pickleball, enough to give structure to my weeks and keep me connected to people. I’ve found relationships that don’t anchor me, but do give my days shape. And always the beach, the walks, the heat, all of it just outside my door.

This move was deliberate. I needed distance from the version of myself that had turned cooking into obligation rather than joy. Here, food has returned gently. As curiosity. As something open-ended. Cooking feels exciting again. More importantly, food is something for me to enjoy and share, not something I have to perfect and deliver. Like the joy I felt with my sister, but now every day.

What I didn’t expect was how strong the contrast would feel. I have always told myself I prefer steadiness. Routine. Emotional moderation. But I can see now that much of that wasn’t happiness. It was distraction. A way of keeping myself busy enough not to notice that I wasn’t fully satisfied, even while being deeply loved by my family and friends.

Standing on my balcony, looking out over the city and the sea, it still feels unreal. The space, the light, the view. An apartment that would cost more than three times as much in the UK. At night, the city stretches out in front of me, lights flickering. I never imagined I would live like this. It looks like freedom. It feels like possibility. It is what I wanted.

The problem is that loving it properly means acknowledging what it costs. The happiness here is real, but it exists alongside a constant awareness of what is missing. I know I cannot have my parents here. I also know I cannot recreate this life in the UK where they are.

Missing my parents doesn’t mean this move was wrong. And loving this life doesn’t mean I have replaced them with experiences or material things. If I stayed living with my parents forever, that would eventually make our relationship smaller, not stronger. Distance is part of what preserves it.

I can’t bring my parents here, but I can speak to them every day. I can visit them. What I can’t do is carry this life back with me.

The truth is that happiness comes with compromise. It isn’t clean or simple. Even here, among what feels like luxury, there are rats and cockroaches. There is litter, noise, unpleasant smells, moments of friction, language barriers. The beach isn’t perfect. The streets aren’t always kind. But none of that cancels out the beauty.

The happiness I feel here comes from accepting that nothing is perfect, and that missing my family isn’t something to fix. It’s something I live alongside. I don’t want that feeling to disappear. I think I would be sadder if I didn’t miss them.

The pain I sometimes feel is just a mark of how strong our relationship is, and how much I will always appreciate them. If I may steal a line from one of my favourite films: “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”(Luckily, in my case, no tragic ending yet.)