I seriously considered applying to Cambridge for my grad school. Honestly, with my grades I probably could have pulled it off.

Also, I really wanted to go because the truth is, I really, REALLY miss England. I miss it on a level that unless you know me pretty well, it's difficult to understand. It's one of the few places in the world I really felt like I could call home, all of the domestic problems of the present day notwithstanding. When I was younger, I seriously wanted to marry someone there, lose my American accent, and assimilate completely. I was going to pick a fictive home town somewhere in the south of England and tell people I was from there, and forget all about my American birth certificate.

But things change. A major part of the reason I stayed in the States in the first place was because things got serious with Kobi and I and they kind of stayed that way. He and I have occasionally discussed having him wait for me Stateside but neither of us wants to do that because he's so much a part of my life.

Also, I always felt guilty about leaving my cat. He's 18 now, and still seems to have most of his will to live though he's slowing down. If I leave him now, I'll never see him alive again and I would be devastated.

Some of the things that made me want to leave the country (like a populace that was largely against LGBT rights) have changed much faster and more completely than I had ever imagined. There are a lot of things that still need work but the country I was born in is more livable now for someone like me. I grant you, that could change depending on what happens next November, but a master's degree from an American university would give me a bit more mobility if the future turns bleak.

But I have to admit that the matter that proved the most decisive was my decision to pursue a path toward becoming clergy. That will take at least five or six years of my time and I should probably not move any further than Seattle in that case.

Now here's where it gets interesting: there are no parishes of our church in the UK yet (the nearest parish would be in Oslo, Norway). However, our church has a history with a now-defunct Gnostic church founded in the UK in the 1950s. There is an opening there to take things full circle. I rather like the idea of taking over a deconsecrated medieval chapel and reconsecrating it for our church. Also, there is a visa specifically for clergy (though I hear they screen you really hard for that one).

But let's not get ahead of ourselves! Maybe I'll get restless and decide this isn't for me (that is a distinct possibility). Maybe I'll end up somewhere completely different or stay in Portland. At any rate this will be 10-20 years down the road if it happens at all. But there's always a possibility that I could come back, as either a cleric or an academic, one of these days. I'll leave my options open and let the chips fall where they might.