To My Dear Halifax,

The flight is checked in; the bags are packed. Ok, we just sleep. Tomorrow I will have my flight from Toronto to Halifax after a year in Toronto, and I will finally be visiting Halifax again. I usually tend to imagine what is going to happen when I wake up, especially if it’s an event that I’m looking forward to. I learned that when I was on the swimming team in a competition. Now imagine you start, you are in the water, go go … same was happening now … Now I am going to Union Station and getting to the airport, the quiet blue airport … wait, I am imagining wrong. This is the Toronto airport that I should go to tomorrow, but I am imagining the Halifax airport … well, that’s weird. My brain automatically just goes to the Halifax airport when I think about taking vacations.

It is tomorrow that I arrive at Halifax airport. To be honest, I had been looking forward to this moment since 2026 started. I stepped outside to wait for the bus. Of course, the airport bus comes every hour, and I just missed it, so I had to wait 50 minutes more. Usually, if this were past, I would say, “Ugh, this transportation system.” But not this time. I actually needed those 45 minutes outside the airport. I sat there and smelled the Halifax fresh air, the ocean, and nature. I really missed this. Sitting there, looking at the hotel I was supposed to quarantine at for 2 weeks when I first arrived in Halifax in 2021. The memories of four years flashed back to me, every moment, every smell, every friend. I just noticed tears running down my face … My brain is telling me, Wow, shocking that I miss Halifax this much. Maybe all the people who were telling me, “Ati, you will miss Halifax”, were right. At the end of the day, this place does magic when you live in it; you hate everything, and when you leave, you miss every moment and every little thing about the city.

First day back, and I had to visit the ocean, just like in movies. I came back and stood there by the water in the darkness of night, took a deep breath, stood there in quiet and let the memories flow. I don’t know, for some reason it feels like I never left this place, and that traumatizing one year just didn’t pass by. Was I really this emotionally attached to the city? Or is it the people and deep connections that I had that I miss so much?

The next stop was the Dalhousie Medical Science Building. My friend had something to do in the lab on Sunday, so I told her I really wanted to come inside with her to revisit the memories where my love for science started. We went and sat on the empty sofas by the elevator, and my friend went to the lab. The moment she left, I started crying, called my mom, and asked if I really did the right thing. I left this place where I had good support and a genuine community around me for what? My mom said something about us is that we are deeply emotional people. Sometimes we cannot let go of the good memories and romanticize the past. She was right. I do romanticize the past, even if sometimes I want to run away from it. But the building smelled familiar and safe. The walls, the sofa, the pictures, everything felt like home, and it felt like undergrad as if I could run away from my responsibility of being a graduate student in a lab that was just not the right fit for me. And that is exactly what I did, I went to my previous lab for the whole week and acted like I still worked in this lab, and chatted with everyone for hours, even went to the seminar. “Ati, it is as if you never left this building. The notes on the board outside of the lab keep changing, just as if you are writing the new question of the week on the board and asking the whole department to answer it. Your soul and laughs never left floors 8, 9, and 10.”

I was doing a great job of imagining that things had stayed the same and that a whole year had not passed until a day before my flight back to Toronto. After a long chat with my prof, pouring out all the information from this whole year, I came out of the building, sat outside, and cried my eyes out. A friend of mine saw me outside.

“Ati, remember you were so excited to go to the big city. You did not want to stay here.”

“I know, but I was wrong. I do not want to go back to Toronto.”

“But you needed that. You needed to leave. It was the best for you.”

“But what is the best for me anymore? I left this city with the hope of meeting many more people like the two professors I connected deeply with here, because they got their PhDs from UofT. So I imagined that, if I went to UofT, I would see people like them every day, but I was very wrong.”

As I said before, I have a very strong imagination. I even dream about the conversations I have, so if things do not go the way I dreamed, I do not deal with it the best way. This is one of those situations. It is not that I did not like Toronto. I loved Toronto, but the lab was just not a good fit. It was exactly the opposite of what I dreamed about.

It is the last day, and it is exactly like the day I left Halifax last year. I sent the last email with the title “saying goodbye for the last time before I leave” to check if the people I wanted to say goodbye to were available for a last goodbye. I went to my prof's (honours supervisor) office and had another long chat with him. I tried to meet him every day I was in Halifax, but this chat was different from the others. He advised me on many deep things. I think he had noticed I did not want to leave and that I was deeply depressed about going back. Before we said goodbye, he hugged me and told me, “It is just one more year, Ati. It is fine. You will be fine.” I think that was all I needed to hear from him to tell me I would be fine. As I passed by in the hallway, I saw another recent graduate of the department. He told me, “Ati, you are one of the people I receive the most notifications on LinkedIn for liking posts. Keep it up. As we see you liking posts, we just know you are doing fine.” As if people were telling me things intentionally to make me cry on this last day. I put away the mask I had been keeping up for the past 5 days. I was just telling people openly that I did not want to leave and go back. The last stop was, of course, the teaching lab, and the last sentence I heard from my prof was “Be happy." That was enough for my emotions to pour out. I do really miss the happy girl I was before. As I went outside the building, I hugged my friend and cried in her arms. I told her to visit me in Toronto to help me pass this year faster.

For the entire 2 and a half hours of the flight, I kept my AirPods’ noise cancellation on, as if not hearing the outside world would let me stay in Halifax memories forever, and I thought about every single memory, every talk and chat I had in these past 5 days. Arrived at Toronto airport, and I could smell October 2025 exactly the moment I lost my spark and my past happy, excited self. I imagined with myself how much of the ocean's beautiful air is still in my lungs.

And at the last, to my dear Halifax … You were a dear home to me. I am going to call you home. I struggled and was confused for 4 years to call you home, but I am finally able to call you home.