Ronin

One's adult life can either be said begin the moment one is allowed to fight (and possibly die) or breed for one's country, or the moment one is allowed to vote to decide who runs the country and have a drink to celebrate afterwards. In the UK, these ages are either 16 or 18.

When I was 16, I was at A-level college and so - as I was living with my parents at the time and was still very much a child - I tend to date my adulthood from age 18, when I went to University.

I have spent all - bar a month - of my adult life in Sheffield. Today I posted the final set of documents to end that. I also said goodbye - a very final, unequivocal goodbye - to some of my friends.

I do not say goodbye, I never have. And, even tonight, I did not truly say goodbye to everyone. In fact, I said goodbye to a single person out of the circle of friends and simply withdrew from the others in silence. It is what I do.

In ancient Japan, a man would be given a sword when he came of age - a tempered piece of pattern-welded steel that could slice through bone and blood like air. In Sheffield, where I still say I come from, despite having only spent 10 years of my 28 here, we invented pattern-welding before the Japanese. The Saxons and Vikings were using it for their Kings' swords.

We. It perhaps sorts ill to say that, because, to be honest, I have abandoned saying "we" about the UK over the last few months. I say "the British", "in Europe". I still say "the Americans" of the place I am going to.

I am now - the man who came of age in the City of Steel and had known nothing but her - a Ronin, a wave-man, a Samurai without a home and a master.

Something about that hurts - I am neither fish nor fowl. I know that a gradual fading of friendships is inevitable unless they are maintained, and they cannot be maintained over 3000 miles of ocean, and I know that a gradual errosion is better than this final and sudden renunciation - so why have I done it?

Quite simply, because to not do it would be death-watch beetle in the soul.

Think on it - my life in Michigan would be tormented and cheapened by the constant ghostly reminders of my time here. My time as a European, British, English, Yorkshire, Sheffield. When it was tough, I would look back. There would be the terrible temptation to return, to give up, to look at the soft place that exists here.

Which is why it cannot be. Like a dishonoured Samurai, I have to break all ties with my former land - and I have to begin that process now. I can take with me exactly what they took with them - the pattern-welded tool that allowed them to practice their trade in foreign lands, divorced from the social mores of their own courts.

In Sheffield, I have been tempered and folded like steel, and she has made me what I am. For that, I shall always honour her - but it is time to leave.

To not do so would simply be too dangerous.

But it is still hard.

Darknight