I was a homebody – but it turned out my happy-ever-after lay thousands of miles away | Rosemary Mac Cabe

Disillusioned with my life in Ireland, I took up my sister's offer to visit her in Indiana - where everything finally came together

Until I moved away - for good, though I didn't know it at the time - I never expected to leave Ireland. I'd always been a homebody, happiest near friends, family and Dublin - a city I knew so well it felt like a part of me. At 34, I had lived there my whole life - and with the exception of the years I'd attended college in Galway, and a few months spent honing my Italian in Milan, I'd never lived more than 30 miles from my childhood home.

That was absolutely fine by me. When my sister, who moved away right after graduation, encouraged me to come for extended visits I'd think of all the things keeping me in Ireland: our parents, my friends, my future as a broadsheet journalist, the latest man in whose basket I had placed all of my eggs.

Rosemary Mac Cabe is the author of This Is Not About You: A Menmoir