The Human Boomerang: Finding Your People When You’ve Lived 5 Lives Already
I’ve moved enough times now that my life feels less like a timeline and more like separate box sets.
Small-town kid era.
Sydney gay chaos era.
Hobart soft-focus era.
Back to Sydney, healthcare and high-function era.
Each move felt like a reset. New gym, new supermarket, new “this is my café now” performance. New queer ecosystem. New version of me.
For a long time, I treated those eras like sealed chapters. When I left a place, I quietly assumed I’d also left the people, the versions of me, and the relationships that belonged to that life.
If they didn’t keep in touch, I told myself it was because I didn’t matter that much. If I didn’t reach out, I pretended it was because I was “respecting their life now.”
It’s only recently I’ve admitted the obvious: I’ve been a human boomerang for a decade - and I never gave my friendships a fair chance to come with me.
It’s not that they hated you. They just had kids, careers, and daylight savings.
We romanticise constancy: the friend group that never drifts, the bar staff that still knows your order, the city that always fits. But real life is school drop-offs, shift work, new partners, burnout, time zones. Geographical distance is not neutral. It scrambles rhythm.
When you move five times in ten years, you’re not just starting fresh; you’re repeatedly asking people to track a version of you they never see.
Most of them aren’t rejecting you. They’re just busy. And, frankly, you’ve been busy too.
Queerty recently captured this tension perfectly — the queer person torn between big-city possibility and small-town peace, asking “Where do people like us actually belong?”
The answer that stuck with me: “Dorothy’s journey was never about the destination—it was about the friends she met along the way. With effort, community travels with us, and home is something we build”
We talk about “finding home” like it’s coordinates. Maybe for us - the serial movers, the queer workers chasing roles across states - home is relational, not geographic. It’s the people we choose to keep stitching in.
The era problem (and why it’s kinder than you think)
A lot of us quietly Taylor Swift our lives: distinct eras, each with a specific aesthetic, soundtrack, and supporting cast. It’s neat. It’s also brutal.
If you’ve filed your Sydney 1.0 friends under “party years,” your Hobart circle under “recovery era,” and your current life under “serious grown-up,” you’ve probably also internalised a lie: that only one version of you was legitimate at a time - and only those people belong in your now.
But you were real in all of them.
And the friendships from those years weren’t props. They were practice. They held you when you didn’t have language yet. They sat in big share houses and partied in night (and day) clubs with you. Some of them would still pick up - if you actually called.
Modern loneliness research keeps repeating a simple truth: loneliness isn’t just being alone; it’s feeling unseen or unimportant.
If we never reach back, we never give people the chance to say, “No, you still matter to me. I just had my hands full.”
City vs Small Town vs You
There’s a real tension for queer people that straight people don’t always grasp.
Big cities offer density: more queers, more venues, more options - and, often, more burnout. Small towns can offer space, affordability, slowness - and sometimes loneliness, straightness, or safety calculations. Remote work has scrambled it further. The Emerald City could be anywhere with Wi-Fi and oat milk.
The trap is thinking the decision is purely geographic.
Location matters. Safety matters. Access matters. But if you move without re-learning how to build and maintain connection, you just export the same hollow feeling to a new postcode.
So instead of asking, “Where do queer people belong?” try:
Where do I have enough safety to be myself?
Where can I realistically practice showing up?
Who have I already met that I haven’t fully allowed into my present tense?
Community travels if you carry it
Dorothy didn’t defeat the witch alone. She accumulated weirdos.
Here’s how that translates for those of us who’ve lived five lives in ten years:
1. Reopen the old doors (gently).
Message the friend from Hobart you loved but drifted from. The ex-colleague from Melbourne Pride who always felt solid. No essay, just: “Hey, I’ve been thinking of you. Would love to catch up if you’re up for it.”
If they don’t reply, you’ve lost nothing. If they do, you’ve just reactivated a piece of your own history.
2. Build “boomerang clubs.”
If you’ve moved for work, chances are others have too. Start a low-key social: “New (or back) in Sydney/Hobart/Wherever and figuring out friends as adults.” Use tools like Get Out to surface events that attract the same crowd: queer sports, board games, craft, recovery-friendly nights. Don’t brand it perfectly. Just start.
3. Treat place like a platform, not a personality test.
You are allowed to love Sydney’s pace and miss Hobart’s quiet. You can crave a slower life and still want a visible queer network. There is no correct answer. Give yourself permission to optimise for seasons, not a single verdict.
4. Don’t outsource all your belonging to romance.
If you make “partner” the only answer to “who witnesses my life?”, every move, every breakup, every quiet patch becomes existential. Build constellations, not pedestals.
5. Make one concrete move this month.
Reconnect with one person from a past city.
Say yes to one local event where your people plausibly are.
Start one tiny recurring thing (monthly coffee, walk, or games night).
Not because you’re desperate. Because you’re deliberate.
Where I land
I used to think moving so much meant I’d failed to “settle.” Now I’m starting to see it differently.
What if being a human boomerang means you’re uniquely qualified to understand that home isn’t a single postcode, era, or venue - it’s the web of people you choose to keep weaving in, even clumsily, even late.
We don’t get Emerald City handed to us. We get bricks, texts, invites, awkward first coffees, WhatsApp groups that may or may not die, and the choice to keep trying.
Community travels if we do. Home is something we build - and rebuild - on our own terms.