This homecoming business is tricky. The subtleties and nuances of Irish life, my new Irish life, are proving to be more challenging than I had anticipated. Although, of course, I should not be surprised. Memory is a trickster. The deeper, more personal reasons why I left in the first place have, of course, not gone away. I should know better, and I do, but somehow it doesn’t help. I no longer have the luxury or the romance of being an exile, can no longer wrap myself in the “wounded Irish Catholic” frock coat, fleeing to liberal godless England to seek solace from the savage wounds of sexual shame and preach smugly from the outside, looking in. There is no one else to blame now, I’m a grown up; no one really has any sympathy. Nor should they. Move on, get over it, get over myself. Get up to speed: Dublin is a confident, brash, fast-moving, aggressive city. Sex is as freely available here as it is in London. Ireland has moved on from all that mournful confessional guilt-ridden melancholy shite, and so should I.

Sometimes I feel as if I never left, and thirteen years have gone in the blink of an eye, leaving me not one iota wiser, nor with enough resilience or confidence to define myself comfortably, to find my place here, to know what it is I stand for, to know what on Earth I came back for. At other times I realise that, whatever curing process I went through in London, (as in ham, not in ailment), it has given me a capacity to detach and analyse what goes on here in a way that I would never have been able to do otherwise.

Family defines the individual in Irish life, to a quite extraordinary degree, especially in comparison to the English. In naming this, and expressing reservations about this, I may sound like I’m being ungrateful or critical of my own family, but that is not my point, for they have been unfailingly kind and supportive. But my reasons for escaping to the big smoke, apart from the obvious, such as studying and getting qualifications, were to do with subtler stuff, trying to reinvent myself on my own terms. Now that I’m back, and the bosom of my family awaits me, a thirteen-year-old gap indented on it like a morning pillow, my struggle to figure out what I want, and am able for, without reference to them, seems a chimera, an exotic conceit, a self-indulgent whimsy that is the disappointing result of far too much therapy and far too little responsibility. I know I’m not alone in this - many people I know find the issue of negotiating a comfortable distance between members of their families a vexing one. For some, it is a hazardous toxic minefield, for some it is an icy wasteland. When family bonds are too close, when people feel that they don’t have enough space to breathe or be different, there is friction, resentment, rage; sparks can fly. At the other extreme, some families, especially those that I’ve encountered in England, can make neglect and detachment an art form, and it is amazing any of them survive their childhoods at all, for lack of warmth.

No matter how old we are, we can still feel like we’re six years old when we’re with our parents, with childish reactions that are way off the scale of rationality, and of that I’m more guilty than most. But I guess the challenge is to find a balance that works, and that is kind, and that is fun, and on that score I’m not worried, and am far luckier than most.

I left Ireland, it turned out, to expose myself to the psychic vacuum of reserved English tolerance and distant politeness, to explore anonymity and invisibility and sex and ideas and relationships, to see what happened when all the flabby sentimental guilt-soup stuff was atomised. I’ve been left with the bare bones of me. Coming back into the maelstrom of Irish life, it’s jarring. I need padding, I need something to buffet me, to protect me from the high-volume, high-intensity emotional currents that seem ubiquitous here. And with any strong current, the choice has to be made to allow yourself to be swept along, to follow what is expected of you, or to find the solid rock underneath and stand your ground, or to attempt to swim against it, like salmon up a weir. And I honestly don’t quite know what I want to do. Friends are advising me to wait, to see what happens, that it will become clear in time, and I’m sure they are right.

Homecoming myths aren’t much use to me now. After the traveller returns, there usually isn’t much of a story left to tell. Either it all goes horribly wrong, or it all ends happily ever after. I don’t think either is likely, but it does seem that I’d better start thinking of some new stories. Those of us trying to make sense of the new Ireland, who are making our homes here, either returning émigrés like me or new immigrants, are working on mythological new ground. Now, more than ever, we have to make it up as we go along.