I tapped the side of the car excitedly as we rolled past the chipped town sign of the place I was born and raised. I hadn't been here for two years since my father got a job in the city. I still remember the pain I felt saying goodbye, the same pain I will probably feel in a few days time when I have to leave again.

Staring out of the clouded window, I see the familiar scene begin to repaint the picture in my mind. The town's hospital, huge with pillars of white and blue, stood proudly above the many restaurants and fast food takeouts beside it. A small park, with an abandoned slide and fenced off roundabout, looked brighter than I had remembered, flashing multitudes of red even in its worn down state.

There were new flower beds and wooden fences surrounding the roads that I had never seen before, stretching far in a chaotic beauty. I felt a stab of pain at having left such a stunning town, knowing I would have loved to cycle past these exact flower beds on the way to school every day. I hadn't used that bicycle since I lived here.

The car continues to glide along the road, and as my mother stops us at a red light, someone I used to know walks in front as they cross the road. I only knew them briefly, a small girl in my primary school. But the memory alone leaves me biting down a sigh. I wish we had never left this place, to me it would always be home.

I look to my right, seeing a small empty field where the town's giant Christmas tree is put up and decorated by the community every December. My mother used to take me and my sisters to put small stars on the spines of the branches, and we used to watch in awe as the lights were turned on every year, flashing all different colours in perfect rhythm.

I look down at my hands for the rest of the journey, not wanting to see anything else to make me regret leaving even more than I already do. I see a flash of green to my left as my mother looks at me in the car mirror, and I knew we had just passed my old school.

It's hard coming back to a place where you know you were so happy after spending two years in absolute misery. It's even harder knowing there's nothing you can do about it now.

I put my finger on the window and traced around my history. Memories whirring on the other side of the glass, new places full of stories I should know, replacing buildings I had my own stories about.

When I'm older, I'll come back here. I'll brush my hands through time and raise my children by the oak tree in so many of my dreams.

"Until we meet again," I whisper under my breath. The car rolls on.