Author R. Eric Thomas used to joke that he never wanted to move back to his hometown of Baltimore, even to be buried.

And why should he? He’d had a rough coming-of-age as a Black, gay teenager living in the same neighborhood where “The Wire” was being filmed, but had found a measure of happiness and peace in Philadelphia. His life — finally — was going as planned.

After years of searching for love, Thomas had met a wonderful man, a Presbyterian pastor, and in 2016 they married. That was the same year Thomas achieved internet fame by dashing off a humorous Facebook post commenting on the hotness of three world leaders (U.S. President Barack Obama, Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Mexico’s Enrique Peña Nieto). The post led to a full-time job writing a humor column for Elle.com.

But the following year, Thomas’ husband, David Norse, received an offer to become pastor of Maryland Presbyterian Church in Towson, a job so good the couple couldn’t possibly turn it down.

And so they didn’t. Thomas and Norse moved back to Baltimore, where they remained for five years, coping with (among other things) the death of Norse’s father, the COVID-19 pandemic, homeownership in the suburbs and a whole lot of frogs.

Thomas writes about all of that and more in “Congratulations, The Best is Over!” his new book of essays, which was published Aug. 8 by Ballantine Books.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Let’s get the spoiler over with: You and David are no longer living in Baltimore.

That’s right. Work took us back to Philadelphia last summer. I thought about including that as a coda in the book, but wanted it to be a picture of our time in Baltimore. David is an associate pastor focusing on Christian formation, and he got an opportunity to work with a church that has a little more staff and to work more directly with youth.

We were in northern Baltimore County at the time, and I also had a desire to get back to living in a city. The pandemic underlined some things that I was missing. It was an opportunity to search for a community that we were really hungry for.

In your essays, you write that after you moved away from the Baltimore for the first time, your complicated feelings about your hometown had “calcified into an active grudge.”

I grew up in a neighborhood that by design was resolutely without hope. It’s very hard to look out your window every day and see people deprived of opportunity.

I also spent a lot of unhappy years here in Baltimore when I had dropped out of college and was underemployed. After a while, Baltimore became identified in my own mind as the place where I was unhappy.

You write in the book about your “cupcake days,” a period in your 20s when you were directionless, underemployed, broke, anxious and depressed — and baked muffin tin after muffin tin of cupcakes. How are you feeling these days?

I’ve learned new tactics about being in a relationship with depression, but it’s a lifelong relationship. There’s a quote by Robert Harling I think about a lot: “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.” I can’t get to parts of my identity, I can’t get to laughter without some tears.

At times I have been in an urgent situation. I’m grateful to the therapist who worked with me throughout my time in Baltimore. He saved my life.

Depression tells you, “You are alone and things will never change.” Therapy tells you, “You are not alone, and things can change.”

I love the future. I love anticipating what’s coming next. I believe tomorrow will be great. Today may not always be great, but that’s O.K.

As you know, Baltimoreans can be sensitive about how their city is depicted. When I read your essay, I almost felt as though you were bending over backward not to criticize Baltimore, to make the point that you caused your own problems.

The version of the book that you read and that was published is probably the most bending-over-backward of several different versions I wrote. Some of the earlier versions were more pointed.

But I don’t write books to settle scores, and I understood at that point that the relationship wasn’t Baltimore’s fault. I was unhappy because I was avoiding work I needed to do inside myself. When I did that work, Baltimore opened up for me and I came to see it in a new way.

This book is a story of falling back in love with Baltimore, but it isn’t a rom-com. I found a new version of myself in Baltimore.

Can you tell me a little more about that?

In Baltimore, you have to show up as yourself, and sometimes that can be hard.

I think of Baltimore as a speak-easy city. It’s a city where it pays to have to good connections, to know the good spots in advance. Baltimore is a city of treasures, but some of them aren’t always apparent when you walk by the outside. It’s a house party city, a dinner party city. I had to be really intentional to not just casually show up some place and hope people I knew would be there.

I think one of the things that is exciting but challenging about Baltimore is that it has so much beautiful promise and opportunity, but you have to be direct about exploring that.

You write at great length about the garden you and David planted at your house in Phoenix. Was it difficult to leave?

There’s a little bit of grief to not having that garden anymore. We put a lot of effort into it, and it was a symbol of that portion of our lives. I didn’t know anything about gardening, and when we started, I thought, “You put a seed into the ground, and bippity boppety boop, it’s a plant.”

But there are two-year gardens and three-year gardens. You plant seeds that you will never see the end of because they will outlive you.

That’s true of making art, or raising children or digging a gorgeous garden with lilies and hosta and berries. We make an Eden, and then we walk away.