On home

Heads up: This is part one of a series on ‘home’. It is one of the more Black Willow pieces of writing. I am practising pathos. So If you want to skip the moaning you can wait around for when I get to the second instalment, or something else entirely (next week). However, I am living this and not able to skip past anything, so why should you, and besides, I love the company. I have kept this under 4.000 words for all our benefit.

I have not moved around all that much, well, not compared to a friend who has racked up about twenty-odd moves so far, but I have lived in three different countries to date. In the last ten years or so, I have tried to be very sensible, build up a career and a life and try to make the place where I live now work for me. It was rough to move here from the UK. Honestly, I have never gotten over the nigh-complete loss of witty banter.

I have positively run twice from places so far, reason being I could not stand sticking around what I perceived as my own failings associated with them. One is my birth home and the other is the place I studied at. Let me point out here that I may have blamed myself for the actions of others so much that I effectually hied myself off somewhere nobody would know me. Ludicrous in hindsight, but not so much when you are actually in the thick of it, so ashamed, embarrassed, and speechless. The third big move, I thought, was different, the decisive action of an adult, approaching the end of my twenties and wanting a steady income, offer myself and a potential partner something stable and responsible, plus I got tired of living at a very high cost with little to show for my education in terms of the job I had. I yearned for better, more. I wanted that adult life, a meaningful career, and that meant I could definitely not stay in one of the most glamorous cities I ever saw. Beauty though she was and is, she and I were through.

I have often questioned this choice in the last one and a half years, and even at times during the decade before, despite Brexit. I feel this doubt and itch again now, this drive to migrate, like a bird in spring, like salmon, like anything that wants to go out there and find fulfilment. Because I still want, and I still want more, and specifically I want a home where I can be fulfilled and feel right.

I am pining to be anywhere but here (this place, also this point in life). But I am not talking about holidays or short trips. I am talking about the great migration of an animal, and about leaving behind parts of my life that I cannot consolidate with who I simply know I am. As long as I have to wrestle with my weird urge to blame myself everyday because still, here I am, struggling so hard to overwrite a burdened geography, I am with Jack London on this: ‘Life is movement’. I feel stuck. And to be stuck in any way has always been unacceptable to me. So now, again, there is this drive in me. I have hardly read any analyses of Jack’s work, because thankfully I escaped studying literature and I only care how it speaks to me. But I always thought that the opening lines of White Fang are such a great juxtaposition of the utter stagnancy that befalls us at times, when we despair (the Wild) and that sheer bloody-mindedness that is life, which makes us get up despite that stagnancy even when we don’t really want to anymore. Survival programmed into us so deep it takes over, ever in revolt against the dictum that all movement must in the end come to the cessation of movement. I think wanting to raise a hearty two fingers and simply drop everything and run is my knee-jerk version of it. And assuredly, when even that desire eludes me, that is when I am at the most perilous crossroads of self. That is when I turn into the guy who runs off with nothing but three cartridges into the dark, mirthless, unforgiving cold filled with hungry maws, because he cannot stand losing another single dog. I like that guy because he’d rather go out fighting, but in hindsight, his mate who chose to stay to guard the casket was the wiser of the two. (Crucially, though, only because someone else came along to save his ass.)

I have a solid, likeable, white, straight cis-guy in my life (in fact, I have several of those, mine are delightful), who helps me deal with my neurotransmitter-starved brain. And he pointed out to me that this time I still haven’t run, haven’t moved, despite announcing my desire to do so months and months ago. Could it not be, he asked, that maybe I could make a home right here where I still am, despite everything?

And I answered that, obviously to both of us, it appears I am attempting to do so. But it is not an action, it is often just filling time. His question has me occupied still. We both know I remain in limbo.

Often, it seems like I am trying only to fail. Regardless of the many new hobbies and greater depths of friendship I am recently trying to make myself permeable to, just to let them in, to invite them to the ridiculousness that is I, I am still pining. I am still yearning.

I want to feel it. I want to come through my front door and feel right, I want to stand in a place and claim it as mine and, moreover, let it claim me. I want to belong to it. I want it so much I feel like I am jumping out of my skin. Sometimes it comes to me, when I am doing sword drills or sparring with the others in my sports club. A tender hum of a connection. Sometimes, it snuggles up to me when I am making music with my mate. But it’s a gossamer kite tether, always ready to snap. So barely there compared to what I felt as a child. And right when I make that comparison I know in my bones I left my birth home because I felt like I was a square peg in a round hole there. Othered, othering myself, nigh-on constantly, and hopeless that it would get better. Obsessed with the thought that I was meant for other, read “greater” things. (Than what? Am I not just as unhappy as some of the adults I despised as a teenager? Am I not just as stuck in my own web of choices as any other person? I used to blame the countryside, but I a nagging feeling tells me that often, this is just life at its suckiest. Alarming. Because then, where do I turn to? Is this even solvable by a change of scenery?)

On the very, very micro scale which is my life, all I, as a person, a single and mostly to herself relevant individual, want, is to have a home. A place of ultimate belonging. I have a blood family that is growing now, very far away from me. Their worries and problems and joys are to me like seen through the looking glass. Always one step removed. It has been like this all my adult life. (Which is most of my life, now.) As am I, from them. Part of that is that I came to a personal watershed when I was about sixteen, when I had to decide if I could hide away who I was attracted to until I was of age and had to move out anyway. The answer from within was a swift and resounding ‘nope’. And, well. I felt they maybe could have been more tactful and brave about me coming out. To all of you who are parents of queer children without being queer themselves: yes, your child will choose to withhold certain things from you if they do not feel supported when they are brave enough to let you know who they are. It is a question of prioritising long-term survival. You cannot waste energy while you are trying to handle your hormones, your constant state of awareness of otherness, on a debate with your elders about who you already know you are. Someone with a half-baked frontal lobe cannot be expected to be eloquent or reflected about any of this. The onus is on the adult(s) in the conversation. From listening to friends, I know that these moments can go well. I also know it can be scary and even saddening for family, for all they are often good-intentioned and well-meaning. I hold up that it was scarier for me. I needed more in that moment than I got. Then, running was not yet an option, so I did the next best thing and shut myself off, because I could not manage taking care of both my own emotions and theirs at the same time.

Unfortunately, I am reticent to have a second go at asking for what I need once I feel my first attempt fails to generate the nourishment I crave. This is not how I was taught to ask for things. A ‘no’ is not an invitation for debate. (Huh. I feel I unintentionally may have plagiarised that from some discussion on consent?) So I stay in a safe, but stagnant, shut-off state. But then, I can already do the whole trying to keep-your-face-and-(mostly) your poise-routine and I am quite satisfied that I am making some progress in...not doing that. Which is one reason why I started writing here as well. Being shut-off is neither a sustainable nor a well-balanced state. I am aware I need to have more than this in my toolbox of coping. I am trying to stop being a hardass when all I want is comfort. So, great, but how to move on from here? Is it not better to have new beginnings in new places? It certainly seems counterintuitive not to.

Where do I need to be to finally be in the right place for me?

Every time I moved, I did so because I wanted to make a home for me.

I thought I had finally managed it only to lose it, along with all belief in it too, which is like a crisis, or even a loss of faith to me. And anyone who has had their beliefs, whatever they are, challenged and shaken profoundly, will be able to relate to how devastating it is. I am going through life right now with hardly any ground beneath my feet, and I cannot see a path for me in the scarce rubble that remains to place my steps on.

So, do I need to return to my place of origin? Like a romance novel heroine, unwilling at first but then finding much healing and resolution and, finally, peace and happiness in the very small town they ran from? My brother-in-law reminded me of a saying while I visited a short while ago, ‘It’s always the stone you cast the furthest from you’. It means that what you protest most strongly against, where you say you could not, would not possibly be able to live, is what you may have the strongest, deepest attachment to. A very rural way to see things, maybe. I mean, we country folk do need to give ourselves narratives to make our life choice to rarely leave our own county a good decision, after all. But that does not necessarily render it untrue. But, also, just a saying. Or is it? That trope of the prodigal’s return has me occupied. It is a motive which deals in such profound healing. Look. I could now wax wonderfully about about the topos of returning home in, perhaps, the Odyssee. But I have something nice and more current which I like better as an example to expound upon this theme.

When Emmy Harlow, scion of the witches Harlow dynasty, one of the founding families of the wonderful town of Thistle Grove, returns home to uphold most important family traditions, there is a purely coincidental run-in with a certain sexy, formerly bad choice, but much reformed, nourishing, nurturing, and of course otherworldly gifted, Talia Avramov, scion of one of the other founding families. They bond over avenging Emmy’s best friend, Linden Thorne, as well as Talia and Emmy herself, who have all been treated rather disgustingly by the same guy. And a whole new purpose emerges to boot, which reconnects Emmy with her own deepest wishes and witchy roots, and misunderstandings of the past are cleared up, and even the heartbreak which our heroine fled from in the first place only served to pave the way for something so much better and way, way hot. (I mean, clearly. Read the book. Do it. It’s such fun.)

I feel such a fond connection with Emmy and her motives. Her struggle with the embarrassment, her refusal to be town gossip and her desire to be her own person and not what others ascribe her to be, the desire to venture forth and become the authority on her own life. Her conflicting, remaining, deep love for her home, her connection with it. The place I grew up, guys, it is beautiful. It is in its own way, in terms of nature and landscape, just as magical as Thistle Grove. Fireflies in the garden. So many stars to see at night. The scent of hay in summer. We even have our own magical lake. The soft rush of the brook behind the house. Crickets. The rich silence of snow which is so different from any other quiet, filled with the presence of it because it changes all the other sounds. And when I am there, I will go down to that lake, feel it on my skin and breathe in its scent and remember so many summer days there. I remember that always, always, that landscape and nature was all around me, that I could be wild in it and alone and extra, pining after the unavailable straight friend or licking some confused hurts that I could not name, because it did not care one jot, it was just there. It was always there and I could always be in it if I wanted.

What we do lack there are theatres, movie theatres, vegan options in restaurants, diversity, courage to try something different, support for someone who tries something new. As well as any institution providing higher education within the next 100 km or so. No nitro cold brew or any other novelty hipster stuff likening the places in Thistle Grove Talia points out to Emmy (though I do hear that some brave souls are serving only vegan food at one of the mountain huts at home). So yes, I both wanted and had to leave my birth home anyway. But sometimes, it does not feel like a choice anymore. Sometimes, I wonder if I can move closer to it again. I wonder if I may, in fact, find more to connect with than I am suspecting.

When I ran, it was always in the firm belief that surely, there was more than the current “this” out there, waiting for me, if only I was courageous enough to dare look for it.

Nowadays, it appears rather that I, much like Emmy, walked into self-imposed exile. And that I have very little to show for it. I know that my brain is not capable right now to reframe this. But I also do need to make you all out there understand: it can appear to me like a waste of years and years of my life. Because, see, I still believe that every moment of life that is not joyful especially in the face of all the sheer awfulness that is out there, is a damn shame. And I am tired of having my time being shaved off fighting so hard for the ability to take life at least half-smiling.

See, I want to love being still alive, and to be grateful, and I want to celebrate this with myself, my friends, and yes, preferably also with someone for the rest of my time, in our home, wherever we choose to make it. And on the floor of said home, if you must know. (I am trying to make you laugh, is it working?)

I am still struggling a lot with having had the illusion of such a home over the last couple of years, being so ready for it, and losing it. I told you that this blog will, among other things, deal with grief. And I am grieving losing what I believed was everything I always wanted. Because I felt so unbelievably lucky. So rich I finally had the chance to get something of that magic back. Losing this adult attempt at my own home seems like every place, every relationship that did not work out is coming back to me, all over again. And always it comes with such a defeating notion of failure.

And that right there, has also to do with me, at my core, not trusting always and as a matter of course that I am worthy, and that, naturally, I can have such a home, and that, indubitably, it is okay that I want the whole nine yards – well, not the kids, but definitely the dog – and most importantly, the home that is the other person. The home that, to me, is the other woman.

To be honest, I think I would happily have tried to settle down near my birth home if I had gotten a chance. Would I have really always chafed so much at the fact it was small in every way there, and that people did give me funny looks? They gave everyone funny looks: the only goth kid, the few punks, the hesitantly emerging queers. Even the many cis guys with long hair. You just could not win with the folks at home. In the end, just as my healing high school years showed me, gentle support from true friends would maybe have sustained me until I less of a Daffyd Thomas. But I did not find it in me to stick around to find out.

A truly astounding amount of shit can be overcome, I feel, with the love of a reliable strong woman who walks beside you proudly. (Be it in Ferragamos, Louboutins, scuffed Converse...or hiking boots.) But the crucial thing is, you cannot make a home like the one I want, if you are partnered with someone who is surprising you post-mutually assured commitment with actually not being committed at all.

I hurt, I left, turning my hopeful eyes toward greener pastures. Wash, rinse, repeat.

And...here I still am, a few iterations of that same cycle later. This time quite incapable to get up again, it appears. Stagnancy seems to catch up with me, damn her eyes. I have done everything I can perceive of. Every fucking thing under the sun. Moved countries, moved cities. Left behind friends and family, thrice over. Had shitty times, at work, with bosses in charge of my time and energy who should never be in charge of anyone ever; and sadly with partners, in a country where I am not a full citizen, trying to build a life when the world I grew up in seemed to yell at me constantly that I was not worthy to have a place, a home, a love to call mine. Not only, I suspect not even mainly because I am a lesbian, but because I am smart (not NASA-smart, but for some people probably still disturbingly well-rounded), was a perennial teacher’s pet, talented, constantly understating my own achievements, occasionally rather miserable, sensitive as heck and because being bullied made me normalise being treated badly, way before, like an utter tit, I had to go and be gay too. Hell, I am half-expecting to be heckled, to this day, whenever I approach a group of strangers, not primarily because I am gay, but because I am me.

I am exactly where I was at eighteen, at twenty-four, at twenty-eight. &tc.

Only now, it is exacerbated by the knowledge that I cannot, that I refuse, to keep doing this. I am finite, after all. And it took a bit of an alarming turn, this time. That cmd run on the above mentioned Londonian revolt against the dictum to cease movement failed to execute for a while. Wasn’t quite sure it would again, ever.

So yes, I am exhausted. I want to run again. I want to run after a dog sled under the northern lights. I want to scuba dive again. I want to see Brisbane again, this mind-boggling jewel of a city, and I want to sleep in a tent in Queensland again, hike through Tasmania, stay in the UK again for a while if only somehow I could get a work visa, see Seattle and light a candle for my grunge generation there, I want to be gob-smacked by the sheer sensuality of earth and how unbelievably rich and alluring and stunning and sexy she is, I want to dance and dance again, in clubs and under the open night sky, want to walk on the peaks of the mountains where I come from, and I want to feel again how much I love the dirt, the intensity of heat, humidity, of twenty below zero, snorkelling in the Mediterranean at dusk with the water turning a dark and mysterious indigo, and hear ear-splitting cicadas. I wish I could make love to a woman I love, and who loves me, the way I always wanted to, and simply keep doing that. In our home, wherever and however we make it. I am so tired of being so cut off from that earthly flow. I am so weary of being unable to find my way.

I think of the old friend who I saw this winter, and who made my knees go out from under me with her presence, just like she always was, strong and tall, and how I could lean into her and feel her arms around me, not because she is a woman and I love women, but because we are still friends, no words needed, and she draws me like a house with lit up windows and a wide open front door. My hearth. I think of my friends far away that I have grown up with, the lilt of their accents that are so much like my voice, my language, the way we express ourselves, allusion and sayings and phrases and simile which often are such perfect descriptions of a thing, a circumstance, an occurrence. I sit in my car, crying, and I want to scream with it.

I want to visit my friends in Boston and Vancouver, in Krakow, and the many smaller places whose names won’t mean anything to you, but they do to me.

Maybe I have a hundred kind-of homes out there.

How unfair this seems to the ones that have helped me so much in this city, this place which I still often don’t much like, and definitely do not love. You cannot and should not love that which brings you pain and misfortune. I hope they know they, too, are a home to me, all the home there is to find here. Maybe, the pull will become stronger and I will manage to enable myself to get moving. Maybe, this time I won’t have to. Anyway, guarding a casket waiting for the rescue team is getting a bit stale by now.

A hundred kind-of-homes are wonderful and an immeasurable wealth of love. I am grateful.

But I really, really want the one.