It started off as a joke when I was in the throws of lockdown and my job felt so heavy and inescapable and Brighton felt small and grey and stuck, stuck, stuck. And when the visa applications opened again I thought "fuck it, why not?" and put my name into the pool for a chance at two years somewhere else and the chance to reset. The chance to explore and breathe and create some chaos for myself. I didn't know if I would get it, or whether it would come at the right time. But I needed a get out card, I needed another option, something a bit mad and a bit hopeful.
And then I got it. And when I got it and I cried and ran around my kitchen and felt so alive, I knew that I would go.
So I am slowly making plans and tying up things here in Brighton, looking at farms for WWOOFING and temp jobs in women's shelters, planning routes across the country, working out what I want from two years away.
But the sun has started to come out. There is enough light after work to sit on the beach in just a jacket. I have friends across the city to meet in pub gardens and to swim with. It feels ridiculous to choose to leave.
There are days where I feel excited, the thought of being cut free is so exhilarating! I can do anything!
But then there are days when that feels too big and too daunting. I will know no one, I will have no ties through a job or a relationship, I will be completely at the mercy of the decisions I will make. I can do anything.. how terrifying.
The anxiety comes out in weird ways, a strange possessiveness over a room at work, an inability to use the kitchen as the house feels less mine. But I remember feeling wobbly before I moved to Brighton, I can probably even scroll back to posts I wrote at the time about how scared I was.
I need to do this. I need to get away and push myself again. I want to be scared about my own life and adventures and challenging myself with new experiences, not just scared of what will happen to the families I worked with, locked in to a cycle of care and helplessness. I want to write. I want to be outside and run around in fields growing things and getting muddy and tanned and covered in nettles or mosquito bites. I want the headspace to meet new people and fall in love and find new things about myself. I want to be able to live again.
I feel selfish saying that, I feel selfish that I am able to leave whereas the families I work with can't. I feel pulled to them, pulled to a job that is all consuming and painful. But I know I can't carry on like this. I'm sure I will be back, to this or other work that uses my whole self and all the anger and hope I have in the world. But for now, I'm out.
I'm refueling. I'm resting. I'm re-evaluating this life that I have carefully constructed for myself.
And I can always come back. I tell myself this often. Another get out card I need to have in my back pocket.
So I am off to Canada, back over the pond. It was a much bigger step for a much younger Sarah when I left seven years ago to move to Bethlehem. I have so much more experience now, I know myself better, I know what I need.
It will be alright.
