over the pond.

 

These two photos were taken in August 2019, a year after moving to Brighton. One is from a walk to Saltdean, another is from a walk up to Chattri Memorial. I was not in a good place. It had just been Brighton Pride, but I hadn't felt up for it. I hadn't coped with the crowds of people or drinking or messy group dynamics. I found myself overwhelmed and swallowed up. I was so wretched and lost, four months post break up but still messaging Connor, still feeling new to Brighton, still struggling without solid friends who just get you. So I walked. Angry, agitated, upset, spiralling. Not safe to be on my own in my flat, I forced myself out. Headphones firmly plugged in I walked and walked and walked, reaching the edges of Brighton. I wanted to scream, I wanted to throw myself into the sea, I wanted to be blown away. I didn't know that soon I would be assaulted and would spiral further. I didn't know that I would face someone difficult from my past alone at Lucy's wedding. I didn't know that my placement would be less than ideal, or that the world would fall into a rollercoaster pandemic and I would be thrown into a proper social work job without a break.

It may seem odd to bring this moment up now as I am on the cusp of leaving Brighton and starting a new life in Canada. But I was looking through photos (like the overly sentimental memory hoarder that I am) and stopped when I saw them. These days were some of the lowest I have had in this city and I wanted to remember them. I wanted to feel the wretchedness and then shout out on this little space on the internet that I survived. I survived! I forced myself out the house, pushed my feet to take each step, feeling my shoulders get slowly further away from my ears and my breathing steady. I danced on that hill to Jamie T, spinning around in wobbly loops and starting to smile. And after those days I did so much. I built up the relationships I needed that Summer, let go of Connor and some of the pain that he caused, made it through my Masters, lent into my glorious queerness, became a bloody good social worker.

I wanted this written down for when things slip in Canada. When the slog of building a new life gets too much and I feel disconnected and foggy. When I am a year in and friendships still feel shallow without years of memories behind us. When anxiety rises and words feel cloying and uncomfortable in my mouth. When the Winter and rain comes and the Spring feels so far away. I want to remember that I've got through it before and I will get through it again.

My last weekend in Brighton will be Pride 2022, camped out on my friend's sofa, four years after I first camped out in my unfurnished flat. How things have changed! I have roots and friends and a beautiful life here now. I shouldn't spiral with social interaction. I shouldn't need to walk until I feel real.

I have come so far.

And I have so far to go.

My best friend just had a baby. Her very first. It's pink and plump and tiny.

My sister is pregnant with her fourth, stomach swelling as we draw closer to October.

I always thought this would be something we would do together, an experience that we would share. Building a family, having children, being parents. With both Lucy and Louise. But I'm not straight. And that makes plans for pregnancy and babies a little bit more complicated. As I watch people around me become parents, I think more and more about my own relationship to children and whether I will ever have children of my own.

I recently read a wonderful graphic novel called Stone Fruit by Lee Lai that beautifully explores queer families and the role for queer people in children's lives. Nessie is the niece of the protagonist and is so loved and so cared for by her aunts. They play together and create worlds together and run wild together. They are such fundamental people for Nessie, and the joy she brings them is alive and visible on the pages of the novel.

In Feel Good, a netflix show I am currently bingeing, the main character Mae says that they see their unborn children in their female partner's eyes. Parenthood feels teasing sometimes. A physical impossibility with the bodies we have and the bodies we love. But that doesn't mean we don't see or feel the desire to have children or feel broody thinking of what our swirl of genes might look like.

When I saw Louise in London recently, she said that she wanted me to have a family and it made her sad to think that I might not have one. I told her that I would have family, it just might not look quite like how she would imagine a family to look. It might not be conventional or straightforward or free or even full of my own children, but there are options.

I still feel very young, I don't feel the pressure of the biological clock. Partly because I'm not sure what my journey to parenthood would look like and partly because I am just not ready for children yet.

There are a lot of people in the queer community (and the community at large) that do not want children and are very clear about it. Whilst I'm not making plans to visit a fertility clinic any time soon, I don't want to be shut off to the idea of ever having a baby. 

When I first started properly dating women and thinking about the potential of spending my life with a woman, I thought a lot about what that would mean and what my future could and couldn't look like. I was in love, or infatuated, or in awe- still not entirely sure which one- and I wrestled with the idea of the nuclear family, of the dream of marriage and children in quick succession. And I realised, with conviction, that I didn't need that. That being with the right person for me and being happy and building a life together was worth what I might lose. That there is no guarantee, even with a strapping young virile-looking lad, that children come easily. And that wouldn't make a relationship less valid. And if I find a female partner and children do not happen, then that is okay. I don't just want to slot into a heterosexual relationship for the wrong reasons, I want to find someone who is right for me.

I went on a date last week to the beach with a beautiful girl. It was our second date and the conversation turned to expectations. What are we looking for, what do we want. And the subject of children came up. She said to me that she wasn't a hard no but wasn't a hard yes. And I think that's a good place to be. I'm not looking for someone rearing to go with big adoption or IUI plans. But I do want it as an option, I want the door to be open, whether it ever happens or not.

And I will have a family, whether that's a wonderful umbrella term for those I love in my life, or whether that looks like parents evenings and school pick-ups. And I will be there alongside Lucy and Louise as they raise their children. We will still do it together. And it will be a joy and a privilege to be in their children's lives and I hope that their children appreciate their slightly messy, slightly eccentric, rough-round-the-edges queer aunt. I will dance with them in the street and on the station platform. I will embarrass them and hold them and love them. And I will always be their family.

What a strange and solitary historical moment.

Although I still have 74 days left of placement and 15,000 words left to write on my dissertation, my head is already somewhere past this course. I am ready for it to be over, for May and freedom and a summer spent in fields far, far away, thriving. I spend my free time searching for flights, I spend hours debating over where I want to work post-qualifying and where I want to live and what my new apartment will look like when I finally have a paycheck once more.

I have to force myself to take a step back, force myself back into the present and this tiny studio that has become my home. I don't want to move on too fast and not appreciate this time learning and growing and reaching out and becoming what I hope to become. I know that I am itching to be done, restless in a room that has no space to sew or sit comfortably. But this time studying has been good.

I want to remember my balcony garden, hours perched on my kitchen bin as I potted and repotted and tended to my vegetables.

I want to remember the string of zines above my bed, a daily reminder to write and create, but mostly a colourful distraction from the stained walls.

I want to remember the table I got for £7 to make my kitchen look more like a kitchen, and the dried flowers that sit on it, preserved from a bouquet I was given when I left my first placement.

I want to remember the wonky red table that balances precariously by my wardrobe, filled with paper and glue and my long armed stapler.

I want to remember my slowly growing collection of ornamental hedgehogs and mushrooms, hidden between houseplants that I irregularly water but are clinging on.

I want to remember the photobooth strips that I make every visitor take stuck around my mirror, the square photos and boob print wallpaper that make up my headboard.

I want to remember two mattress piled on top of each other, barely space to put one on the floor for a guest, wedged into the fireplace.

I want to remember the high ceilings and Victorian decoration and the massive single pane window that makes the room bright but freezing.

I want to remember the view down my road to the sea.

The next step might be more exciting and grand than my current day-to-day student existence, but I don't want to wish it away. I will miss this room and the time I have spent here. It has been the foundation for all I have managed to achieve. I don't want to forget it.

I live alone. And sometimes this means that people worry that I am lonely.

After my trip to Bulgaria I wasn't exactly excited to be back in Brighton. I had errands to run, laundry to do, the communal shower needed something strong to unclog the drain. I felt stuck in my studio flat, tired and less willing to explore and push myself as I had done whilst travelling.

But when I did go out, I ran into a woman I worked with on placement last year and we spoke about how things were going, my course, her thesis, and her daughter's mental health.

I then ran into the guy who co-ordinates the tutoring program I volunteered for last year and we chatted about his trip to Canada with his girlfriend and my trip to Bulgaria, what schools had lost funding and where I was working this semester.

I decided to go to an outdoor reflective service that One Church were putting on in the evening. On the bus I bumped into someone who is a part of the student housing co-operative working committee with me and we spoke about the progress the co-op has made over the year, about their dissertation and what it's like to have no schedule, about my roller coaster summer and my need for structure.

When I got to the service, I saw a woman who had volunteered with me on the church's farm project over the summer, we spoke about how the last three weeks of my summer job had gone and about how her daughter had promised to look after her dog but had flaked so she had had to bring him with her.

These run ins, these accidental meetings, these moments of connection; they weren't superficial and surface level. They were fruitful and honest. They are the very real result of the time and effort I took last year to reach out and build community, to meet people and to explore Brighton.

I may live on my own but I am not alone in this city. I need to remind myself of this sometimes.

I am not where I was a year ago, when social interactions were still so new and tender, when I did not know if I could share some of the heavier things, when I was scared to push people away.

I am proud of the friendships I have made, of the number of people I know and value in Brighton, of all the things that I have got involved with and the projects I've shaped. I am loved and appreciated.

Tired as I am from a rocky summer, I want to continue to reach out and find community, to meet new people, to expand my network further, to have more people to stop and talk to in the street.

I may like to curl up on my own in a room I know no one will barge into and cook in a kitchen where no one will be using the pans I want to use, but I don't want to do this year alone.

And I won't.

In February 2017, when everything was in pieces around me and the world felt too big and too much, I wrote myself a letter. It spoke to a future I wasn't sure I wanted.

It is a list of affirmations, strong statements about who I am and what I will do. Some are bold and determined whilst others merely beg for survival. It was the tiny slither of hope that remained sprawled out across the page. Amongst it all I wrote this:

"You have been given your words. You have known this for as long as you could scribble a story about
cutlery on hand-lined paper.
You have to use them, you have to whisper them and mould them and shout them until you are hoarse in the throat.
You must do this as long as you keep breathing. And you must keep breathing."

One key thing that I held onto, that I gave as a justification to keep on living, was my writing.

And that year pushed me to create such painful and powerful things, some shared, some hidden away. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. And people listened and read it and shared their stories with me in return. It was one wonderful thing that came out of a horrendous year.

However, once I graduated, my writing became different. I found myself using my words each day in my miserable office job only to shape soft and compassionate letters to people in financial difficulty, trying to soothe even as I reached out from the wrong side of their situation. It wasn't as creative and eloquent and visible as the work I had done in my final year of university, there were no community nights to share what I had written, no one thanking me for how carefully I crafted each response. But it was important, to stay kind in a ruthless environment. It gave me purpose.

I was glad to leave that job and not be a part of that system anymore. I am thankful that I now occasionally help people write to their debt companies instead and can use my inside knowledge to support them better than I could have done in ignorance.

Then this year I started to write deliberately again. I wrote a whole zine about the complex relationship we have with abusers, it is tough to read and it is honest, and it need to be written. And it felt good. To write and be heard and to help people by speaking to their experiences and helping them feel valid. To be a voice again for those whose words don't come so easily. To use my words for something bigger than me.

I still feel like I must keep writing, keep using my words, keep whispering and shouting, keep sharing. Whether its on a non-existent blog or in a professionally stapled zine. Whether one person or a hundred hear me.

This photo was taken on my very first trip to Brighton, on a wet and windy weekend in November.

I didn't know where I would end up for my masters, but knew that Brighton would probably be on my list so decided to take a trip and see the city for myself.

It seems like a lifetime ago that I was applying, writing essays about volunteering experiences I had barely begun in my bedroom in my mother's house, dreaming of a life where I could grow into myself once more. I was in recovery, hibernating in an office job that pottered along, slowly healing in a sleepy town on my long bus commute. It took a year to get ready to wake up and face myself again.

Tomorrow is the final day of my first semester. I still have essays to write and a presentation to complete, but I'm on the home stretch. In January I go on placement, finally working in the field I have waited and wished to work in. I'm actually doing this crazy thing I imagined I would, and I am so happy to be here.

It's going so fast! And sometimes so slow. And so fast!

I know this was where I was supposed to be. I know that I needed to go back to school, learn more before diving into such an intense role, join a cohort for support and well deserved nights out.

It takes three years to be qualified. Two years to get my masters, one to train as a newly qualified social worker. Sometimes that feels impossible to achieve, a milestone I can't quite see. But I've done one semester now, sent off my first assignments, (hopefully) know where I am working in January- things are moving forward.

I am still unsure of how long I will live in Brighton. I am not hesitant to build a life here or put down roots. This is not an interim period or a waiting room, this, here, is my life for however long I remain. I already know how much I will miss this time in my life, the space and energy I have here, the busyness of my calendar, full of all the things I have ever wanted to do. I don't want to wish this time away.

One semester down, three to go.

Its a start.

Before I moved down to the coast permanently, I spent a couple of weekends here and there sorting out my flat and getting to know the city whilst trying, and failing, to imagine what my life in Brighton would look like.

The weekend of Brighton Pride was one of those weekends.

On Friday night, waiting for Ellie to arrive the next day, sitting in my bare room, I freaked out. I was on the phone to Connor and I just couldn't stop crying, worrying about everything, scared of this place and the thought of moving to a new city where I knew no one. It felt stupid to be crying when I was where I wanted to be, in a lovely little studio that I had worked and searched so hard for, but I was almost inconsolable.

Fast forward to the first of November, today, three months later, and sometimes I still get scared.

This stage of my life in Brighton is slowly unfurling, beautiful and purposeful, and I am pushing myself to do the things I've always wanted to do and put down the roots I need to feel safe and secure. I can finally do all the things I hoped and wished to do that final year in Kent before my dad left and I got ill, things like date whoever I want, create whatever I want, find the right church for me, find the art scene that my zines and writing fit into, find a community. And, without the anxiety that curled around my throat, I find myself able to talk to people without shrinking into myself. I can finally be me.

But it is exhausting to build a life, to put yourself out there again and again, to pour your energy into new friendships and networks.

Sometimes I come back to my little flat and curl up in bed and find myself drained and lost.

But I am doing better than I ever expected, and, in the most part, the dips don't drag out into the next day. When the sun rises I get up again, start to tick off the many things on my list, get myself to class, reach out to that person in my small group or my cohort, make time for the sea, try to cook and eat each day. I keep going. I keep going.

And I am slowly building a life here. This place is slowly becoming my home. Slowly becoming mine.

I am so, so proud of what I have achieved by moving here and for pushing myself to make this a life I want to live. And I do.

I have two years here and I am determined to keep pushing, keep learning, keep moving forward.

I think this is where I was meant to be, in this slip of a room in this city by the sea. After the quiet lull of last year, I needed somewhere that felt alive. And oh, Brighton, you feel alive. And so do I.

It had been a long time since we last lived together.

Nine days between houses in a whirlwind of reaquaintance and nostalgia didn't properly prepare us for the magnitude of returning to Bethlehem and sharing our lives once more.

Fuelled by high expectations and months of anticipation, the first few days were a shock. A shock as we learnt how to accommodate another person again, learnt how to communicate and work together, relearnt the quirks we had managed to play down in our last spontaneous meeting.

And we clashed. Stubborn and swollen with our own ideas and agendas. Wrote angry poetry and thought about whether it was right that I had travelled back to the town we had once loved in.

But we quickly uncurled our fists, let go of the whimsical fantasy of a romantic holiday and embraced instead the beautiful tired mess of us.

Three and a half weeks when Connor was within arms reach, when I could throw my thoughts out into the room and he was there to hear them, when we could cook the vegetables we had planted and picked together, when we woke up to each other.

We were not unfailingly happy, things were not always simple and straight forward, but we were together. We could talk through any problems we had in the same time zone, we could hold each other if we were hurting. And oh how we loved each other.

I spent three and a half weeks with my best friend and built a little life together, as we always seem to do.

I think the hardest thing about the times we spend together is that it actually works. If it felt forced, if it meant nothing, if it was just okay, it would be easy to walk away. It is hard to know what we could have, if it weren't for visas and immigration and the cost of US education.

We are now back on different planets, orbiting around different suns, colliding when we can, and it is so hard.

We do not know when we will see each other again or where we will end up or what this journey will look like for us, but I trust that we will walk this road together for as long as we can.

Until next time, Connor.