over the pond.

Some years are growing years, other years are resting years.

28 was a growing year.

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.

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.

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.