Finding Home

View from my flat in London

This Christmas holidays have seen me hermit myself in Wales. I haven’t had phone signal in days, and when the lights go off at night, you better hope you ate your carrots when you were younger. It’s given me time to think though. Time to try and organise the jumble of interests I have into something tangible within the real world. But first of, I had to decide where I would be happiest. Where I would feel most at home for a long period of time.

Sometimes I stare at a dessert menu stressing over what to have. I’m normally too full at the end of the meal to even rationalise one thing, so when three or four stare out at me, I’m pained. It’s the restaurants with several sample desserts that come to my rescue. They save me from having to choose one over the other, and I’ll know which to go for full blast next time.

Clifton, Bristol

When I was fourteen I made friends through the internet. When I was sixteen, I went to visit them in Bristol every chance I got. Weekends and holidays, whenever they would have me. I’ve spent every New Year since 2008/09 in Bristol, celebrating heading into the future. I love them, and in turn I love their city, their suburbs and all the parks we spent time in being teenagers; the shops we browsed through despite not having jobs to support any purchases.

During those first two years, I also spent a lot of time in Cambridge while studying, making friends with people in the alternative scene there, spending time with them whenever I wasn’t trekking three hours west at the weekends.

Royal Crescent, Bath

I chose the city of Bath for university as it was close to Bristol. I found the more I dove into my chosen subject, the less I had in common with friends I’d left behind, even the ones just down the road. I felt guilty and missed them, but knew that a lot of things inevitably come to an end.

As the opportunity came up to study abroad, I investigated it, and shortly after was accepted as an exchange student in Chicago. In the final year of my degree, I travelled nearly 4000 miles away to dip my toe into another surrounding, and after a few months was horrifically in love with the city.

Chicago from the John Hancock Observatory

When I arrived back, my childhood home had been sold, and I had a turnaround period of a month to pack up and move out again. I quickly found a place in nearby London, and I was determined to throw myself into this new city as I had in cities before. Chicago, Bristol, Bath and Cambridge, and all the other places I’d found a community in within the recent years. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. I’ve learnt a lot of hard truths about London. The prices are incredibly high, the majority of people incredibly unfriendly, the city incredibly big – too big for any real community feeling to develop. It doesn’t feel like home when you’re starting from the bottom.

One of my best friends has a favourite quote: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

Around me I saw people settling into lives they weren’t entirely happy with, following routine because that’s what they know how to do. I worry constantly that by not knowing what I want yet, I never will, and will get into a rut of uprooting myself in search for something I’ll never find. Sometimes I worry that I run away when things begin to take hold; abandon everyone I know for the possibility of something better. I worry that I get bored of my own friends.

Westminster Bridge, London

It took me a long time to place all the pieces of the puzzle together. It’s not running away, it’s the tasting of different desserts, and more often than not I’ve found irresistible aspects to a lot of them.

With this comfort, I’m leaving London and heading to Bristol on what I hope to be a permanent basis for now. I’ll be with my friends who have been there for me for seven years, even when I’ve constantly been running away from them.

Trafalgar Square, London

Life often has to be what you make it. You can start ahead or behind others, and only if you know how to achieve things can they sometimes be possible, but it’s worth the effort. It’s worth not doing what you always do, because otherwise you’ll always get the same results.

I don’t know what awaits me, but with a fair amount of certainty, for now I feel my tasting period has come to a pause. And I’m confident I’m choosing the sweetest dessert.

Chicago skyline at sunset