over my ten years in london i moved home eight times (excluding the weeks in between leases where i crushed on my friends’ sofas) dragging my suitcases and ikea bags across north, east, southeast and southwest london. despite the hassle, i’m grateful for the amount of neighbourhoods i got to get acquainted with, the amount of corner shop men i got to flirt with and the amount of grindr grids i got to familiarise myself with.
the eight moves are intrinsic to a wider feeling of displacement that has characterised my twenties. i’ve shared flats with strangers and friends, but never really attempted to make a home, always hesitant to purchase anything more than a rice cooker. i’ve always focused on the short term, driven by financial scarcity and convenience, ready to leave at the sight of any conflict.
in a lot of ways, that transience has come in handy. it’s made me adaptable to different contexts and dynamics, people and places, and it’s made my relocation to australia perhaps easier than it is for others.
but, recently, i’ve been spiralling.
recently, i’ve been questioning how long i can go on like this.
recently, i’ve been wondering whether i should settle.
recently, i’ve been wondering where to settle.
recently, i’ve been feeling thirty.
recently, i’ve been feeling tired.
in a week’s time i’ll be moving to broome, a small coastal town of 20000 in western australia, bureaucratically forced by the australian immigration system to do 88 days of specified labour if i wish to be granted a second year here.
i’m excited by the prospect of a new adventure, with new people, with infinite new opportunities. but i’m also questioning my choice, wondering whether i should relocate myself once again.
or if i should just go home.
recently, i’ve been wondering where is home.
in 2020, i lost access to the place where i grew up. a somewhat unassuming two bedroom flat that my family rented for almost twenty years in a small north italian town. a place that hosted me, my mum, my brother, my sister and our cousins, aunties, friends and lovers.
before moving in, my mum handed me a paint and a brush and told me to do whatever i wanted with one of the corridors: for the next two decades, guests on the way to the toilet will walk through a psychedelic mosaical splash of clumsily applied green, yellow and pink stains. on the balcony, an array of pencil lines archived my desperate attempts at marking my, minimal, height growth. on our living room wall, my mum’s now deceased partner painted a luscious nature scene with a waterfall emerging from a deep green rainforest - my favourite painting of his. it’s a place where my family laughed, and argued, at the dinner table whilst eating beef and potato curry. it’s a place where my family regularly prayed together, despite our maybe discordant feelings on religion. it’s a place where i strutted in my mum’s high heels when she wasn’t home, my lounge a catwalk. it’s a place where i watched sex and the city with my siblings, definitely way too young to be a viewer. it’s a place where i bleached, and dyed, my hair, again and again. it’s a place where i sang karaoke and had sleepovers with my friends. it’s a place that we debated moving out of many times, struggling to be able to afford it. it’s a place where i saw my brother take his last breath.
since my family has left that flat, and town, to move in with their respective partners, “going home” hasn’t held the same meaning. what was once a comforting experience is now a visit to unfamiliar environments, without any of the childhood nostalgia. it’s a loss i underestimated at the time, but one that feels quite prominent now.
as i get older, the question of where i’ll grow older feels louder every day, and so does the lack of an answer. living in uncertainty, whilst a blessing, is, also, exhausting. a constant oscillation between excitement and fear for all the potential what-ifs. familiarity, comfort, a natural remedy to that exhaustion.
i’ve been reading all the houses i’ve ever lived in: finding home in a system that fails us: an intimate memoir by (legend) kieran yates recounting her childhood house moves growing up in a working class single-parent unit and adult house moves navigating the current british housing crisis. it’s an angering read, exposing the racialised injustice of our class system, but also a heartwarming one, a peak into kieran’s coming of age story, from her favourite music to her crushes. what stands out above all is, unsurprisingly, the value of community: from family friends taking her in, to neighbours looking out for one another, it showcases the concept of home under a different light, so different from the insular middle class dream we’ve been sold our whole lives.
i’m unsure of what my home will look like in a month, a year or five years. i’m unsure of how long i’ll live in australia, not only because of how restrictive the immigration system is, but also because i’m hyper aware of my positionality, a settler on stolen land, and constantly questioning the ethics of my stay here, something i’m still trying to make sense of.
i’m unsure of where i’ll go when i do leave australia.
but when comfort isn’t provided by a physical space, bonds step in.
i moved to australia seeking a nomadic adventure, a gap year from my stressful, exciting, chaotic, london life. i was expecting to travel the island, discovering beautiful sights, embracing solitude.
what i ended up experiencing has been the complete opposite.
over the last eight months, i’ve been somewhat sedentary. (unconsciously?) prioritising instead a new community. i’ve found myself welcomed into the most beautiful friendship group, with whom i attend free palestine rallies and food court lunches, with whom i can gossip about boys or release my anxieties. i’ve found myself curating a warm home with two caring, funny, housemates, whose presence fills me with safety and joy. i’ve found myself developing relationships with people i would have never anticipated, from a twenty year old backpacker to someone from my hometown. i’ve found myself landing somewhat a dream job, officially giving into a career as a social worker.
over the last eight months, i have, unexpectedly and unbeknownst to myself, made myself safe. entering your thirties without a long-term home, relationship, career, plan, etc, is paralysingly terrifying, but this is a reminder (to myself and all of us lost millennials without generational wealth) that, when feeling overwhelmed, displaced, isolated, the comfort of a home can be found in unexpected places. a reminder that, just as there are infinite adventures to be had, people to be met and places to be discovered, so there are new homes to be built.
i saw this tiktok today:
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a reminder that all this stress is worth it! fuck a routine!