HOME

Departure

Trouble back home demanded change.

So, like a leaf blown from its tree too early I left home on a gloomy morning. I can still remember my crying grandma waving me off, understanding the situation a lot better than me. She weeps on departure every time, and I dread the moment she’s not there to cry for me, just like the old dog that’s not there anymore to greet me in frenzied excitement, hump my leg and lay down next to me when I stumble home drunk.

Things were to change, no other way around it.

I was excited, new life in a place I’ve romanticized for years. Big city buildings and people larger than life. Instead, the next 4 years were a blur of bad jobs, not fitting in and people a lot smaller than my expectations. Its all a blur now, just a detail poking through the haze here and there

But that’s the way it usually goes with expectations…

Time in the big city was a lot different to back home. A day here has suddenly turned into a month there and before you know it or had the chance to retaliate it hits you it’s been a year. Time in the big city… even the clouds moved faster.

I guess the first time I knew things weren’t quite like home was when I met these 2 drunk girls on the street, a typical Saturday, but I didn’t know that, so I walked up and tried to strike a conversation, they gave me the weirdest most hurtful look, like I was there to kill or rob them, madness all I wanted to do was talk.

Even then, shortly after my departure I was reminiscing about home. Questions like “Had I just ran from somewhere better?” or “Had I betrayed my friends, family and myself by coming to this cold rainy place?”. Questions I don’t have the answer to still, but they don’t bother me as much after all I have embraced my new identity.

The immigrant

a mut

a vagrant

a person with no home whom you mistrust by default

Difference is always despised

…

Gone

Everyone talks about how high the prices are in London

No one talks about the price you pay coming here

The loss, and the loosing of yourself

The manager looking over your shoulder

The white hair at 25 and the heart attack at 30 from too much

blow,

bad living,

shit pay

and

the women,

it’s always the women

Everyone talks about the new life, making yourself better, achieving something

No one talks about the person you lose in the process

The shame in readjusting

Giving up yourself for who you ought to be

Everyone talks about how Soho is the party centre of London

No one talks about the drunks and the mad there

The ones who couldn’t quite make the cut

I look at them and don’t see much difference between

They’re one failed relationship away

One missed step in the morning that led to you missing work, then the rent and so on until eternity

Everyone talks about rights and liberties

No one talks about the price you must pay to earn them

As if they’re just there for you for free, as if we’re something more than numbers in a giant tax generating machine

Everyone talks how many of us there are here

No one talks of the loneliness, one can only get in London

Living with 3 people in a house you barely know and talk to

The hallway conversations that everyone tries to run away from

The distance between us

Home

Going back home gets more difficult each year. Partly because it’s no longer home

Partly because of you

The places you used to go no longer bring you the same feeling

Just nostalgia and a feeling of loss

After a day or two you wonder why you came back?

What were you going to find here?

The answer to life, yeah right…

So it’s the bars again, the sleepless nights the easy women, the familiar

Something to hold on to

Waking up is the same – again and again until one day it isn’t and everything’s different

Realising you’ve grown but you’ve also aged, perhaps outgrown home

The home you longed for, the place which haunted your dreams for the last year, is different.

Then maybe it’s just you who’s different …Maybe just you but home’s no longer home