Even on my fourth go round, I’m still unsure whether I’ve
developed anything to say about packing up and leaving. If I wanted to, I
reckon I could write paragraphs about the strange labour of wrapping up plates
and praying frames don’t arrive with cracks. There’s definitely something to
say about the way the task numbs you in relation to your belongings and their
significance in its need for focus so you don’t forget things you’d later end
up missing. I could create some metaphor about plants in a box, how life moves
easily from place to place with protection, blah blah. But right now I’m on a
train chasing boxes of my things across the country and I have nothing
important to say, I don’t think.
I’ve never been good at letting go of things. I could still
tell you an insult that hurt me in 2013, or the exact phrase my first boyfriend
used to dump me. I’m still mourning my old Sheffield flat, so I know the
process of grieving my Manchester home will be too long to hit 20 minutes after
handing a key over. I’m sure it’s a wave still building out at sea somewhere,
ready to crash down when I next see a photo or my friends go out without me. So
far the current is more soothing than harsh, hitting against my ankles but
still letting me walk as I chose to move on.
Unlike Sheffield or my parents’ home, the choice to leave
wasn’t done for me by time. My year in a uni house hasn’t bled out, the demand
of education isn’t forcing me to move place to place with a calendar, I was
scratching at the door begging to be let out of academia or a shit hometown. Nothing
was pushing or pulling me from my flat, it was the first place I truly settled
of my own accord and made a home of, building a life up from nothing but a few
friends and a couple of boxes. Staying in the same place for longer than
anywhere beyond my family home, my Manchester home in the heart of NQ was a home,
a real home, proper home with all my addresses changed and bills in my post
box. Nothing would’ve stopped me from staying there forever, getting married
there, bring babies home to its exposed brick walls as the clock for once didn’t
dictate my circumstance. It saw me through two years of seasons and I saw more
of it than anywhere as its walls held me in lockdown, staring down of the
balcony to learn the side street like my own skin. I knew exactly how to turn
the tap on so it didn’t splash me, I knew the best places to put washing to dry
in each weather condition, I knew my routine to a comforting extreme, touching
the door lock twice each night for over two years now. And I don’t even know
what my new flat’s lock looks like.
I pushed myself out and I don’t have anything wise to say
about it without sounding like a girl boss motivational quote. Maybe later I’ll
write them out and edit them over pictures of my 12-year-old self in the I love
London hoody I demanded to own and my mum tried to demand I bring on the move
with me. Across my wonky teeth face I’ll scroll ‘I’m outgrowing my own potential’,
or that one about comfort zones or whatever. But I am, I’m venturing out of my
night-time routine into a life my younger self would’ve scrapbooked about and I’m
sure after a good night’s sleep and a moment of sadness, I’ll be ecstatic about
it, I just need to wait for her to wake up or break through the brain fuzz to
scream her excitement to me.
Maybe that’s the big thing I have to say. Less about the act of moving, and more about the way that growing up is just gathering the hopes of all the versions of yourself. Something about carrying the dreams of your younger self in the same hand as your adult potential, and striving to reach further for both of you even if it’s a scary big stretch. A pack up your dream flat and move away kind of stretch. A listen to Taylor Swift ‘Never Grow Up’ on the train after your parents wave goodbye kind of stretch. But doing it because you know the 12-year-old you used to hope you’d be this brave.
And I’m being that brave. My god I’m going to miss that home
and the friends and the life I had there, but I’m being brave and I’ll think
about it every time I see a cheesy tourist hoody. I’ll squeeze little Lucy’s
hand each time I know a tube route without googling it, at any party, in every
moment I feel her heart flutter at my life as a reminder to remember,
not take for granted, keep being braver and bigger and better than she hoped,
moving larger than life even as the smallest fish in a big new pond.
Yeah I think that’s it. On the fourth go round, I have
nothing truly significant to say about moving. But I could write novels about
all the ways I felt the gaggle of my past selves demand attention in the last
week or so, all egging me on, staring in awe, begging me to not forget days
they spent daydreaming in Stockton about sitting on a train moving down to London
as I am right now.