What to do when everything is wrong: a reflection on coping
I can’t even run away anymore, because of broke.
I’ve just finished my third packet of crisps of the evening, the second season of Sex and the City, and I’ve finally come up with the title for this piece. Two days ago, I moved home, and everything is wrong.
First the obvious, this is not my home. I mean that in about three different ways. This physically isn’t my home: this is a new house that my mum moved into during last term. I’ve never been here before, I’ve scarcely been down this street, and I certainly haven’t lived here. This is simply wrong. The house is not where I live, and the expectation that I’d call this home instantly is frankly absurd. The floor is uneven in places, the layout is condensed and completely different to every other house I remember living in. It is short and wide – a corner unit – and so wildly different to every long and thin house I’ve ever known. There also just isn’t space for me here. It’s clear that this was not a house chosen with me in mind, a reflection on the snap decision of my mum’s landlord to sell the house in which she used to live. I don’t have a bedroom here. In the last house, I at least used to have one, even if it wasn’t really mine. There, a third room was available, the space my brother used to store his computer and idiocy therein, a space for me to go when I made the occasional pilgrimage back to an old version of myself. It wasn’t ideal to say the least. A room with a mattress and suitcases on the floor is hardly a room, but it was room enough. Somehow, this time I’ll be here for about three months, and I don’t have a room at all. I’m in the corner of the living room in a sofa bed, stuff stored at the foot, other bits in the utility room next door.
On Friday, it really wasn’t that bad, with most of the day spent with me home alone, only Carrie and Butler to keep me company. The living room is spacious enough and the house does have pretty much everything I need to survive. Being alone, I had plenty of time to sit and relax after the stresses of moving the day prior. The evening came, my serenity ruined, but my mum didn’t stay downstairs for too long, retiring to bed soon enough. Saturday, however, was a different story, with constant stimulation, endless conversation, an incessant need for us to spend time together. When my aunty came over, I used the distraction to be alone for a while, though this was far from peaceful as my mum decided to use the living room speakers to play music while she sat in the garden. I had two choices, I could either stay inside and be deafened by her generic pop or go outside and socialise. I felt I’d done enough of the latter, so I sat and scrolled twitter for about two hours. It was then I realised that this was going to be a very long summer. Sure, I would have a job soon, hopefully, but the interim may be too much, and I’ll end up running away again.
Not having a room is probably one of the most difficult things for me. I’m endlessly reclusive, and would gladly spend hours alone, headphones on, book in hand or mindlessly scrolling. Here, I can’t be alone, and I don’t have any headphones that actually work, so I’m left with the books. Breaking my headphones was perhaps the worst thing that I could’ve done before beginning my foray into the midlands and somehow it makes almost drowning not worth it, not even for the experience or objectively funny story. But seriously, what am I supposed to do, what if I want to watch something, listen to a new album, masturbate, or even just not listen to my mum’s crime drama? How am I supposed to survive like this for three months? Even when it is possible for me to be reclusive, how can I do so sans criticism from my mum about being “anti-social” or “awkward”?
Personally, this town just isn’t home anymore either. Cliché, may it be, being queer affords a new and chosen family, or more radically, an opportunity to reject the flesh, in any and all meanings of the phrase. I reject my flesh, as I reject my blood, as I reject those who gave me them, as I reject where the gifts were exchanged. For the record, I don’t think I can call Oxford home either, at least not fully, but it certainly feels a lot more like my space than Kettering does. I have a strange, almost academically proud, affinity with the midlands, though only in the abstract. I like the idea of being neither northern, nor southern, being from a place defined only by its lack – there’s a joke here about de Beauvoir’s Other, or Saussure’s signifier and signified – but actually being here is either nothing or terrifying. I have no friends, nothing to do, nowhere to go. I have friends in every other corner of the country, or at the very least someone I can catch up with for coffee, but clearly the middle doesn’t count as a corner, as there’s no one here – only families and pensioners. The closest people to my age are those that didn’t go to university, or the 20 somethings who moved for cheaper housing after an accidentally early pregnancy. The people I pass on the street either see me as a faggot, someone to rob, or someone they can’t comprehend, conceited as that seems.
Counterintuitively, I do most of my writing when I’m here. I’m sure I’ve used most of these lines before, as I run through the same problems plaguing me vac after vac. I fundamentally don’t belong here, and even if that isn’t true, the belief in that thought makes it so. I don’t belong here by virtue of not believe I do. I’m sat here writing this, my laptop covered in stickers from indie records, bought at my local record shop, where I got the totebag currently holding the library’s copy of The History of Sexuality by Foucault, listening to Adrianne Lenker, Fiona Apple and Tori Amos alike. Find me one other person in Kettering who does this and I’ll eat my words, this town is not made for me, regardless of how self-aggrandising it may be for me to believe that. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough, maybe I shouldn’t catastrophise a new house, maybe I should be proud of where I’m from, after all aren’t these supposed to be the streets that raised me, even if they are a few miles over. It’s hard not to think that everything is wrong when I’m here. I don’t have a room, anything to do or any friends here. I can’t smoke, I have no money, and I can’t even escape into my headphones for familiar escapism. I’m in a house I hate, a town I despise, with my brother above my head as I walk on eggshells to not be too queer, too leftist, or heaven-forbid too myself. The other day I could tell he was about to ask me what I was reading, so I had to talk to him first about something banal to deflect from having to tell him about Butler. If I did that there would have been a 50/50 chance of us getting into a fight so big I would have had to come out or run away.
How much suffering is endurable? Is this the best option for the summer, or should I perhaps try something radical in order to avoid the pain? This is certainly the cheapest option, and living here for the summer will be next to free, only shelling out for the bus fare to work when I start. The emotional costs should also be factored though, here I have to endure every other facet of life, where elsewhere I could be free, burdened only financially. If I had the disposable income to do so, I would move back to Oxford tomorrow, live with a friend, or some random second year, even find a sublet on Oxtickets, or anything to avoid dealing with this existence. I can’t even run away anymore, because of broke.
i read this the other day and i couldn't relate more in the emotional sense !! even when i do have another place to stay/live in, i think i find great comfort in it REALLY quickly because i don't feel as though i have much to come back to, wherever "home" is. i'm sending my all my love to u rn - at least we've got another year left in oxford to figure things out x