A short story about moving (again)

Fuck. I think I actually have to do this.

I had to remind myself that settling takes time. Last year, after moving to Oxford, I felt like I’d made a horrendous decision, and that I’d rocked up in a city I’d flirted with for a year previously for all the wrong reasons.

It wasn’t a horrendous decision at all. It certainly wasn’t everything I’d expected or hoped it to be, but neither was it everything I’d feared it would be.

When I left the first time, having finished up at university, I left it on bad terms. Caught in a permanent onset of gloom, even the bright spots managed to contort into an ensuing storm. My mind was stuffed full of the worst kinds of thoughts, tearing everything I loved about the city apart and developing a self-inflicted veil of torment around it.

So I had to leave. I had to retreat and put myself back together, because I wanted to go back. I wanted to bulldoze down over the negative memories and build new ones on top.

For the most part, I did. But your mind still winds back, unprovoked, and returns to those memories every now again. If not memories, then thoughts of how things could have been, or how things were good and not quite the same since.

I’m a ruminator, shoot me.

Over time, it became home. I lived with great people. We’d have barbecues in the summer – I’d make a marinade for the chicken legs, laden with spices but criminally underseasoned, while a housemate would throw together an amazing guacamole.

But one by one, they moved on. I was the late-comer; just as I’d settled and got used to their company, life peeled one away at a time. One moved to China, another relocated closer to work, and another went off to do a PhD.

In their place came new people. But that cast changed a couple of times too, before taking my own leave from the house.

Was I just a transient in their lives? 

From worried that moving would be a terrible mistake, it turned out not to be. The end was drawn out, as I started work in London and attempted to commute in each day.

Wake up at 5:50AM. Get in the shower. Brush teeth. Get dressed. Cycle to the coach. Get on. Travel. Get off at Hillingdon. Walk to the tube station. Get the Piccadilly line to Ealing Common. Get off. Wait for the District line. Get on. Go to Turnham Green. Get off. Try and look across the platform at the departure board. Run. Get the tube to Richmond. Hope there’s a seat. Ad infi-fucking-nitum.

It was too much. I’d spent a long part of my life not wanting to live in London, blinded by the fear that the stories of noise and intense loneliness would come to pass. Blinded by the fear that my friends would be too far away. Blinded by the fear that I’d never fucking settle.

Needs must. I shoved all my belongings into a van, said goodbye to precisely nobody – the house completely vacant – and hit the road for the capital. The closer I got, the traffic became more treacle-thick and impassable. The baggage in the back made horrific noises when I hit the brakes, forgetting the size of the vehicle I was supposedly in control of.

I did my best not to think during that journey. I didn’t want my mind to know what I was up to.

It’s been about two months since then. It’s convenient, I think to myself, having no other bon mots to console myself with. My brilliant job makes it bearable, but still…

…I don’t really like it.

Nobody tells you what you’re supposed to do when you move. A starter pack for new residents in a new city, crammed full of recommendations of the best things to do, contact details for people you might get on with and the odd small luxury – that doesn’t exist.

You got there, you work it out.

So you’re – I’m – constantly questioning whether I’m doing this right or not. And in this particular city, you’re asking yourself new questions. How many Deliveroos in a week is too many? Am I going out enough, or am I out too much? Have I wasted my time?

Why is this so fucking hard to get used to?

And of course, the kicker:

Will this get better?