#307: Home

Longing to belong

I don’t feel at home.

I feel restless, with an itch to move, driven by a nagging feeling that I don’t belong where I am.

I’ve felt this before, many times. I know many do, yet some of us bury this itch until the part of you desperate to come out gives up and dies. I can’t do this.

I felt it first at 18/19. I lived at home, in Stoke, but I got the itch. I began to feel like I didn’t belong. I was restless to flee.

From then on, I didn’t stay anywhere for long; Sheffield, Newcastle and London. I was not too bothered about where I was at that point in my life. These were flats to sleep in. Places to be and work from. The place didn’t matter because I was on the path I needed to be - these were all stops along the way.

Landing in London, I felt part of something. I actually felt like I belonged there, possibly for the first time in my life. The city was so full and deep I felt like I could explore it forever. The startup scene was an eclection of geeks, weirdos, pirates, suits and geniuses that somehow I fit into. In building a mental health business, I created my own tribe that sat comfortably within all of that.

Yet the itch grew in me again. The pull to leave, the ache to move. I heard it in my mind and in my body. My head told me about the money I’d need to belong in London. My body told me how tired I was of the sirens and the condensation on the inside of the windows in my flat.

The startup scene that had once been so fun and enlivening began to feel heartless again - social change wrapped up in pitch decks. I wanted to change the world and in the end I felt like I just built a tiny little cog that continued to make the world spin round, when I’d have preferred to halt it altogether.

The search began again, Lisbon(?) Brighton (?) Staffordshire (?) back to London (?)

Staffordshire it was, home, back to the place I grew up. The one I left because I didn’t fit in. Here again, as an adult this time, as a new person.

I’ve tried, lord I’ve tried, tried to hard to fit. Built communities, a newspaper, met everyone, started run clubs. Yet the nagging feeling inside has never left. The ache that I feel from this lack. The longing to belong. If not here, where?

I don’t feel it every day. I enjoy my life. I love my family. I love the friends I have. But I always have the ache in the pit of my stomach. The wonderings in my mind of where else I could be,

I feel a stranger, an outsider - not a native, not a neighbour. I look around the streets in the coffee shops and see nobody that looks like me, mainly retirees out for tea and cake. When I do find the creative and entrepreneurial community I crave on the industrial estates - there isn’t the same values alignment. I’m the odd one out because I don’t actually care about business. I want to talk about art, soul and story.

I can’t just flee or act on impulse this time. It’s not that simple now. Even though I have felt this ache for a while, I haven’t acted on it. I live with it. The confusion and uncertainty is heavy, it’s in my head, on my mind. Where do I belong? Where do I want to live? What community can I be part of? If not here, where? If not there, where? Who am I? Who am I? Will I ever fit in? Is this even about place? Or is this about me?

These questions weigh on me, weigh in me. A long ache I feel every day that I’ve felt for years.

I wonder if some of it might be resistance. Resistance to being on my own. To being different, weird. A desire to be like everyone else that aches on me and stops me living freely in whatever way I want. I’m writing about this already, working through this. I already know this. Just be a curly wurly James.

And then the practicalities of work, commutes, work opportunities, house prices and childcare.

All of this leaves me in a bind. Trapped in my own web of confusion about where to be. It leaves me locked in the middle.

People tell me this is being an adult. This is being a parent. This is compromise. You can’t have it all. This is just life mate.

Yet I am searching for a different way of being and I can’t rest until I find it. I don’t believe this, that life is all sacrifice and compromise. I don’t believe I have to trade, I’ve always believed that I can have it all. It’s this itch that has always driven me.

I’ve been searching for something. Something that isn’t a massive mortgage and the rat race. Something that isn’t stressing about child care. That isn’t booking in to see your mates 6 weeks in advance. A life that isn’t calendar invites and working late on the laptop on the sofa. A life where friends pop in. Where plans don’t always need to be made. One where we eat often together, with others. A life where there’s nature and creative energy. Where hustle and inner peace can find a way to coexist.

I want it all. I don’t want a compromise. People tell me life is sacrifice, perhaps I need to let go.

Perhaps I can’t have chickens in the garden and a creative community around the corner. Perhaps I can’t have fame and riches and an early night on the sofa watching Tour de France with Sarah. Perhaps I need to grow up, let it go.

But I won’t. Because I have this dream for an extraordinary wholesome life.

This probably isn’t about the place I’m in. It probably never has been or never was. I imagine this is all about me. About me finding home in myself first. Accepting who I am and being that version of me everyday and when I do that, I’m sure everything else will follow.

I’m not there yet, truthfully you could put me anywhere and I’d feel conflicted, I’d take myself with me and still be writing this newsletter.

I’m getting closer. Closer to being me every day. No doubt when I’m there, when I feel at home within. I’ll find it outside too.

Cheers,

James x

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#306: I'm a curly wurly

#305: What Mont Blanc said