'The person I was when I came to Margate is very different from the person I am leaving it'

On moving home

Photo credit: Ore Agbaje-Williams

I’ve recently decided to make the move back to the part of London I love the most. South. If you’ve read Rosewater, you’ll know how much it means to me and frankly how obsessed, territorial and annoying South Londoners are about their turf.

But there is something huge to be said about the gorgeous home that my partner and I have cultivated for ourselves in Margate. It’s a house that has seen us through mental health crises, the illness, caring and death of parents, job shifts, job losses, and it’s also held so much love and space for us and our little cats.

It’s a place I’ve found so much safety in when outside often felt unsafe. Inside our home is a cocoon we have created. There’s a semblance of peace. A safe space to cry, break down, blare music and run around the house dancing. To feed ourselves and our friends. It’s a home where there’s not a white wall in sight. Instead every wall has been imbued with colour, energy and artwork made by my friends, peers and people in the community.

This home has been a pleasure to share with our friends who live in the city. It’s been a refuge for them. So many of my friends have come here to write and recuperate when London has been too much. When they’ve needed a moment to step outside and look at the sea at the bottom of our road. I have this beautiful connection to water, to always wanting to be in the water. We don’t need to take about sewage leaks, Southern Water, and how that dream was shattered!

Margate has been a phenomenal place to put down roots. To really discover what community means in a physical form. I wrote a while ago for Elle about the powers of community and how moving to Margate has, in many ways, saved my life. I stand by that.

And yet, my partner and I find ourselves at a juncture where we feel ready, happy and excited to return to our birth place.

Immediately after we made the decision, a sense of panic shot through me. A sense of fear around trading in our lifestyle here in Margate and our comfortable, sunny, colourful environment. It made me reflect on what home really means. It’s a question that I grapple with in my novel Rosewater.

When we meet Elsie, Rosewater’s protagonist, she’s losing her home. But by the end of the novel she has a new space which feels like hers, and a new emotional attachment to home.

Kai-Isaiah Jamal wrote this brilliant poem about home for Rosewater. It’s in the voice of Elsie. I think it so beautifully and brilliantly captures the eternal question of what home really is.

I guess

You ask me where home is

And I say here…

Or here?

As if I don’t know

As if I ain’t been shown a way home -

For a while.

Maybe it’s wherever I can feel the bile in my stomach

settle. Or any room that’s got a kettle

And moment to pause.

Lost cause I know a little better

I guess home’s wherever

I guess I find it wherever it is there to find.

Mine? No place fixed and every place I’ve missed.

Any girl I’ve kissed, at least twice.

Home? Sometimes wherever I have left a tear

Or the ear of any shoulder that bumps with mine

Whilst we are both trying to find the platform.

A platform?

A rave from back in the day?

The left side of a face?

Curved like a hammock in setting suns.

Setting suns.

Anywhere you can run to with your eyes

tightly closed.

Home…

I actually don’t know

To be honest,

If a tree falls in a forest

And nobody hears

Does it mean she’s been kicked from home?

Or does it just mean you’ve outgrown the woods.

Home is where I don’t have to keep my hood up.

Home is in whatever comes from the Dutch pot on Nan’s stove

Home is on my own

But also has found a way to wickedly reside in a body.

If they are on me, or under

When outside there is thunder

But in interlocking arms there is slumber

And rest and neck kisses

And sex and anywhere that misses you more.

Homes they’re the core

And life

Well that’s like the apple

And sometimes

You gotta show some teet’

And bite all the way down.

And home is down

Any path

That feels like sunshine

And warm.

Home ain’t cool.

Cos cool don’t mean warm,

Home means far from the warning signs

And red flags

Home means I’m a slag so often some place I

ain’t know

Home’s wherever the wind blows me

For that night

I guess?

*I shrug all the way home*

Kai has so eloquently explained what home feels like here. That sense of home being a feeling rather than a physicality. I think for me, being by the sea has been a shield and a protective bubble.

I asked my partner if she felt worried that we wouldn’t be able to create another space that feels just like this. One that feels as safe and joyous. She reminded me that we create the home. It isn’t something that exists without us. And in our last flat, living in a one bed with no outdoor space, we had created another place that felt safe, calm and like ours.

Having that conversation with her, and looking back on the themes in Rosewater, and Kai’s interpretation of what a home might feel like - the smells, the people - it really does remind me that there will be many iterations of what home is.

Home is in the people, the energy, the ether. It’s in your heart. So as much as I’m gonna miss my gorgeous friends and community here, who are so special, who I’m so grateful to have met, I also know that we’re gonna bring that same love, energy and intention to our new space.

Just as we filled this space with laughter, safety, a shoulder to cry on and a cat to cuddle, we will do the same there.

The person I was when I came to Margate is very different from the person I am leaving it. Rather than assuming it’s Margate that did that, I have to remember that it’s me that did the work. Embarked on the journey to become happier, healthier, and feeling like I’m in the right place. That is to do with the work I have done as a person and the work my partner has done for herself, too.

I have to remember I am still going to be the person that has slowed down when I get to London. I want to keep making art in a way that feels in tune with where I am in my life, and I don’t want to rush around so much again that I don’t look up. These days I look up. I look at the sea. I look at the sky. I am able to be more present in showing up. My mind isn’t always racing at a million miles an hour. I’m not depressed. I might have been through a lot of pain, and a lot of loss, but I know myself far better than when I arrived.

When I came to Margate it was with the intention of getting lost. I was in such a state of pain and trauma that I thought I wanted to disappear from London. But I wanted to disappear from myself. I didn’t want to be seen. I thought moving here would allow me to do that, but it’s actually forced me to confront everything. Forced me to do the work. It’s taught me that I can’t hide.

I remember my therapist reflecting back to me that I was running away. I denied it, saying I just wanted to be close to the sea. But she was right.

So how beautiful that after three years of enjoying being here, and going through a lot while being here, that I can feel like those lessons don’t just exist in the physicality of this home. The lessons of safety, home, purpose and place - all exist here because we do.

Wherever we land next, will just be an evolution. It will be the next iteration . I won’t go back to the person I was before, because I am different now.  Being in the city, it might require more effort to ensure that I hold onto these new things. But I now realise that home is not a place. It’s a feeling that exists within me.

In other news…

Last week we had our second the feels film club in Shoreditch! It was a gorgeous night filled with laughter and insight from Lena de Casparis and Becky Lee Smith. The next one will be in the summer and the feels subscribers will receive priority tickets.

And today is the paperback publication of Rosewater! She’s back with a brand new look. It’s Bookshop.org’s Book of the Month so you can get 10% off here with the code ROSE10.