I am taking a break from the Uses of the Catharsis essay series, because I need to spend some time grieving. I'm finally ready to write about that grief. I moved recently, from the UK to Canada. In leaving the UK, I left behind family and community the likes of which I'd never before experienced. I met people who changed the trajectory of my life for the better. The kind of people who gathered me up and held me as softly as their hold was firm. I've known so much love in my life, and my time in Cambridge amplified the magnitude of that love at least tenfold. Leaving was really hard. I hated every second of every goodbye.

Before Cambridge, I'd lived in the US for many years. In the last decade, I've lived in Canada, the US, the UK, and now I'm back in Canada again, probably for good. I was happy in Cambridge, and the truth is that I probably would've stayed in the UK for several more years if my visa hadn't run out. But finding a job that will sponsor a skilled worker visa is hard, and the job market in the UK is shit right now. So as the deadline to leave the country or move to a different visa status approached, I decided to leave the country, and go try out life elsewhere. The experience of having my residency tied to my employment was existentially exhausting though, so I decided to go back to my country of citizenship. Hence, I'm back in Canada, this time living in a city I’ve been curious about for years, in a province I’ve never lived in before. I like it here, and I’m starting to make friends already. I’ve got plans for attending queer reading groups, and queer balls, and I’ve talked to at least one unhoused neighbour about what the homeless shelters in my neighbourhood are like. I’ve got leads on places to volunteer my time. I’m staying with a friend while looking for an apartment of my own, and I’m really putting in effort to establish a life here. I am still sad about the choice to be here, but I really do feel like I’m keeping myself busy to try to get to know the city, and not avoid feeling my grief about leaving the UK. Being here is sad, and it still feels like the right choice to make.

A few months ago, I asked my therapist if there was something wrong with me because I couldn't sit still in one place for more than a few years. I hate goodbyes. I hate planning going away parties. I hate the internal pressure of knowing every little thing might be the last time you do that thing with these people at this place, and you need to be present in the moment and really savour it now because you have no idea when you'll ever see these people again. I hate the way grief comes in waves, and there isn't anything you can do about that except let it wash over you because there is no rushing the tides. I hate feeling my feelings.

Grief is such a bodily feeling. It makes me tired. It makes me ache. It makes me slow down, and forces me to breathe from my diaphragm, and take lots of hot baths, and massage my aching joints. I have a very complicated relationship to my body. If I could be a brain in a vat and just have sense experiences pumped directly into whatever nutrient goop keeps brains alive in sci-fi movies, I would choose that option without sweating or second guessing. This kind of physical patience with unpredictable sensations is a strenuous effort for me. And I do this routine every single time I move to a new place. I’ve moved about a dozen times in the last decade, and it has never gotten easier with practice. This feeling of grief is as familiar to my body as it is unwelcome to my heart. But I can't seem to stop myself from asking "What's next? What else is out there? What fruits have I never tasted, and how do I get to where those fruits grow?"

When I'd asked my therapist what was wrong with me that made me chase novelty despite how much I struggle to be present with the grief of moving and leaving people behind, she'd asked me, "What do other people have that you don't? Why do you think some people are happy to live in one city their whole lives while you aren't?"

I had no idea how to answer the question at the time. Now that the move is complete, and I'm learning the subway stops and neighbourhoods of yet another city I've moved to on a whim, I've been returning to this question periodically. I think her question was helpful in getting me to reframe what I was seeing as a bad or suspicious thing about me, and turn it into a morally neutral set of preferences that people are allowed to have.

I've regretted many choices I've made, but I've never regretted making a fool of myself or stumbling while searching for something novel or interesting. I have found endless reams of both in the least likely of places. I moved to the UK several years ago when the opportunity was offered because I wanted to see the heart of the colonial empire and what 400 years of colonial violence gets you. If you told me at the time that three years later, I would be weeping over the loss of marmite on toast and fresh blackberries picked on the side of a bike path in September, I would've accused you of having a colonised mind yourself. Now look at me. Here I am grieving marmite and blackberries and looking foolish. British food is all mostly mediocre, except what's made by immigrants. But there are a lot of immigrants in that country, and so therefore lots of excellent food. I know you can get the marmite on the internet and the berries at the grocery store, but it's not the same and you know it.

I think the thing in me that desires the world through direct sensory experiences
is an existential curiosity. My fleshly form desires all manner of earthly experiences, and I want them as part of my day-to-day life, not just on special occasions or vacations or after I die. I want to taste everything offered to me even if it is a little bitter, I want to smell everything that grows even if it makes my nose run, I want to see every dramatic thing the world has to offer, even if it makes my stomach churn.

I also desire community though, even more than I desire quotidian novelties, and this is where the tension lies for me. I want to be one with the world around me, but it's hard to do that at the depths I desire when I'm constantly bopping around. I'm tired of moving. I want to put down deep taproots in a community and grow tall in that spot. I want to be a baobab tress, so others can rest in the shade I cast, feast from the ripe fruits off my branches, make homes in my trunk, and make burrows in the loops of my surface roots. It takes time to grow that big, so I will need to stay here, in Canada, for a while. I have a restless soul, and I like moving around and trying new things and seeing new places. But I also have a sentimental soul, and I don't think I can handle any more major goodbyes for a long, long time.

I bring to my new city all the lessons I've learned from all the past cities I've loved, and all the people I've loved in those places. The biggest lesson I learned from Cambridge is about how to do community in a way that is resilient in the face of conflict. Cambridge taught me that community is for everyone, especially the people you don't like. Being nice to your friends isn't revolutionary. Everyone finds it valuable and invigorating to be nice to the people they like. But true community, the kind that is stable and resilient in the face of internal conflict and outside threats? That requires a commitment to the well-being of everyone, including the ones who piss us off, the ones who are assholes, the ones who are mean and scary when they're psychotic, the ones who irritate you because they chew too loud or have a hard time reading the room to know when it's the right time to take a joke and when to back off, the ones who are selfish and make everything about their internal psycho dramas and the ones who think you're lazy and don't quote "earn" their keep. Community for all of them too. 


In order to resist individual and state capture, we have to develop the skills, both collective and individual, to love one another without looking away. Community is hard and it is for everyone. Including me. So I am going to stay in one place for a good long while, and I'm going to put a lot of effort into scratching my novelty itch without applying for a work visa, even when that little voice in my head starts to shout about "missing out on life" or "getting too comfortable in one place". I will give myself the chance to be a healthy baobab tree, with deep enough roots and a sturdy enough trunk to support others who need a space to call home too. And that means feeling my grief too, breathing deeply into the pain, and knowing this too, shall pass and turn into a valuable lesson I can pass on to others as well as making me more resilient in the process.

I hope these musings on grief and moving can be a step in the right direction.