Searching for Something
When longing becomes a state of being
Anniversaries are funny things. Sometimes I won’t even notice they’ve passed; other times they can weigh me down with feelings of longing and sadness. Because I’ve existed in what feels like a permanent state of longing for the past 9 years, anniversaries always seem to hit me hard. I don’t think they used to, but they’ve taken on added weight lately, as the years continue to pass, and so many things I long for still haven’t materialised. That sounds depressing: it’s not meant to. I love so much about my life, and in many ways, I’m happier and more at peace than ever. But my life has also been characterised by a perpetual feeling of incompleteness, which has intensified over recent years.
My husband Karl and I have always wanted to live in the sticks, for example. We’ve been together for almost 17 years, and we’ve been talking about having a little farm and a family and a load of animals in the countryside for maybe 16 and a half years. But, for at least the first half of our relationship, it wasn’t front and centre for us. It was something that we wanted, sure, but like a lot of things I thought about in my twenties and early thirties, it felt a way off: we’d do that later, just as soon as we stopped going out, and having fun and enjoying time with our friends.
The anniversary of the aforementioned 9th year - the point where the state of perma-longing I still find myself in began - has just passed. This week, it’s 9 years since Karl was contacted by a former employer, inviting him to move to Detroit to start a music school. After a few weeks of deliberation, we said yes, kick-starting a period of our lives that has been defined by waiting (and is still yet to resolve). Between February and November 2014, we waited: first for our visas to be approved, and then to actually move. In the gap between agreeing to go and getting on the plane, time moved at a snail’s pace, leaving plenty of room for second-guessing. It felt like such a huge thing to be moving halfway across the world, to a place we’d never been to before, so we softened our own (and others) anxiety by telling ourselves we didn’t need to stay if we didn't like it; that we’d probably be there for just a year or two.
Looking back, I can see that I was trying to soothe myself by drawing these imaginary lines in the sand, but it also meant that once we finally lived in Detroit, I found it hard to be fully present. The question of how long we’d stay was always running in the background, causing a low-grade drip of worry, like a forgotten app slowly draining the battery on a phone.
Our experience in Detroit was life-altering and not something I would ever wish to change, but it was stressful at times too. We loved our jobs and our friends so much, but we worked hard and often felt overwhelmed by responsibility. I was trying to write my Ph.D. on the weekends, and I was homesick, preoccupied with longing for England: for the place I grew up and, in particular, the landscape I called home. I missed my family and my friends, and, in the concrete jungles of South-East Michigan, I missed nature, the Downs, and the sea.
When Karl’s mum was diagnosed with cancer in 2017, the longing for home coupled with an abiding, low-grade uncertainty about the future grew stronger. It took us two years from that point, but in December 2019 we moved home: to be closer to family, yes, but also feeling changed by our experience, and ready to start the rural life we’d been dreaming of. We were convinced that life in Detroit had been a necessary stepping stone in that journey, but the time had now come to make those long-held dreams a reality.
That was 3 years ago; give or take. In a few weeks’ time, it will be 3 years since the start of the pandemic and the first lockdown in the UK. Despite the wrench of leaving the life we’d built for 5 years in America, and the ever-present shadow of Karl’s mum’s illness, during the first few months we were home, I was brimming with possibility. I threw myself headlong into the project of finding us a smallholding. I looked at Rightmove and OntheMarket, setting up multiple searches and email alerts that quickly overwhelmed my inbox. I searched on Google maps for all the farms in a 15-mile radius and emailed them all, asking whether they had any land to rent or work opportunities where we could gain experience. I drafted an application for a small-scale farming opportunity with the Ecological Land Co-operative. I scoured a bunch of very boring council documents about brownfield sites and identified a few potentials. I searched the land registry looking for unowned land and wrote to the local planners about an area of woodland near our house, enquiring about the possibility of buying it. I followed Facebook pages and joined various tiny home and alternative community groups.
At the same time, we tried to settle back into the house that we’d lived in for only four months before agreeing to move to Detroit. Although we loved it when we put our offer in, it felt different now, like it belonged to those unrecognizable people who’d jumped on the flight to America back in 2013. Yet, our inability to feel at home in the house also helped solidify our plan: it was time to move on.
The frenzied burst of activity yielded very little results, so a few months in, we decided to change tack. It was becoming increasingly clear that Sussex was way out of our budget, so we decided to cast the net a little wider. We purchased a camper van - a 1994 Mazda Bongo that we fell in love with on sight - and resolved to travel the UK, looking for a place to finally settle and call home. I set up a WordPress with the obligatory corresponding Instagram, so we could document our trip. I held a hope that our cause might get picked up; that we might use it to find like-minded people who could help us. We called it ‘The Search for Swallowtail Farm’ in honour of the little smallholding we dreamt of, and we planned a couple of trips in the van for the following months.
But of course, the pandemic had other ideas, and along with the rest of the world, we had to hunker down and wait it out. Unlike so many, we were lucky to have access to beautiful countryside only a short walk from our house in a seaside town, and we spent lots of time walking and talking and planning what we might do next. Always keen to have a story, I told myself that the enforced slowness and stillness would help us to re-acclimatise to life in the UK and that it was, in fact, exactly what we needed after how hard we had worked in the US. I began journaling again and started studying the ancient system of Ayurveda online. Karl enrolled on a permaculture programme in Brighton, a dream he’d held for a while. This time was important; necessary, we agreed, and our farm would wait.
And wait it would, because - as if the transatlantic life move/terminally-ill parent/pandemic combo wasn’t enough - 2020 threw us another curveball in the Fall: an infertility diagnosis. Just like that, our move to the countryside was halted, to be replaced by appointments and tests and procedures and disappointment and elation and heartbreak. In the two and a half years since that first appointment, we’ve had two rounds of IVF (one resulting in a pregnancy), one natural pregnancy, and two miscarriages. In case maths isn’t your thing, we are still childless.
Of all the experiences we've had, this has been the hardest wave we have had to ride. It pales the feelings of homesickness I experienced in Detroit into insignificance. What a luxury to only be concerned about where we might live! The longing for a child that doesn’t want to come is a raw sort of pain and it’s one that has provided a particularly brutal twist to the ever-present, gnawing uncertainty we were already experiencing. Four years after we started trying to build a family, it is both more difficult and easier to ride the wave. Every month that passes, every birthday, I simultaneously want it more intensely than I’ve ever done before, while also loosening my grip, just slightly, on the idea that it’ll ever happen.
So here we are, three and a bit years after we got back from Detroit; 9 years since we agreed to move there. It’s two years today since Karl’s mum died. We’ve recently accepted an offer on our house, and we don’t have a plan for where we’re going next. Last summer, as we reeled from the second miscarriage, we snapped: enough. Something had to give, and I knew, somewhere deep inside me, that it was time to pause, at least for a moment, the relentless train of ‘trying for a baby.’ Into that gap, the longing for a home re-materialised, and this is where our energy is now focused - we’ve resumed our search for swallowtail.
It feels equal parts thrilling and terrifying to be selling our home without a clear next step, but I’m certain that it’s the right thing to do. I’m burnt out and exhausted from the past few years; from all the highs and lows I’ve experienced, but I’m also done with feeling stuck in a version of a life that doesn’t make sense to me anymore. These years have been the best and worst years of my life. I’ve learned so much, but feel more clueless than ever. I’ve developed a trust in something bigger than me, but I’ve had moments of feeling utterly faithless. I’ve changed for the better: I’m stronger and more sure of myself, but I’m also broken and grieving. I’m ready to leave this house, where so many hard things have happened, but I’m also clinging to it, as the only anchor I’ve had since returning to the UK.
I swing wildly, from a total belief in what we’re doing to fear that we are making the wrong choice and that we’ll live to regret this move. But underneath all these competing voices is a calm quiet one that’s telling me it’s time, and that all is well. I can’t always hear it, but it’s that voice that I’m trying to tune into and trust, even when my brain has other ideas.
Alongside the longing for a family and a home, I’ve also had a life-time’s worth of longing for creative expression, that I’ve mainly ignored. After everything that’s happened recently, I’ve decided it’s also time to try and fulfill that wish. Writing is my medicine: it’s kept me sane for most of my life (and especially these past few years), and it’s what I love to do most. To that end, I set up a Substack a few weeks ago, and it’s sat there ever since: every time I’ve thought about writing that first post, I’ve felt myself shrink. Instead, I’ve distracted myself by following a load of great accounts. This week I subscribed to the The PK Diaries, and as luck would have it, only the second post I read was a celebration of writing itself. Peta’s statement: “I just love to write” seemed so simple, but resonated with me, and in a brief moment gave me a whole new perspective to consider writing from. It sounds obvious, but it felt alien to suggest that writing could just be that: something that I love. Not something to be agonised over or feared. Not something that is terrifying and vulnerable. I mean, it is those things too, of course, but it doesn’t only have to be that.
The prospect of being ‘out there’ in the world feels daunting, and I’m already wracked with imposter syndrome, but I’m also trying to reframe writing to be a simple act of expression that brings me joy. Along with everything else I’ve been searching for, I’ve been desperate for connection, and, as someone who is often plagued by anxiety and overthinking, I’ve longed to exist in a way that makes me feel comfortable and at ease. And so it suddenly just seemed really dumb to not write more. If I accept that I just love writing, then why would I deny myself the pleasure of it? Why would I stop myself from making sense of the world in the way that makes the most sense to me? Fear has kept me quiet in the past, and it has kept all my curiosity, my questions, thoughts, and musings confined to the pages of my journal, but like a lot of things recently, I think I’m done with that. And so here we are.
As it stands, we’re due to leave our house on 31st March, although given that absolutely nothing has worked out how I thought it would recently, who knows! We’ve booked our cats into the cattery, and we've arranged to stay with my mum for a bit. And after that - well, again - who knows? What I do know is that I want to find somewhere to settle. To feel the ground under me, to feel like I’m home. To write more. To express myself more. To feel more at ease in the world, and to do so in the ways that make the most sense for me. I want to be more present. I want to have fun again. I don’t want to be so focused on the future all the time; I don’t want to exist in that perpetual state of longing anymore. This isn’t easy, of course, and it feels like a particular challenge given how hard-wired my brain is for thinking ahead. But I feel hopeful, and like change is close. I feel like we’re nearer to finding a home. And maybe once we do, I’ll be able to work through everything else that’s taken place and think about what might come next in terms of expanding our family.
I also know that home can be found in many places, and so I’m going to write about it on Substack as I go, because why not? Writing is one of the few activities where I feel totally present and alive; one of the few things that soothes my frayed edges and my endless hamster wheel thoughts, and I know I’ve got to lean into it. If the past few years have taught me anything, it’s how fleeting life is, and how none of the small things I worry about on the daily are actually that important. During these years, I’ve known grief that has been so intense that it literally knocked the breath out of me. It has been raw and brutal, but that empty, wordless space has also given me a taste of wild freedom: the knowledge that none of it matters (especially what other people think of me). And so here I am.
Peta concludes her recent post that celebrates writing by addressing those thinking about starting their own Substacks with a soft invitation to do so. I’m accepting that invitation with excitement and a bit of fear and an open heart, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it might take me.
Thanks for reading
x
