content note: this article briefly mentions suicide & grief
It has been 244 days since I ran away to Margate.
When I arrived, I knew no one here. Before moving, I had spent maybe a week in the town, total. And that’s if I am being generous.
I bought my flat on the British television show Location, Location, Location - which is a story for another day - but in it, they said that I had friends, because I told them that. I did not.
But I did not have the language at the time to explain that I was venturing somewhere where no one knew me precisely so I could reinvent myself. Or more precisely, I was going somewhere no one knew me so I could become myself and not the version of myself people had become accustomed to.
The first time I came to Margate, I was in my second year of university. I was undergoing intensive trauma therapy under an Early Intervention in Psychosis team in Camden. I hadn’t had psychosis, but I did have a bipolar misdiagnosis and a lot of complex trauma - thank you, homophobia. Between that and being autistic, only specialist teams could get funding for the treatment I would need. I was not in a good way and I did what I always do - head to the sea.
I stayed in Whitstable because it was cheaper, in a tiny house in an elderly couple’s back garden and, as I remember, spent a lot of time watching Gillian Anderson in The Fall. I cycled up and down the coast between Whistable and Herne Bay, listening o
podcast. Each day, I would get the train into Margate and wander around aimlessly. I remember thinking ‘I could live here’. I cannot even remember why, which is not saying much as I can’t remember much about that time in my life.Within a year, the world would be in the midst of a global pandemic, within two years my Granny would be dead. Within three, so would my flatmate. I moved back to my hometown in Hertfordshire - a thing I thought I’d never, ever do - and started flat-hunting.
It would be nice if I could present to you a linear narrative about grief and healing, but I can’t. Not yet at least. In the last twelve months, I found out about my former flatmate’s death five months after the fact, turned 24 years old, completed on my flat, moved in and got settled, got a literary agent, had a meeting with a publisher and then found out another friend died, got my first book deal book deal, started working on my book about LGBTQ+ inequality at a time when rights are getting erased rapidly - all whilst working full time, making new friends and working out how to live alone.
It has been a lot -let alone for someone whose disability makes change difficult - and I don’t always give myself the credit for the fact I have coped as well as I have.
I have been contending with a strange paradox: this has felt like a year of getting by rather than the thriving that I hoped for. And yet, despite everything, I have achieved my goal of being more myself than ever.
The autistic mask came down pretty quickly when I moved because not only did I get to live alone for the first time ever, no one had any expectations of me - at least, beyond ‘that girl off the television’. I came to Margate being myself and decided if no one liked me, or they thought I was weird, that was fine.
It turns out I’m not antisocial - a critique leveraged at me my entire life - I just only have a certain amount of energy to deal with people a day. Living alone has meant that I have a bit more capacity for people. I have interests I never realised before. It turns out I don’t hate art, or fashion or music. I just don’t have any interest in pretending to like what other people like or because something is literally In Vogue. And Margate is full of eccentric types who get on with what they get on with no matter whether anyone cares or is like them.
I still get weird looks, encounter people who think I am hyper or annoying or don’t get me, but that’s fine. But at least they don’t like me, and not a version of myself that I was failing to fabricate for the sake of trying to be liked.
Last night, I was surrounded by friends and soon-to-be friends as we supported Dre - who I had a very tender conversation with about neurodivergent creativity a few months ago - and who is currently fundraising to take their show to the Edinburgh Fringe. I ate more arepas than I thought humanly possible, prepared lovingly by Dre’s mum and friends. I heard a poem about a cosmic caterpillar and encountered an instrument I had never heard of - a yangqin, which is a kind of type of Chinese stringed percussive instrument - played by MantaWoman, whose music I am now a little obsessed with.
There’s a line in Doctor Who - because I am me and there is always a line in Doctor Who: “I'm not running away from things. I'm running to them before they flare and fade forever.” I joke that I ran away from my hometown and its associated conservatism and homophobia, but the reality is that I don’t think that was enough to propel me forwards. The hope of a life on my own terms - and where I can help other do the same - might just be the thing that keeps me going. Small gestures of generosity and kindness and the knowledge that there are, surprisingly, good people.
Having had so many friends die in the last year and dozens more friends-of-friends lost to suicide, it is difficult to feel like I am not running out of time. It’s difficult not to worry about whose death you will find out about when you open your phone in the morning. Lots of my new friends have no idea this is what I’ve been contending with these past few months, because it’s not exactly the small-talk expected of early friendships and I can be full-on at the best of times.
I am lucky, people have chosen to stick by me anyway. They've been compassionate, and oh so patient. It will be interesting to see what people think I am like when the waters are calmer. I suspect people will discover just how loudly I cackle and how dry my sense of humour truly is.
I always suspected Margate was a town of misfits, but I never expected to be welcomed in quite so much. And the generosity people have shown me these past few months meant that I could keep going and do the thing that my dearest friends could not: live.