After several weeks now living back in my childhood home for the first time in nearly 5 years, and not just that being stuck inside, without a voice, without being able to eat and that’s just half of it after my double jaw surgery. Recovery hasn’t been easy, and from what I understand from my doctors, surgeon, and orthodontists I am having a tougher recovery than most.
During this time it has been difficult and I haven’t felt like myself, because I haven’t been able to do the things which I believe make me me. It has made me contemplate why I moved away from my home in the first place and moved to London.
My school life was a complicated one, I loved learning and had a passion for information, I still do. I was an academic child and teen and was pressured into going into Science and Maths, and I ignored them, I had another passion and that was food. I loved cooking and I was truly skilled at it, I still am. I won competitions, I worked as a chef for the last 7 years a 3rd of my life. But even so, I had no friends in school, my social life was non-existent. So at the age of 16 when I was offered a place at the best catering college in the country, in London, I worked so hard to be able to go and I did. I commuted for the first 5 months and with the staring hours of college being so early sometimes, I spent 2 weeks to a month at a time at the age of 16 living in hostels in London, otherwise I would be leaving home before 6 in the morning and getting home after 9pm. I was knackered.
So just after turning 17 I moved to London for promise of an amazing career and new life, and now at the age of 21, nearly 22, I’m at a place I didn’t expect but there is so many things I am grateful for. Especially the people now in my life. Sitting here stuck in bed in Brighton makes me realise what I have in London, even if I hate the city in many of ways. But I have a new family in London.
The reason I am saying this, writing this, is because this is my personal story of migration. Is it that different to someone else moving country you better opportunities and a better life. I just stayed in the same country.