When my parents were my age, they left.
It's time for me to do the same
When I was sixteen, I fantasised about going. Not just from my home, but London, England, the UK, Great Britain, whatever. This feeling was aching, instinctive, but I wasn't ready. Although I wrote stories and poems, filled journals and daydreamed about going, I knew it wasn’t my time. The reasons for wanting to go were mostly about me - I wasn't running away from something, but yearning for some fictional other. A place where I lived a put together, slick life, where I didn’t think about money, where I was happy all the time. A place where the sun shone more.
But financially, emotionally, spiritually, I was too young. I settled for the next best thing: university. I went off to Bristol for a few years, bounced back into London and then ended up moving out again in the pandemic, as the city slowly - and then with frightening speed - became more and more unaffordable. The summer of 2016, when this country voted to leave the EU, was sweat-filled and sobering. I knew then, as I knew before, that I would have to leave. But still, I was not ready. My desire to go settled down a bit after I graduated, travelled, began working. Finding a person you love, a brilliant job, and the chance to write and write and write will temper the urge to drop everything and go - until it cannot anymore.
I’m ready now. I’ve been ready for a while, but sometimes these things take time. In the second half of 2024, I wrote a novel called Strangerland, based on the true story of my parents. They both left their homelands at my age and ended up in London, building a new life together. It felt unbelievably comforting - and bizarre - to know that as I was writing about their journey, I was embarking on my (eerily similar) own. As I captured their incredible past, I inadvertently wrote my future.
After months and months of planning, waiting, hoping, my partner and I are moving to Berlin. In fact - he’s left already! Were it not for some visa delays, I would be there right now too. I will be giving myself some time to do the only thing I have ever truly wanted to do - to write, uninterrupted. Maybe I will go back, maybe I won’t.
So, I quit my job, I held the farewell drinks (and then did not leave - see said visa complications above), I started to unpick the knots tethering me here. I learnt that I will never be financially ready (lol) to move abroad, but, yet again, I have been incredibly lucky and privileged. My partner, who watched me furiously edit one book and write another in the space of eight months, all whilst working full-time, has made this possible. He is stepping in to support us both for a while, whilst I contribute where and when I can. I want to be as transparent as I can about that, because the writing world is so often murky about money. I don’t earn close enough to what I need to make a living - yet. One day I hope to support myself fully from my writing alone, but it’s not going to happen in expensive, miserable England, which has all but killed creative industries. I have a (very small) pot of savings, I have a deeply supportive partner with a job that can pay our bills, I have stories - written and unwritten - on the horizon. I have my parents, who did it all before me in far harder circumstances, knowing that they had no one to fall back on. They are one of the reasons I’m doing this too.
I was having a conversation with a friend recently - one of those that you’ve just met but connect with in an immediate, profound way - about Strangerland. We were talking about belonging, and I said something like, ‘Well part of why I wrote this book is because I’m hoping that if people see what my parents went through, maybe they’ll be kinder to them, and to people like them.’ The realisation that I was trying to humanise immigrants, in direct response to the way this country - my home - had scapegoated and vilified them, hit me as I formed the words. And then I began to cry (writers, amirite?). I’m so proud of the book, but I also don’t want to spend my life writing in response to dehumanisation. I want to create from a place of joy, too. Moving elsewhere won’t necessarily fix that, but it will give me the privilege and pleasure of newness, and of being a stranger in a foreign land. A level of removal that I can’t have in Britain. The irony that it is my passport, my Britishness, that is allowing me to do this is not lost on me.
I have many fears. Enough to write a dozen blog posts. But I have enough excitement and curiosity to write hundreds. When it comes to writing, I only ever stick to one rule: tell the truth. Good work can be weird, dark, disgusting - whatever - but it must be honest, no matter the genre. I want to live the way I write.
I will of course be documenting this move here - everything from the confusing tax and immigration process, to finding a place to live, to making friends, to navigating a new city, to how on earth I will make this writing thing work. This will all be housed in a new section of Aphrodisia called ‘The Berlin Files’, which will remain free for the first few months, and then will transition to a paywall. I’ve thought about this for a long time and I’ve come to the conclusion that at least some of my writing will need to be paywalled on here, now that I will no longer have a stable source of income. There will also be some new fiction coming, which I’ve not published on here for a while. I’m excited about it all.
In the two years of writing here, I have resisted this because I have never needed the money or had the time to ensure that my paid writing will have the consistency, quality and cohesiveness that paying subscribers deserve. I now need the money, I now have the time. My paid work will be romantic, it will be honest, it will be me documenting, in real time, a new adventure. More details to come. I promise you it will be worth it, but I also appreciate that you may not be interested in reading about the ins and out of moving to a new country and learning how to live a new life. I promise that a big section of Aphrodisia will remain free to access, and whether you join the paid section of my newsletter or not, just the fact that you have subscribed and are reading this means more to me than you know. Thanks for being here. See you soon. x
A quick favour. I love writing these posts, and I intend to do them for free for as long as I can. If you enjoyed reading this, forward it to a friend (or three) who you think might like it too. It helps massively, because validation from strangers is truly the only thing that makes the horrors bearable for me.
So insanely excited for you Monika 💛 and for all the words and projects that come out of this new adventure. Good luck on the move ✨
“I want to create from a place of joy, too.” Yess. Loved the update! I was in Berlin last summer and it’s such a rad city. All the best on your new adventure!