Recently, in a moment of idle curiosity (of which I have many) I worked out that, in my time on this planet, I have lived in 22 houses as a permanent address, or you could say home. I am now approaching sixty so that makes it an average of 2.73 years lived in each house. When you consider that I have spent the best part of a decade in some of them, you get a feeling that being in one place, putting down routes and all of that stuff has not really happened for me. ‘Eastenders’, ‘West End Girls’, ‘Our House’, and ‘Homeward Bound’ are all alien concepts to me. However, ‘They Call Me The Wanderer’ and ‘Wherever I lay my hat’ (to continue this slightly tortured song title metaphor) are ideas I feel more at home with. You could say I’m more at home with not being at home.
When I first moved to London I squatted in Kings Cross, then I met my first wife and we live together for the best part of twenty years, first in the Willesden Green area of North West London and them for a brief time in various run down properties in France. Initially we lived in short life housing. This consisted of various places including a rather grand but run down mansions block on the high road. We then bought a flat together with a small mortgage and a large deposit from her pre inheritance. This was the cheapest way to live in some style in the most expensive city in the UK, but it did rely on us staying together, which we didn’t. When our codependent relationship finally fully unravelled I had fallen into living in South East London in the Peckham area. I had agreed to flat sit for a friend who planned to live in France for 9 months. That turned into 7 years, and by the time this dodgy sublet had been discovered I had met my second wife and so I moved into her flat in Elephant and Castle. It was the early summer of 2011 when we fell in love and got engaged. We were set for a lifetime together. Yet again the question of where I lived, and more importantly where I belong was again sorted. I was going to spend the rest of my life with this person, and equally important I was going to spend the rest of my life at home with this person… until we separated.
Another pattern in my life was emerging.
So as the twenty naughties rolled into the twenty teens South East London had now become my home, which it remained until the pandemic and our separation changed all of that. Since then I’ve had four addresses and moved, or rather ran away, to North Wales, the area where I grew up from age 14. I say four addresses, make that 5 if you count the infamous week in the Holiday Inn on the A55. I now live in Flint. I don’t wish to do Flint down, but after spending most of my life in the hustle, bustle and buzz of London it’s not where I want to be.
Like so many areas of my life, the place I call home has constantly come up for re negotiation, and I’ve never been able to reconcile this. I’m jealous of those people who have never moved around much. Who know where they belong, who are settled and who have a life long stomping ground. To be 60 and still be so unsettled is a challenge. It’s strange, but I’m also jealous of those souls who accept that they don’t belong. Or should I say, don’t belong in any one place. Free spirits with a sense that life is an adventure. I’m drawn to the idea of living on a canal boat and not having a permanent mooring. Cut adrift. Just continuously cruising Britain’s Waterways as thousands do. Waterways, rivers and the sea all have such a positive effect on my mental health. With canal boats there’s also the added romance of moving around, always living in a new place. I recognise that, like many people with ADHD I have what you could call a very romantic view of life. And it’s the same with housing. The romance of a new and shiny place to live.
Like my working life I have come to realise that with my housing choices I’ve taken the path of least resistance. I didn’t make the choice, the choice was made for me. It wasn’t my home, or my area, it was our home and our area. In fact the only time I decided to to live somewhere I ended up getting evicted after 5 months or so. It’s safe to say that I didn’t plan that well. I knew, deep down that I couldn’t afford to live in a country cottage, but the romance of the countryside, and of the fact that I could move in without being credit checked led my ADHD brain to ignore this stark fact. If there is one common theme to the hardships of my life it’s consistency, or should I say lack of it. I’ve struggled all my life with this. It’s fair to say that ‘average’, ‘level’ and ‘consistent’ have not really been my bag. For me, it’s always been all or nothing, brilliant or useless. Inspiring, or desperate. They say life is a marathon, well mine has been a never ending round of exhilarating sprints only to collapse just before the finish line. My life has been dominated by a culture of instability. Ironically the only constant in my life has been change.
I have also made another big realisation recently, and I say this with a deep, deep sense of shame. I have spend most of my adult life being a kept man. My ex once described me as Peter Pan, “you’ve never really grown up” she said. She didn’t mean anything bad by it. In fact I know she found this reckless and carefree side of my personality to be exciting when we first met. In so many ways it was true… but still, it really hurt. It’s really not how I saw my life, or indeed myself. To my mind I had made these choices, and I was set for life. I’m also ashamed to say that I was blind to all of this, and blind to the disasters that were about to unfold. But then being ADHD, and not knowing it in a neurotypical world makes you blind to so much stuff. You get the feeling deep down that you’re not doing it right, but it seems to be working. You seem to be getting on by everyone else’s standards, until it all falls down like a house of cards.
Time blindness also plays it’s part here in a weird way. Loosing almost everything after the pandemic, money, relationships, career and even my home felt very sudden, and very shocking. It felt, at the time, like it had all just suddenly collapsed. I now see that it was more like a slow crumbling. Like a chunk of coastline slowly, and imperceptibly eroding until it finally crashes into the sea. My ADHD brain, a brain that wants everything to happen now, and can’t see the small steps to success is equally blind to the small steps that lead to disaster. Others saw it coming. They saw the erosion, but I didn’t. I just felt the collapse.
But I don’t want you to think that it’s all bad.
The apparent chaos and instability of my life has been at times exciting and exhilarating and has led to amazing things. Would I have agreed to tour with Alan Ayckbourn’s company for almost a year in my mid thirties (to critical acclaim I might add) if I’d been happy at home? Would I have been a groomsman at my friend’s wedding on a beach in Australia if I had questioned the wisdom of paying for a 4 month extended holiday there on my credit card? That was a good one though. During the ceremony we staged a mock, comic ‘forgetting the rings’ incident which involved me running up the beach and diving into the sea to swim to England to fetch the ring I’d supposedly forgotten. Much hilarity and laughs at that one. My clothes were trashed and sodden for the rest of the ceremony, but it was worth it. The whole trip cost me thousands of pounds. Money I didn’t have. But still, it was worth it just for that one moment of hilarity. That’s how my brain works. And perhaps most importantly would I have discovered my ADHD if I had not run away from my home city of thirty five years to rural North Wales?
Who knows?
But I do know one thing. For the first time in my life I can honestly say I live somewhere where I truly don’t want to be. Again it’s not through choice, but I’m not kidding myself this time that it is. I’ve heard it said that the ADHD brain needs to visualise and see things. Out of sight is out of mind. So being somewhere where I really don’t want to be has had an interesting effect on me for sure. I won’t lie, it’s painful being here and living in a shared house. Everyone else is in their twenties and making their way up in the world. I’m in my late fifties, and it feels, at times, like I’m meeting them on my way down. I feel disempowered. At times angry and sad that poverty has robbed me of so many choices. For the first time in my life there are days when I’m not optimistic, which is a massive downer. But weirdly it’s been a powerful motivator as well. Everyday I wake up and see that things need to change. I stare at the four walls of my room. Two face each other 3.2m apart. The other two just 2m. Yes, it’s really that small. I suspect that the storage container that I rent is bigger, maybe I should move in there. I can’t escape it, I can’t be in denial. It’s a reminder, like the biggest of all pomodoro timers, or the master of all alerts (thousands of which, I set up) that I need to take steps, small steps to change my situation.
I’m lucky that way. My mind, (with the help of some loving friends both ND and non ND) always seems to be able to see the funny side, or the ironic side, and quite often the positive side. Recently I’ve feared a slide into complete hopelessness, and this has led me to redouble my efforts to make sense of my life and change it for good. A few months back I got in touch with a friend, one of the many that I’ve not been in touch with for years, and he asked me how things were going? I told him the whole grisly saga of my life since just before lockdown. Loosing my inheritance, acute injury, increasing debt, separating from the love of my life, my dog dying, running away from my home city of 35 years, loosing my business and temporary homelessness… all of this crazy shit. His response surprised me. “Wow!” he said, “You do lead an interesting life!”
I guess he’s right.
And as for living in Flint. You can say one thing. Flint is the place that took me in from complete destitution. I have to give it that. I think I’m going to stay in the discomfort for a bit longer. No more running away, no more kept man. Alone yes, on the breadline yes, but at least making my own choices. I reckon I have one more move left before the ultimate small wooden home that I’ll finally end up in, so let’s make it a good one. Maybe home no 23 is where I find out where I really belong.