How to move back to your hometown

A guide for losers x

I never thought I’d move home at 27. I should be, like, getting famous then joining the 27 club. Instead, I wake up in my teenage bedroom. Outside the window, the view is the same as it was when I lived here before. Puddles shine on the tarmac and the trees are losing their leaves.

We spent years planning our escape. We made plots in bedrooms and pacts in cafes. One day, we would leave forever and never live here again. We had big dreams. Our lives would be an infinite sprawl of luck, wealth and enchantment.

We romanticised the dewy provincial parks and tree-lined streets while we waited. We found banal beauty in the roads with identical houses, scuzzy skateparks and cracks in the pavement.

The shops on the high street closed then reopened then closed down again, eventually fulfilling their destinies as Poundlands, vape shops and nail bars. But at the other end of the high street was our ticket out of here. The railway line leading out of town and up to London or further. As far away as we wanted to go. And we wanted to go far.

What I loved most about my hometown was leaving it. As a teenager, I hated living there. A medium-sized town in the southeast, it’s known for its grammar schools, rail links to London and crumbling medieval castle. A sensible place to live, I suppose. The kind of place where everyone would nod their heads and say it makes sense to move to if you wanted to leave London to start a family. A suburban nowhereland void of music venues, nightclubs and cinemas where all the schools are single-sex and all the parents are competitive.

Growing up, I couldn’t wait to live somewhere else. I didn’t dream of anywhere in particular; anywhere that was bigger and had produced at least three cool bands would do. I was envious of people who were proud of where they grew up and derived a sense of identity from it. My hometown felt faceless, but its cardboard cutout nature allowed our experience to traverse borders and continents.

We sought comfort in cultural imports like Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto and Lorde’s Pure Heroine. Being a teenager in a small town and dreaming of escape is universal. We were two white kids in suburbia whose idea of rebellion was journaling so fiercely our pens ripped through the page.

Palo Alto dir. by Gia Coppola (2013)

Now I’m back in the same town, romanticising it all from a different perspective. These days, moving back in with your parents temporarily feels like somewhat of an inevitability, if you’re lucky enough to have somewhere to go back to and if you’re even luckier to be from a place that’s a commutable distance from London.

I always know at least one or two friends who are living with their parents at any given time. When one person escapes, another one retreats. We’re skating around adulthood and independence and it’s been this way for a decade. Will it ever change? Will we move to sensible towns to settle down or keep chasing our tails through endless cycles of growth and regression? We’re in a constant state of becoming.

So, if one day you face the same fate and find yourself moving back in with your parents after your frontal lobe has developed, here’s a handy survival guide for losers like us; from supporting local venues and dating locals to romanticising the sharp edges of your teenage years and, ultimately, planning your escape (again.)

Romanticise everything

Remember when you were 14/15/16 and depressed for the first time? Now you can replay those moments over and over and over because you’re in the very room where they happened! There are few things I relish more than feeling nostalgic for the worst periods of my life. It’s easy to look back with rose-tinted glasses even if, objectively, you know you were miserable. There is a depth of feeling you experience as a teenager that never comes back. The music you listen to, the friendships you form, the interests you have; none of them will ever feel the same again. When we grow up, life usually gets better, so we don’t need to relate to art quite so strongly anymore.

Our favourite songs become background music to the busy grind of our twenties. Our favourite books and films roll off our tongues when people ask, but most of the time, we only recall the shadow of the plot and half-remember how much they once meant to us. All of this makes adolescence an era ripe for romanticising. I’ll trace the littered alleways and waterlogged parks again listening to old songs and crystallising them in my memory once more.

Make art about romanticising everything

My friends keep saying that moving home will be good for my writing. That’s the one consolation to be gained from any tricky life period. I often think I’m only one big heartbreak away from finally writing a masterpiece.

Reread old journals

I have a compulsion to reread my teenage journals whenever I go home. Is this a symptom of chronic self-obsession? Probably. I’m on the fence about whether rereading old journals is good for you or not. I imagine it springs from the same anxious disposition that makes us rewatch the same TV shows over and over. There’s comfort in knowing how everything’s going to turn out.

I’m glad I documented my life so consistently from 13-17 and so erratically from then on. There are moments of cringe, but also clarity. Sometimes my younger self had more figured out than I do now. How do I let someone know that when I say burn my manuscripts when I’m dead I really mean publish them?

Date the locals

The last person I dated in my hometown was a 40-year-old triple divorcé so I can’t wait to see what kind of unhinged romantic decisions I make this time! Dating apps are pretty shit wherever you are, but hometown Hinge hits different. When you’re bored out of your skull on a Saturday night, it’ll seem like a good idea to get pissed at the local Spoons with a stranger who’s never lived anywhere else. The novelty will soon wear off though, not least because you have nowhere to shag because you both live with your parents.

Support the local venues

I’d be the first to slag off my hometown for its lack of cultural institutions. It’s close enough to London that everything gets sucked up by the city. The nearest cinema is an Odeon on an industrial estate that primarily shows blockbuster franchises (RIP to my Picturehouse membership.) At least Tunbridge Wells, my hometown’s slightly more glamorous sibling, is only a 10-minute train journey away.

There you have The Forum, a charmingly scruffy gig venue in an old public toilet where I saw Wolf Alice and Palma Violets back in the day. They mostly host ‘80s nights and cover bands these days, but I’m planning to darken their doors again this winter if only to support them while I’m local. The weird, arty teenagers of tomorrow need at least one cool local place to go without having to travel up to London every weekend.

Plan your escape (again)

I don’t know where I’ll be in a year’s time. Life is fragile. I’m not very good at being still. I’m already hatching plans for my springtime escape. I’m hoping this reset will be a springboard into the rest of my life where some of those plans I dreamed up with my teenage best friend will be realised.

At the same time, I want to appreciate my hometown more than I have done in the past. This evening I walked into town and the Christmas light display illuminated the castle walls. I didn’t have to do any mental cartwheels to see the beauty in that. Life doesn’t work out how we thought it would, but it’s not all bad. Maybe I’m not going to find being back in my hometown as difficult as I thought.