Moving to the ‘Big City’ Was My Teenage Dream — Here’s Why I Only Lasted a Year
My mum tells me that ever since I was about 8 years old, I always made it clear that I couldn’t wait to be an adult and live on my own. In my teenage years, that dream was compounded by a burgeoning obsession in queer media — tales of young queers running away from their small towns to the big city, finding their tribe and carving a niche in a fantastic, fabulous nightlife full of crazy and colourful characters. I devoured books such as City of Night by John Rechy and Dancer in the Dark by Andrew Holleran, classic pieces of queer literature that made the gay nightlife and underworld seem dangerous yet exciting. I would wistfully listen to songs like Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy, and the suburban operettas of Marc Almond and Soft Cell such as Bedsitter and Fun City. Despite living on the outskirts of Brighton, which is an infamously queer city with a legendary nightlife scene, I always felt the pull of moving somewhere bigger and brighter. 3 years in the sleepy Somerset city of Bath, though enjoyable, failed to scratch that itch. So when I was presented with the opportunity to move to Leeds (ostensibly to study at the University, a decision I made with about 30 seconds worth of consideration) I was elated. Leeds in particular seemed like something of a great, cosmic calling — Soft Cell, my favourite band of all time, formed there, and their electropop paeans to city living were directly inspired by Leeds’ industrial sprawl. Perhaps if I had stopped to consider the deeper subtexts behind some of Soft Cell’s hits, I would have had an inkling of what was to come.
I arrived in Leeds for the first time at the end of Summer 2019, to do a few flat viewings. Stepping outside of the train station for the first time, I was immediately a bit daunted — the towering skyscrapers I saw in the distance from the train window were even more imposing up close. This, more than anything, shows how much of a small town mentality I had developed — Leeds was big by Brighton or Bath standards, but it is hardly a metropolis. I should also take pause here and say that Leeds is an incredible city — the sort of city where there’s seemingly something to do every night of the week, entire communities and cultural hubs squeezed into every available nook and cranny. This is what I reminded myself of as I walked around it for those first couple of days — even though I found the throng of people and the sheer size overwhelming, I told myself this must be a place of opportunity. When I had to trek for 40 minutes through abandoned industrial estates to look at a room that was hardly wider than I am tall, I had Soft Cell’s Bedsitter playing on constant repeat in my head. On the first night, sitting in a bar drinking on my own, I thought of how far away I was from home, and how big everything seemed. I cried. I convinced myself it was because my dreams had finally come true.
I was not the first of my friends to make the big move. I have had several friends, from all across the country, move to London to try and make it big, to start careers as artists or creatives. Inevitably they have all ended up hating it. Having lived about an hour and a half outside of London all my life, I was never surprised. I had always hated London — the noise, the dirt, the complete lack of social interaction between strangers, in a place where you feel on top of other people all of the time. When I arrived in Leeds in September, I was determined that my experience would be different. I set up my record player, put on my vinyl copy of Soft Cell’s Fun City and switched on my phone. The first headline was about a stabbing in my part of Leeds, in the park about 200 metres from my house. I shook it off. My impression of Leeds at first was that it was very different from London. Right off the bat, people in Leeds are incredibly friendly — even now, having moved back down south, it’s one aspect of living there that I sorely miss. Buoyed by the genuine chattiness of everyone I met, I threw myself into city life. I bought tickets to everything I could afford, burning through my first term’s student loan in the blink of an eye. I wandered round the city constantly, taking everything in. The area of Leeds I lived in, Holbeck, is a place I fell in love with. Holbeck gets a nasty wrap from the local and national press — a reputation driven by an age old combination of classism, racism and a dose of sex-worker hatred (with Holbeck being deemed the country’s only ‘legal’ red light district). I will defend Holbeck to my dying day — it was friendly and pleasant, its only real drawback being terrible transport links to the city centre.
The longer I stayed in Leeds, however, the more I was aware of a sort of nagging uneasiness. I have heard people say that you need to allow yourself a year to get used to a new place, at least 12 months to feel settled. I am often the opposite — when I move somewhere new, I immediately throw myself in with wild abandon, only noticing the cracks the longer I attempt to integrate myself. By the end of my second month in Leeds, the cracks in my general excitement were becoming harder to ignore. Once winter settled in, my tiny little basement flat did not seem to be so glamorous anymore — it seemed cold and sterile, and I grew annoyed at having to move my bed away from the wall during the day to stop mould growing on my bedsheets. The sheer size of everything, so daunting on my first visit, was becoming harder to ignore — somehow everything seemed so big, and yet I also felt like I was becoming increasingly trapped. There was only grey and beige as far as you could see — apart from the occasional park, you’d have to get on a bus if you wanted to see anything other than concrete. And as much as I tried to throw myself into everything that came my way, I felt continuously like I was running out of time. Everything moved too fast, always facing the fear of missing out on something, and of course the great trek across the city just to go for a pint. By about March of 2020, I was thoroughly depressed. I felt as if I was completely out of my depth. Sitting on my single bed, I listened once again to those Soft Cell songs and heard them in a way I never had before. On Bedsitter, Marc Almond sings: “Out in clubland having fun/and now I’m hiding from the sun/waiting for a visitor/though no-one knows I’m here for sure”. Heaven knows why I found that line romantic as a teenager. Now I was living it, and it was miserable. No-one knew I was here. Millions of people around me, and I’d never felt more lonely in my life.
Unexpected intervention came in the form of a global pandemic. My mother, the one who I had long told I couldn’t wait to live the life I was now living, insisted that I come home to ride out the lockdown that was beginning to loom. I was in a complete mental funk, and given that I was still living in my tiny one room basement flat, it was decided — for my own sanity, and probably safety — that I should move home. Despite how much I had struggled, I still held on to some of that mortification that came with the idea of living at home with my parents in my twenties. Still now, as I attempt to save the money to move out, I remind myself constantly just to suck it up, as grateful as I am. 3 months living in a small town on the Kent coast served as an unexpected salve. The town I was in provided little fanfare during ‘the precedented times’. It had no real culture to speak of, certainly no queer scene, and apart from being by the sea was not particularly pretty. But 3 months away from the big city was surprisingly liberating. After 3 months, when the world began to open up again, I moved back to Leeds in the hopes of getting my life back on track. And, being within the city after a few months away, I made a realisation — this city was everything I dreamed of. And yet I didn’t like being there. Even with the hustle and bustle mostly gone, the feelings of being overwhelmed by the sheer size of it returned almost immediately. And, with it being a city, the complete lack of opportunities caused by the pandemic stuck out like a sore thumb. I sent off dozens upon dozens of CV’s, for every role imaginable. After 2 months back in Leeds, I took stock of where I was — I was broke, miserable, no friends within commutable distance (all of my friends at Uni were international, and left in September) and facing another winter in my flat. I made the decision to leave for good. Having been gone 2 months, and as I mentioned still struggling with living at home in my twenties, I have never felt such relief. My teenage self would find my current situation mortifying, but if only they could see how much better it is than before.
I lasted 12 months in Leeds, though admittedly I only lived in the city for 9 of them. Reflecting on my experience, I am forced to think of how many young people — particularly young queer people — share dreams similar to the ones I had as a teenager. Queer youth have so many reasons for wanting to move away — perhaps they come from somewhere where they cannot be accepted, or just know that they would be more appreciated somewhere else. Many others are like me. I had no need to move so far away to find ‘my tribe’ — after all, having grown up just outside Brighton, I could have just moved 20 minutes down the road. For me, I feel as if I had internalised a lot of that aspirational grind culture ethos even from quite an early age. Once moving away from home became a tangible idea, I got it into my head that I had to move onto things that were bigger, that I had to keep pushing myself harder and harder, and that I needed to be in the throng of the action to make anything of my life. The coronavirus pandemic has already fundamentally changed our relationships with cities, with commuters opting to work from home and ‘out of towners’ eschewing the city shopping centre for online shopping. We are told that the city centre, as an entity, is dying. Perhaps that is not such a bad thing. Cities like London are already ruined by their commuters anyway — they’re the ones clogging the street and jacking up the prices. Perhaps now that we’ve begun to experience the possibilities of staying closer to home, it’s also perhaps time to consider how we can foster opportunities everywhere. For those who grow up in these cities, I can’t help think that they know the contours of these places, things that I would have never been able to comprehend. And for those like me, who never came from the big city, maybe there needs to be more of an effort to make good with what you have at home. The cities should not be the only cultural hubs. Not everyone is built for them.
