The Life of a Nomad

A nomad is defined, in its modern-day context, as an itinerant, a member of a community of people who moves from one place to another, rather than settling permanently in one location. At the very basic level of who I am, which traces back to before I was born, the label nomad is a bit of an anomaly. Anyone who knew me as a baby, as a teenager and even as a freshman at university, would find it hard to put me into this category. But, I have been living the life of a nomad for the past 13 months.

Before I recount the past year of homelessness, essentially, I want to instill, first of all, how truly lucky I feel to have the family and friends who have allowed me to live this nomadic life. I hope it doesn’t sound like I have taken them, or the opportunities I’ve had, for granted. But, at the risk of sounding insincere, I can’t wait to shake off the shackles of this nomadic life and have a flat of my own.

The notion that place defines your identity is not something to take lightly. I’ve had my share of adapting to a new place, struggling in that place to find the right fit for me, and making what I could of it; but, as life-affirming, character-building, adventurous and liberating as it is to float through life with one laptop and one suitcase, I feel, deep down, that I am a homebody of the most archetypal definition of that word. I need to have a home (whatever that really means), which is mine, to really feel at ease in my day-to-day life.

Allow me, for a frivolous moment, to go back more than 30 years, when my first home, for nearly eight months, was my mother’s womb, and my flatmate was the other half of a split egg, a zygote known as my twin sister. I don’t expect those of you who aren’t a twin to fully understand what this means but, those who know me very well, it is the foremost, most defining living arrangement I have ever had.

Being born a twin, whether you like it or not, means that your identity is defined as one half of a single being. You are born, and grow up, in a bubble that encompasses the two of you. We had our own joined-up life, our own language and our own relationship that, put quite simply, never fit into any other tangible category. For a large portion of our lives, we were two halves of one whole, and as much as I love her (and would never trade the experience), being a twin was quite detrimental when it came time for me to carve out my own place in the world.

All of this sappy observation on what it truly feels like to be born a twin, I imagine, makes it hard for anyone, let alone a single-birth child, to fully understand how I picked up my life in Toronto three years ago and moved across the pond, alone, to live in London. But, for the task at hand, which is my explanation of my nomadic life over the past 13 months, it is necessary background information.

I have become, over the past three years, a proud Londoner, but I have also come to the realization that home is truly where the heart is. Let me convey, at the risk of contradicting myself, how much I love living in London, have grown and been nurtured in my life here, adore the relationships I have built, the experiences – both professionally and personally – that I’ve had, and know that all of this has been integral to my growth into the person I am today.

But, deep down, I just can’t shake it. The French translation for the term ‘homesickness’ is the truest definition of the word I have ever heard: ‘mal a pays’. I miss my home, I miss Canada; I miss who I am in that place, in those relationships, in that true definition of my identity.

I won’t go back to my university years, where I had that first call to create my own identity, and where I was as miserable (and, ultimately, happy) as I have ever been. But it puts into context the way I feel today. That broad, and indefinable, sense of floating through life; feeling so content, but also so unsettled; it is really difficult to fully put into words. In uni, I had the worst homesickness I have ever had (for the other half of my identity, my twin, and for the home that formed me), but today I have a real heartache for my home, that place that is my own, that space that defines who I am.

Anyways, enough of the background context; I don’t imagine I have truly managed to put the way I feel into words. But, regardless of the history, for the past 13 months, I have been living the life of a nomad.

Last August, I was moving out of my flat on Florence Street, the first place in London where I truly felt at home. It was a necessary move; my flatmate of a year, and best friend in the city, Lauren, had made the brave move back to the homeland in May, and had left, in her place, a Canadian friend, Donna, who was a great replacement. Regardless of the new arrangement, we were finishing our lease at the end of August, and it was time for a change. We couldn’t settle on (agree on/afford) a two-bedroom flat in Angel, a neighbourhood I stubbornly refused to leave, so Donna was setting up her new home in Pimlico, while I was hoping to find a flatshare in my favourite London borough.

Without going into too much detail, it didn’t quite work out, so I floated around the area for a little while. My cousin Pearl, my London Mom, kindly took me in for a few weeks, and then I had two wonderful months house sitting for my friends Jenny and John, while they were honeymooning in South America. That took me to Christmas, and a fateful and fortuitous arrangement, which found me in a beautiful five-story house in Angel for six whole months, once again house sitting (for Pearl’s best friends) and living a life that would have never been possible without the connections and relationships I have here.

Fast forward to this summer, to early July, when I was once again tossed out into the nomadic life. I had made plans to share a flat with my friend Nelly, and a friend of hers who was moving back to Europe after nearly 20 years in New York. The search for a flat in London is a soul-destroying and wrenching experience, but I’ve chronicled it before in this blog and won’t dwell too much on that. Needless to say, after seeing our fair share of the Islington borough, a flat was found that would be our home. It ticked all the boxes we had laid out – except that it only became available in early October.

At the time, I was spending a lovely couple of weeks in Canada, so it made sense to prolong my nomadic life until the flat was vacated. Again, I was blessed by the amazing kindness and hospitality of my friends and family in London, and have been able to spend the last two months floating around the city. I spent some time in the spare room at my friend Christine’s in Finchley Road; on a Murphy bed at Liz and Iain’s flat in Myddleton Square; back in the West Wing at Pearl’s, the closest place I have in London to a real home; house sitting at my friend Ellen’s beautiful Georgian flat in Barnsbury and again at Jenny and John’s off Upper Street while they traveled the world.

The end of September finds me now excitedly anticipating the move into my new flat. I am longing for a place to call my home, to free my humble belongings from their storage locker in Camden, and to turn my single suitcase and nomadic lifestyle into a proper home. I haven’t even seen the flat yet (how crazy is that?), but love the neighbourhood, the price, the descriptions I’ve been given, and am counting down the hours until I am settled once again.

I will miss, in many ways, the freedom of the past 13 months. Only someone who has experienced the real estate market in London, the price of renting, the extra costs from bills and council tax, can appreciate how truly lucky I have been these past few months. But, I think, most of all, I will miss the blissfulness of living alone. I am moving in with two girls – which I really am thrilled about – but haven’t been in such a living arrangement since I was 21 (10 years!) and making my first home, post-residence in Kingston. It will be an adjustment – for me, and for my new roomies – to share my space again.

But I am more than ready for this next chapter, hopefully my last big move until I’m packing up my life in London to return to Toronto in a couple of years. And, though the nomadic life has been a real experience, I can’t wait to trade in my single suitcase for a real home, a real place that I can call mine – at least for the foreseeable future.