Fleeing

 I am very moved by the plight of immigrants; those that undertake perilous journeys to flee their homes for a safer place. I imagine people living where bombs are dropping and houses are destroyed and on fire and friends, family and neighbours are being killed and running away from that.

My own experience of fleeing is not from anything so terrifying as that image of war. However in order to keep myself safe I have fled and restarted my life from nothing in strange places with no money, no job, no friends and no family when I had arrived. And I have done this twice. 

I have fled to Cambridgeshire From Essex and Manchester and in my case it was not necessary to flee my country, just my county. I had the advantage of knowing the language and the currency, and so that facilitated my ability to look for work and accommodation. When I first fled I was a young woman and it was before the Internet. I was moving to somewhere strange where I knew no one and had nothing, so in order to find somewhere to live I wrote letters asking businesses and the local newspaper to advertise my need for lodgings; was anyone in need of a lodger? I have worked since I was 12 years old and so I know that in workplaces They often have noticeboards and on these noticeboards I have often seen rooms for rent, as I have also seen rooms advertised for rent in the local newspaper. so that is what I did. I wrote and asked if people would be prepared to put it up on their noticeboard. I found a room and a job at McDonald’s. I took a train down to the town where the room was and the person advertising the room kindly met me at the station and I arrived with all my worldly belongings in the rucksack and they said at the time how brave they thought I was moving away to somewhere where I knew no one and I’ve never even thought of it before was after all all that I had and so necessary. I bought a bicycle so I could get to work . later I would earn enough money to learn to drive and I took my driving lessons as my method of getting to and from work.

Because of the continued need to stay safe and keep myself safe and not be found by my family from whom I was not safe I found myself in a controlling relationship with a controlling man and I was trapped there for a number of years both due to my need to be kept secret and due to his desire to keep me secret it suited his need for control. it was a very unhappy existence for me but the alternative of course was too dreadful so I stuck with it . And ultimately I then needed to flee again and this time I fled to Lincolnshire. Again I leave behind most of my assets, my belongings, my things. at 1st I rent an empty house and in it I put bare furnishings from the 24-hour Tesco and I stay there until my baby is born. and from then there is a series of rented and places that I live in that I neither rent nor own. so IM statutorily homeless until I’m able to find a place I can buy. I have by then established ongoing work so that I can afford to do this. And it’s never occurred to me before that it is unusual to have nothing upon arrival and build your life up with no friends, family or support or anyone you know in the area at all and I wonder if this is similar to the experience of the immigrants and I realise now that the terror you flee does not need to be the bombs of war or the threat  of violence. It Can be any level of permanent threat that cannot otherwise be escaped and cannot be lived with. But then I wonder why leave the whole country? if you go to a foreign country, not just a different part of your own country then you lose the advantage of knowing the language and the currency, of the systems, knowing how to apply for work, knowing how to write a letter to the newspaper to ask them to pin it up on the noticeboard that you’re looking for a room. you don’t know how to do any of those things in a foreign country and you’re equally without friends, family, support or anyone who knows you at all - but you have the disadvantage of the foreignness, even knowing how to use the public transport system. How war torn, corrupt or oppressing must a country be for there to be no safe places in that country at all that they have to undergo these horrible perilous journey is to flee to another?

I’ve also realised that I must have been statutorily homeless for many years and never known it.