When you live by the sea, there is always an 'out'. There is always one side of town that is gone - a ledge, a platform where we all look one way and where hardly anyone is looking back at you. Perhaps it is the only place where there is no mirror, only the unconscious breathing of the sea.
If I move to Leeds, I'll miss the sea. I will be surrounded by various areas and places, all making a reflection of the other. There will though be the moors - perhaps the rising and falling of the moors, the wind, will be like the sea. Except of course it is earth and therefore too knowable to be illiterate and therefore 'true'.
If I stay in Brighton though, I will always have an 'out'. In fact, I will have to because the landscape, the people are always in transit. I would always have to change. It's change that I know, but it panics me and I am tired. I want to come home on a rainy day and make tea, while watching the very green trees against a gray sky. I want to be home, and I want to be a woman in that home.
This bothers me: is it a desire to fall into the groove of existing roles, or do I just know who I am now? No: I don't want to stay home, I want to be home. I don't want to be a child anymore - that isn't the same as giving up, in fact it's the opposite.
The thing that panics me is the resurgence of those feelings I had when I was a child: mistranslated, lonely, ridiculous. The sea gives me an out, which is on the surface re-assuring, but also makes me a child. I don't want to be playing at life anymore, I want to see the sea, see the unknown unknowables and then go home inland to fold a family out onto the world.
