I don’t do the things right when I am not OK. I researched London through and through and the people with way too many tattoos and piercings have told me to move to any agency room or quickly buddy up somewhere near Dalston or Hackney Central. In two years I went out, I met the people and I got tired of greeting everyone in every afterparty. I knew every dealer, every shoegaze producer, every pattern cutter, and aspiring model. And if I didn’t know them, for sure I knew someone that knew them. East London is a filthy paper napkin. Layered, dirty and full of a viscose substance impossible to define.

My bank account and a very nice Welsh doctor came to an agreement at the same time. I needed to take a step back and regroup. I understood. Yes, it took a fainting, some ounces of spilled blood and eleven surgical staples, but the idea got engraved on fire at last. As fun as it was, it needed to stop. I needed to rest, to have a look at my life with a holistic approach and take it easy. And yes, at the time I hated every single one of those words.
I also hated living west. The smallest box room hung in the back corner of one of those houses that was surgically fragmented to act as an income source for an Irish country bumkin who took the rent monthly in an envelope. Only cash. He sure did fix the stuff around, but every time I saw him up and down the stairs couldn’t help to think about tax evasion, butter and river dancing over the coffin of a broken economic system.

It was cheap and I was tired of being scared. I was tired of being scared of not being the only one sporting new rock shoes in the queue to the ATM. I was tired of being scared to go down to the hipster coffee shop and face the number of greetings from boys that I have met through my phone to exchange sexual favours. I was tired of being scared of every walk to the grocery store to be a 45 minute mooch to avoid all the people I met in questionable physical conditions.

It was October when I said farewell to The Dalston Superstore, to the shitty gay bars in which Central Saint Martin students used to get their first DJ gig just to play a random soundcloud rip of Charli XCX. I said goodbye to the East, a parasite that makes you cool, hot and shiny and burns within, eating us all from the inside.

Moving houses is horrible. More so, is dreadful when the choice is put upon, when the battle is lost even before starting. Changing the east for the west was certainly never I wanted to do. Blue and grey bags came in brown amazon prime boxes. A boring game of matryoshkas that unfolded in my room to swallow everything that I owned. My books; The Magicians by Lev Grossman, The Courage Of Hopelessness by Slavoj Zizek and Experiments In Imagining Otherwise by Lola Olufemi, among others. My music discs, where stacked, Aqua over Avril Lavigne over Goldfrapp over Hot Chip over Wu Tang Clan. My very vintage tops together with my cheap brand-new trousers and my very expensive trainers. The laptop with all the wires, external disks, and accessories.

And the Kylie Minogue poster. Because there are few things more important in the world for me than that concert in Manchester in 2002.

32 A, Furness Road, NW10 4QD. I hated the house; I hated the neighbourhood and the overground station I landed in when I first got there. Willesden Junction appears like a mythological hydra under the rails. From Highbury & Islington, the landscape slowly changes from three floor detached houses into grey bricks and grim looking children’s playgrounds. The station is a vomit of metal, plastic, and sad faces. The dragon lays dawn mysterious in his own lair, the lord of an industrial wasteland. Streetlights illuminate the rubbish in dark evenings. An empty parking lot, train tracks crossing each other in an unknown mating ritual and a hallway in between grilled metal fences that gave you access to the high street, after a long staircase. One of the many days that I was walking that cursed path, in one of those see-through bags attached to a horizontal metal ring that emulates a bin, I saw a rat fighting with the plastic, trapped in an artificial jail in between latte cups and empty cans. I felt just like that rat. Drowned in a transparent prison, surrounded by trash and forgotten. From the top of the staircase, the only chicken cottage shop of the area stood up, with the drawing of a rooster that was anything but happy. A short walk in between the urban arteries led to my three-floor house.

I also hated (for a change) that the washing machine and the dryer were in a shed, at the other side of the road. When I first got there, I imagined myself walking back and forth, with my sports bag hanging on one shoulder, just to clean my dirty clothes. And I did, I walked back and forth, on windy days, on days when the rain hit hard and the mood was low and bleak, I navigated the punishment, the consequences of my actions. I would miserably wander, load the washing, feed the sturdy old machine with white dust and liquid, and set a timer after pressing the ignition button. I would walk back, stare blankly to any Netflix bullshit that would be trendy at the time using my ex-boyfriend’s account. The alarm would go off, and I would move towards the staircase numbly, and slither downstairs and then again over the road, to gather the vomit coming out from a metal cube just to put into the next one. Press the button. Walk away. Back into my burrow, and let the stories on my laptop suck me in. My life was being degraded. I felt like a peasant, carrying my harvesting wools to clean them in the river in some sort of redundantly homophobic medieval era.
My blood boiled many times during those months. Back then, I had my brain on a loop, begging me to go back, clamouring to abandon. The white noise was amplified, so much so, I could not pay attention to other sounds. In between the loud yelling, a whisper could be heard. Not loud, but constant and strong. My heart was telling me that I was choosing right. And somehow, as wrong as it was, it felt like doing the right thing.

I surrendered to the mediocrity of the Brazilian housemate who talked far too much about football, boring me to death. I surrendered to the idea of sharing communal areas with a woman who once tried to cook a frozen pizza without taking it out from the box. Yes, the box, the plastic and the carbs, everything together inside the oven. I surrendered to two more people who I never fully even saw, the kind of people who start boiling pasta and run back again to their rooms, trapped in a loop of making money just to pay rent and be wretched. The kind of people that are always with someone on speakerphone. The kind of people that think Primark is a valid fashion choice.

The west felt like this extensive carpet of small houses in a sea of vacuum, sprinkled with the occasional island that was a commercial area here and there. My first walk around the neighbourhood just confirmed my fears. I was used to the vibrant street markets and the young bratty artists, the colourful hairstyles and iced lattes, the laughter and the grandmas on motorized scooters smoking a cigarette while drinking a knock off diet coke. The high-street was just a copy paste of anything else. From Kilburn to Wembley, Harlesden, Neasden, Stonebridge Park, it all had the same flavour. It tasted like fried chicken and tears. Occasionally the lovely Portuguese restaurant will excite me and send me to my childhood, only to be awaken by someone asking me for spare change. Although I need to admit, the surroundings sort of lured me in. I stopped going everywhere with headphones and pay attention to the numerous onomatopoeic sounds. Someone shouting. The splash of a bus going too quick just when the rain had settled. I remember seeing seagulls on a particularly cloudy day. They were hiding from the storms that would clash in the coast.

I also remember vividly one of those things that you always tell your friends but never your mother. When I was still going out, I needed to take the overground back all the way from Hackney. A lovely hour with my headphones on, rolling my eyes. One of those nights, when I was just climbing the staircase of the station, I witnessed a man, shirtless, walking, very serious. He had a machete hanging from the waist. Not a knife, not a sword, but a proper butcher’s machete. I froze. I waited in silence with some random Rihanna song blasting in my ears that only I could hear, until he disappeared. I had never been scared like that before.

Other night, I heard gunshots in the night.