Growing up without a home

I’ve always had a roof over my head, so that’s not what I mean when I say “without a home.”

As far as I understand, “home” is where you feel safe, comfortable, and protected. Where you can be yourself. At ease.

Not a particular place, set of bricks or furnishings. It’s a feeling.

My “home” until I was seven was a small two bedroom council flat in a tower block in Newbury Park, East London. It did not have any of those characteristics of safety, comfort or protection that make a home. I wasn’t at ease.

I lived with my parents and sister (two years younger). “Parents” feels strange. Two adults. “Mother” and “father” feel just as strange.

It was basic. Bare. No carpeting. No family photos. No decoration. Lifeless. Cold and dark. Gas and electricity bills went unpaid. No television. A battery operated radio and cassette player. Living by candlelight.

No toys. Made my own out of cardboard from cereal boxes. Scolded for stealing the box before the cereal was finished. Sat on the cold hard floor with chilblains on my fingers and toes and made things. Or drew. Became very good at drawing.

Didn’t go to school. I’d been sent for a short while when I was five but then pulled out. Father was paranoid about what I was being taught and how I was being treated. Decided to homeschool me. He was highly intelligent and knowledgeable but a terrible teacher. Setting problems far beyond the ability of a five or six year old. Not covering basics. Quickly becoming frustrated and angry. Shouting. Hurling abuse.

I was failing daily. Not smart enough. No good.

My father spent his days and our money (social security benefit cheques) at the bookies. Hence unpaid bills. Mother stayed home. Sullen, withdrawn. Childhood trauma of her own which I wouldn’t find out about until years later.

Both frozen at points in time unable to move on.

It was grim. There were no hugs. But it was normal. It was all we knew.

This was not a family. My father referred to my mother as “fatty.” I addressed him by his first name, same as she did. There was no “mum” or “dad.” My sister was just a silent observer.

Little to no contact with extended family. Father’s family lived close but we rarely saw grandparents. Mother had a sister in London but hadn’t seen her in years. We didn’t have contact with anyone else. Just the four of us in that flat. In our isolated bubble. Occasionally social services would knock at the door. They would go unanswered. I wondered who those outside voices were.

Sometimes my father would take us on day trips around the city. Museums, galleries and other points of interest. The newly constructed Docklands Light Railway. Or Harrods. He was intelligent, educated and cultured. Broken, bitter and despondent. Never found out why. Died in 2005. Found a week later in his small council flat in Chadwell Heath (neighbours smelled something).

These trips were exciting and gave me a sense of the larger world around me. I was curious about the London Underground. I would study tube maps in the flat, memorising whole lines and stations. I was fascinated by trains and planes.

There were arguments. About sending me to school (sister still too young). My father would hit my mother. One time I ran into the kitchen, got a rolling pin, took a swing at my father. He took the rolling pin away from me and laughed.

Sometimes the water supply was cut off. Bill not paid, same as gas and electricity. So we collected and boiled rainwater and drank it.

I was around six. My mother had had enough. Could hardly speak English but managed to get help from social services. We left. Moved into a woman’s hostel, somewhere around Willesden Green on the other side of London. Moved around a few women’s hostels.

Eventually my father found us. He would visit. Convinced my mother that he would send me to school. We reunited and were back in the flat. I was disappointed.

I’d been bought a small bike in an unusual show of generosity. A little girl’s bike. What it was marketed as anyway. It had been on offer. Didn’t matter to me. I was lucky to have it. My sister had nothing. I taught myself to ride. Took the stabiliser wheels off myself.

School did resume. A different primary school. I was six but had missed the first year. Obvious after a few weeks I was very behind. I was moved back a year. Physically carried, kicking and screaming, from the classroom. Failed again. No good.

I played with crayons and blocks for a little while. Then my father grew paranoid about what they were teaching me and how I was being treated. Found a bruise and assumed I was being bullied. That was it, I would no longer be going to school. Back in the flat. Nothing to do.

When I was seven there was a rare visit to see grandparents. My father’s parents. I had no real connection with them. He wanted money from them. A lot of shouting and swearing. They gave him very little. It would just be spent in the bookies.

We walked back to our cold dark flat. I was on my little bike. Fell behind. Saw my parents and sister in the distance ahead. They grew more distant. Unnoticed, I turned left. Went my own way.

The defining moment of my life. Possibly. A sense of self-awareness and a deep realisation I was my own person. I owed nothing to those other people, and they owed me nothing either.

Returned to the flat on my own hours later. It was dark. Father was angry, at the inconvenience of the late hour. Mother was distraught. I felt a sense of victory. I’d taken control of my life.

Those day trips around the city had stayed with me. Wondrous London. There was nothing for me in the cold dark flat. I was curious and fearless. The people I lived with just held me back. I would go on my own adventures.

Early hours of the morning I would quietly unlatch the door, get in the lift and be on my way. Newbury Park tube station. No station barriers back in 1988. I’d doctor the dates on old one day travelcards. Little dot marks with pen or pencil. Fairly decent forgeries.

Went all over London. Heathrow Airport to see planes. At London City Airport, new at the time, they asked “where are your parents?” I was asked that all the time. “At home. Where are yours?”

They took me to the cockpit of a plane to be shown the controls then handed over to the police to be driven back.

I was chatty and friendly. If I needed to eat I would ask for money. All my trips usually ended the same way, being handed over to the police and driven back to the flat.

The police were friends. Sometimes I would have to wait before a car was available. So they would entertain me in the station with funny stories and feed me chips in the canteen. Then a drive back to the cold flat. Angry father, upset mother. Off to bed. Lay low for a few weeks. Plan the next adventure.

I went on about a dozen or so of these trips. The last one I asked my sister, five at the time, if she’d like to come to see the planes. We went off to Gatwick.

Never made it. Picked up by police on the platform at Croydon. And this time we weren’t taken back to the flat. A social worker was called in. Then taken in the middle of the night to the home of an elderly couple. Stayed with them one night. They were nice. I plotted escape immediately but the bolt at the top of the front door couldn’t be reached.

Then we were given over to foster parents. White middle class family. A few months. I still plotted escape but couldn’t risk leaving my sister behind.

Eventually my mother left my father and managed to get custody. We had visits with her leading up to this. The social worker would tell me to hug my mother. I would look confused. Very awkward and unnatural.

Then temporary council accommodation. Moving every few months. Changing schools. More stable by the time I was ten, and finally a permanent council house when I was eleven.

None of those places were ever home either.

Missed a lot of school. By this point I’d taken my education into my own hands. There was nothing my mother could do. There was nothing anyone could do. No one could tell me what to do.

It all somehow worked out. I think. But not really. Not yet.

Here I am many years later. Inexplicably “successful.” Don’t know what that means. I’ve been very lucky. Still never really had a home.

I can buy a flat or a house outright in many parts of the UK or other places in the world. People have told me for years “buy a place.” I understood the economic and investment arguments. I just didn’t know what I’d do after I bought it. So I never did.

When I buy shoes, a meal or plane ticket, I know what I am exchanging my money for. Goods or services that provide an experience, a feeling. I had no idea what feeling buying a bunch of bricks and mortar was going to bring. Same with furniture. I’ve always rented fully furnished.

Owning a house seems to be a dream for many. I find that difficult to understand. Not impossible. Just difficult.

I may not have had home or family but I’ve had glimpses. The camaraderie and sense of family working in a camera shop. The long term crowd at a hostel. Teams I worked with early on in government digital. That was home. Family. Belonging. For a period.

I’m hyper-independent. I had to be. But I’m also very lucky to have many friends. These are family and another glimpse of what “home” might mean. If I can learn to reach out to them when I need help.

So here I am, after almost a year on an open-ended trip around the world, feeling fatigued and in need of home. Homesick.