In another life I would have been happy to hear of neighbouring farms, the changes in the village, the plight of weather, the sale of wheat, the new cattle coming in, but this is not this life. The dry soil of dirt and blown seed is not mine. The vivid brown of ploughed fields in the rain is not mine. They belong to a past that was not handed to me, a past I learned to reject too early and can never regain. And yet, it is a past I still yearn for.
I stepped into the stall with my dry clothes in hand and locked the door to stop it from swinging open. I stood there for a second not wanting to change. Three burly men were standing on the other side of that one flimsy door. For the second time on this journey I felt vulnerable. There was nothing I could do if they decided to open the door and… I cut off my trail of thoughts there. They had shown me nothing but kindness in the few minutes since we had met. Why would they suddenly turn evil?
My chest tightened and tears welled in my eyes in the following days every time I thought about Brexit. I felt empty and lost, rejected by a country I so fiercely love. I had fought to come here, I had fought to stay here. I came crawling and wounded to London ten years before and had risen to become the person I am today. And all of that meant nothing at all because I was foreign now, not of here, other.
