My good friend, Medway Exiles (http://medwayexiles.squarespace.com/) described a significant upheaval in his life as Big Change. It’s pretty succinct: two words, logically connected, and conveniently capitalised. It’s those two capital letters that tell us it’s not insignificant. 

Sure, moving from a city I had made home for a decade, and for which I have developed the sort of pride all non-natives do, is hardly a massive deal. But, it is. We’re too easily belittled by the world around us – forever told by politicians that we’re ordinary; cheapened by a salacious media desperate to scare us shitless about almost everything. And, in the midst of this, the pressure of just trying to survive from day to day to week to month to year. Just trying to live a life. 

So, here we are. Three of us in our new home. It’s not a flash place, but still I don’t feel I deserve it or have the capability to keep it ours. I’m so happy but want to hide from it and not face the responsibility of Big Change. Life sometimes feels too big to capture. Too much to hold in a single gaze or seize in a singular thought or emotion.

It’s the fact of life’s terror, its pressures and threats that makes Big Change as hard as it is. On the face of it, it should be easy enough. But, actually, there’s so much to take in to do it properly, to do it justice, that Big Change will be here for a lot longer than we think.