Why I quit London

How does where you live shape who you are?

Caveat: this post is about my personal experience of living in and leaving London. If you love London, you may read this and think I’m pathetic—that I simply wasn’t cool enough to know where all the fun was happening (true). If you too have struggled with London, then meet me in the comments 👀

P.S. I also discovered the Substack audio feature this week and since I have often been told I have a voice for radio, I thought I’d give it a go. Let me know if you like having the option?!

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For as long as I can remember, I have struggled to feel like I belong.

As a child, I was shy. As an adolescent, I was too studious to fit in with the cool kids. My twenties were spent drifting from situationship to situationship, longing for someone to pick me.

None of this makes me unique—all of us are on a lifelong quest for wholeness.

According to psychologists, we are searching for a way back to the safety and comfort of the womb from the minute we leave it. I think that these days, we are also searching for a way back to each other.

A “breakdown of the social fabric” feels too academic—too mundane. As if we are merely held together by an old, fraying scarf, rather than a vital connective tissue that could be the difference between life and death.

I worry about this fascia—how it can tauten and tear, amputating us from friends, family, and community. Leaving us adrift and unmoored in our little nuclear bubbles and digital echo chambers, with nothing but contouring tutorials and Deliveroos for company.

Call me an alarmist—but that’s what seven years of living in London will do to you.

In the beginning, there was fun

From transient rentals to impenetrable trend cycles (each borough demands a different shoe), nowhere made me feel less like I belong than London. A place that until very recently, I called “home”.

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At first, London was my refuge. I fled there from Bristol, where I’d studied and lived for five years, after a breakup, seeking an escape: somewhere big enough to lose myself. To an extent, it worked.

London was sprawling and anonymous. After Bristol (a city in which people you know, i.e. your ex, lurk around every corner), this felt like a welcome relief. London offered a sea of exciting strangers to swipe through—a welcome distraction. London was fast, edgy and dangerous (who needs anxious-avoidant attachment patterns when you can get your thrills standing on the wrong side of the escalator, or clinging to your dignity as you attempt to go down the stairs on a moving double decker bus?).

Also, London was where pretty much everyone I knew lived. It was nearer home. It was what was expected of me (the product of a middle class, Home Counties upbringing, destined for a corporate grad scheme in the City).

It was time to stop hanging around in skip food cafes and psytrance clubs. I needed to grow up and get real. And so I forked out an extortionate amount of money to live in a series of overpriced, sometimes mice-infested flats; bowing to the militant booking culture of small plates restaurants, muscling my way through endless crowds of Salomon-clad hipsters, and spending three quarters of my life on public transport.

Some of it was fun. I remember the hot, sultry summer of 2018. High spirits spilling out of hoppy-smelling pubs, lying on the scorched grass of Brockwell Park, World Cup fans bringing traffic to a standstill outside the Hootananny, dancing in sweaty-ceilinged night clubs to Drake’s Scorpion. There was a period of my life when London felt like one big adventure.

But whether it was London, or me, something changed.

So long, London?

I’m not the first to point out the shrinking nightlife, the fading sense of community, the rising costs, the sharpening economic disparity. And I’m well aware of the ways in which I contribute to that disparity—how easy it is to turn a blind eye to the growing number of vulnerable people on the streets, and keep on buying your oat flat whites a few feet away.

But to me, London never seemed to recover its unique essence post-pandemic—the creativity, the spontaneity, the eccentricity that made London, London. Increasingly, I found that it drained me.

Leaving the house felt like an obstacle course; every screeching tube and stuffy bus an assault on the senses. I walked around clutching my phone to my chest, handbag clamped under my armpit, body tensed and prepared. If a stranger tried to speak to me, I assumed they were after my possessions, not directions (yes, I am one of the many who has had their iPhone snatched from their hand by a passing bike).

Every time I ventured into Soho to spend the day at my coworking space, I came back exhausted, grumpy and bitchy—whining about the dirty underground, the filthy rich, the atmosphere of stress I absorbed like a sponge (and probably directly contributed to).

Sure, there was loads to do. If you had the energy to take two tube lines and a bus, and the money to pay for it. Sure, it could be beautiful. If you were an oligarch in Chelsea, or a bohemian aristocrat in Hampstead. Sure, all my friends were there. But I saw each of them approximately once every three months, cramming our catchups into strict, one-hour table reservations. Sure, there was work. But I can do that from anywhere.

Given literally any opportunity, I would moan about London to anyone who listened. Eventually, I wasn’t just sick of the city—I was sick of myself.

The last straw

There is every possibility that I’m the problem. Maybe I’ve just grown older and fustier. Maybe I haven’t recovered post-pandemic. But whatever the cause, when I look back on my last summer in London, I can see how my mounting sense of dissatisfaction was taking its toll.

My partner went away for a couple of weeks and I rattled around Stockwell by myself. Everything felt hard. It was sunny, but I didn’t have an outside space and couldn’t face walking along the main road to the park. I thought about getting into wild (or at least urban) swimming, but the Lido was always fully booked. If I had to walk home after dark, I felt gripped by panic, my keys leaving deep grooves in my clenched palms.

Usually, I love my own company. But in London, I felt lonely and cut off. The city had become a cold, stone-faced stranger. The Richard-Curtis-induced fantasies (the tight-knit group of friends all living close by, the Notting Hill townhouse) had never materialised.

Probably, the reason I didn’t like my own company was that I didn’t like who I’d become—stressed, fearful, listless, and suspicious.

The thing is, I don’t think I’d ever intended to stay in London for so long—and maybe there is an expiry date on how long one can happily stay there. My plan was always to move back to Bristol, which, lurking exes aside, had always felt like home. But life has a knack for getting in the way of our dreams. You get a job, you sign a lease, you meet someone. And before you know it, you’re clinging to the railings of the 59, fighting for your life as you lurch down the stairwell, wondering how on earth you got here (I may have a complex about double decker buses).

Now I know

How much does where we live shape who we are?

There’s a truth to the saying “Wherever you go, there you are”—you can book the flights, quit the job or leave the relationship, but changing what’s around you can only go so far in changing what’s within you.

At the same time, I wonder whether enough of us moot where we live as the source of our dissatisfaction. A bit like who you make friends with at school, it’s so easy to let circumstance sweep you along and choose your home by default—a byproduct of a job or a relationship (or breakup), or simply where you were born, rather than a conscious choice about the conditions you need to thrive.

I’m reminded of this debate I stumbled on via

Emily Ann Hill

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Through the course of many conversations, going back and forth, and weighing up our options, my partner and I decided that staying in London would feel like sleepwalking. We wanted to live somewhere that better aligned with our values, temperaments, stress levels, and budgets.

For us, that happened to be Bristol. Of course, a) a different set of people could work through those same questions and get London as the answer and b) not everyone has the luxury of choice. But if there’s anything that coaching has taught me, it’s that those of us with agency and privilege have a lot more choice than we think.

Since I can work from anywhere and my partner’s job is fairly flexible, we decided to up sticks. A lot of people seemed to think we were mad. In the final couple of months before we moved, we became well-practiced in fielding questions from bemused friends who couldn’t wrap their heads around why we’d leave London (the epicentre of the universe!!!) to move to Bristol (“But you don’t know anyone there!”).

I found this reaction a bit baffling. Not only because Bristol is 1.5 hours away from Paddington station (hardly outer Siberia), but because I hoped our friends had enough faith in our social skills that we would just…make new friends???

Sure, we had no concrete reason to move here (family, jobs, etc). Only our intuition pulling us by the scruff of our necks, towards a different kind of life. I don’t think this is a particularly brave or risky thing to do (one thing people seem to forget: you can always move back), and I have plenty of actually brave friends who have moved to a different country in search of their home.

Is it really so strange to move somewhere for no other reason than because you love it?

Everyone complains about London—so why do we all stay?

I sometimes wonder if there’s an Emperor’s-new-clothes-effect to my generation’s persistence with living in London. Our prospects of home ownership and quality of life are getting objectively shitter. And yet we carry on, dutifully cramming ourselves into Tube carriages and sniffing someone else’s armpit, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.

The thing is, I don’t want to have a love-hate (or just hate-hate) relationship with where I live. I would quite like to love where I live—especially because I don’t have to contend with the wars, oppression and natural disasters that take “home” away from so many other people in the world.

I could write a whole post on why Bristol is such a brilliant place—the rolling hills, easy access to nature, strong eco creds, friendly people, vibrant arts and culture, world-class food scene. There’s nowhere quite like it. Well, except maybe Brighton…

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But the thing that strikes me the most is that people actually want to be here. They’re proud and protective of where they live. They put a lot of stock in community. They genuinely seem to look out for each other.

Whenever I ask people what brought them to Bristol, their story is similar to mine. Most of them didn’t know anyone, didn’t move here for work, didn’t have it all figured out—they just followed their intuition.

As a friend put it to me recently, people come to Bristol to be who they want to be (and, we wryly acknowledged, because it does have exceptional vibes).

I think there’s something so lovely about that. After all, we don’t just find home in a place—we find it in ourselves.

Who do you want to be?

As I caveated at the beginning of this post, “home” looks different to everyone.

Maybe you grew up in London, and you’re fiercely proud and protective of your city (and would love it if people like me fucked off).

But when so many of us feel displaced—whether physically far from our ancestral homes, or emotionally out of sorts—I think it’s something worth examining. Why do things feel a bit off? Why don’t you feel quite like you?

So here are some questions that helped me work out where “home” was, in case they help you too:

What are my values?

What principles or foundations do you want to build your life on? Community? Nature? Balance? How does where you live align with these values?

What is my temperament?

Do you need plenty of space and quiet to think? Or do you thrive in the hustle and bustle? Do you easily absorb other people’s moods and energy? Or do you feed off them? How does where you live complement your temperament?

How do I feel in my body?

Where do you notice yourself tensing or clenching? Where do you find release? How is your home supporting your body—your sleep, your breath, your posture, your lifestyle?

Where do I feel most alive?

Think of all the places you’ve been. Where lights you up? Where do you feel most yourself?

Or…do you still have some exploring to do?

What do you think?

What resonates—and what doesn’t? I’m really curious to hear from others who have chosen to leave London, as well as those who have chosen to stay. Do you think that the city has changed? Or, a bit like a relationship that goes stale, did London and I simply outgrow each other? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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About me + Messy Work

If you’re new here, I’m Lucia—a coach and writer who thinks there’s more to life. That when we’re feeling stuck, stagnant or a little bit lost, it’s worth peeling back the layers to see what’s really going on. Because there’s always more to learn, more to love, more to let go of. And yes, it can be messy work. But that’s part of the fun 😉