Gosia Nowicka
Sat in the attic room watching the first named storm of the year batter the cedar tree outside of the window. The tree is taller than my house and I hope someone will put Christmas lights on it when the time comes. The rain distorts the view of the houses in front of me, seven rows blending into three. Below me, my children’s bedrooms, my son’s with the ceiling that leaks in three separate places, roofers unable to come out until Austen, and then Boelo, pass.
When I first moved in here I thought I’d work above them as they sleep. But they barely go to bed early enough for me to do that, and now my son is in his makeshift bedroom in the living room anyway. Half of the time my children aren’t here. And I haven’t written a lot lately.
I work today at the desk that was a gift from my partner, the most perfect gift for any writer. I built it up over two nights in August, in the days when the heat was making my sweat smell like croissants. With every screw going in I felt the gratitude wash over me like hot chocolate, like immersing myself in the warm sea. The heat of that summer was just a given. Sure, we complained. Sure, we exhausted ourselves painting the walls into the night. But it was the best summer of my life so far.
At the beginning of this year I came out of the closet. The closet that with every passing week seemed to be built more of glass than wood. It was the hardest thing to do and say out loud, to watch the initial shards scatter around the life I’ve built and for a long time believed I would keep. Turns out the hardest thing was already done during that time. Once the words left my mouth they felt so natural, so right, so free.
All I needed was to give myself more grace and time.
In March I made my biggest dream come true and went to New York for a few days. I didn’t tell many people, even my mother will find out about this trip from this article – sorry mum. My plans were grand, I hoped for a few nights out in the West Village, to visit all the museums I wanted, maybe a Broadway show. I was skint though, so I did what is my favourite thing to do in new places – I walked.
Each morning of the trip I would wake early in my tiny cubicle in the hostel, shower, get dressed and leave. These were my favourite hours of New York. Very often I was the only person out, which seems impossible, I know, but I must have hit the sweet time between people returning home from parties and people leaving for work. The coffee from bodega was cheap and strong, my trainers were comfortable, it was dark until it wasn’t.
And with each morning my hips would hurt more from all that walking, and I felt more and more comfortable with who I always was. I wasn’t looking for answers anymore. The ache in my body, the freedom in my chest, the eyes wide open at the beauty of my dream city was all I needed then.
In May, I found love. A patient, kind, passionate, deep, true, sweet, clear, silly, hottest love. Friends tell me I’m glowing, others have never seen me this happy. It’s the most natural thing to glow when you get to love someone like this, when you get all the love you have ever wanted but didn’t dare to dream about receiving, pouring back at you. I will write about her forever.
A year ago today my first book, a memoir called There She Goes, My Beautiful World was published. Last week it came out in paperback. In July it won the Nation Cymru People’s Choice Award at Wales Book of the Year. Writing and publishing books was obviously my lifelong dream, and it was a joy to see readers’ reaction to my debut, yet the entire time I couldn’t shift the sense that something about it wasn’t right. In some parts I was honest to the point of vulnerability, in others I wrote the version of my life I thought was expected of me. This is the trouble with memoirs, I suppose. This is the trouble of writing from within the hiding place.
I’m still proud of it, of course. It’s my life, my choices, my hard work. A part of my story. But something happened to me when I found love that could explain the feeling of misalignment I had about the book, but also about practically everything else in my past: I no longer wait for the better version of things, events, situations to happen. Everything feels perfectly right just the way it is.
A magpie struggles to fly in the wind. Candles are burning on top of my desk. Photographs of me with my favourite, mostly Scottish, all queer – writers are on the left side of the window. To the right – a mixture of photographs of my lover, me, a deer in the woods in Poland I saw and thought was a sign just before my love arrived. Stones, shells, pencils, books. Younger versions of me – the ones I feel complete empathy for already and the ones I only now am starting to.
I’m also returning to my birth name, to let the girl I always was live fully the way she was always meant to. To honour her story and her story only. When I first started publishing my writing it was the only name I had, so it feels like a full circle. It was too complicated to change the name on the cover of my book, but from now on I will only publish under it.
My name is Gosia Nowicka, I was born in Poland and for the last sixteen years I’ve made my home in Wales. The world is full of unspeakable, dreadful things, but also full of beauty. I no longer have to romanticise any of it. I can just continue living, change the buckets under the leaky ceiling, pick up kids from school and carve some pumpkins with them and my girlfriend tomorrow.
There She Goes, My Beautiful World: A Memoir is now available in paperback from all good bookshops including University of Wales Press and Waterstones.
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