Love thy neighbour

I’ve always loved this beautiful plant that grows over our wall. When we first moved in, our neighbour asked us if we wanted him to cut it back. “Absolutely not!” we said, “We love it!”. And for the last eight years it’s been growing beautifully through the background of our shrubs, covering an otherwise boring brick wall.

When we first moved into our estate, it all felt a bit like that movie, Pleasantville. It’s a beautiful area, with well kept grounds and walks all around. Very family oriented, very safe and very conservative. We’d just moved from a house we loved in an area we didn’t, to an area we loved in a house we didn’t. It was all a bit of a panic purchase. We were actually due to buy a different house on the estate, but it all fell through. And this house was the next one available. We were hosting our wedding in the garden within a matter of weeks, so we offered with blind faith and optimism. We needed a wedding venue! It was definitely a ‘fixer-upper’, but little did we know how much needed fixing up…

When we first moved in (a week before our wedding!), we immediately started renovation work downstairs. Our amazing neighbour pulled out all the stops to replace our living room ceiling that was caving in, and plaster all around in time for the wedding. I wasn’t having shitty 70s artex in my wedding photos!!! Other neighbours welcomed us and congratulated us on our wedding, some even sent cards. It was all very lovely. We really felt the community spirit. It helped us feel like we’d made the right decision, despite the house being a wreck.

Sadly, over time, we started to feel less and less welcomed within the neighbourhood. As people got to know us, and our intentions to start a family and a yoga business, the friendliness from some neighbours started to sour. Not everyone, of course. The younger families were still wonderful, including our plasterer! But some of the other, more established folk in the neighbourhood started to cause a stir. We’d heard gossip about us, we’d been called names on social media, and even been threatened. We started to feel like we couldn’t trust people around us, and that maybe it wasn’t a safe place to raise our kids. For years we kept toying with the idea of selling up and moving on. We made several close attempts but things always fell through.

I think when you’re gay, foreign, ‘woo-woo’ and bring kids into the equation, it can sometimes blow peoples minds a little. Especially in a close-nit, conservative community. It also doesn’t help that I can be quite outspoken, and when I preach my good intentions, they often get met with heavy criticism. So I probably didn’t help the situation 🫣

Needless to say, it’s been a turbulent eight years. And for a big chunk of that, we’ve felt somewhat imprisoned by our experiences and perceptions of what our neighbours might be thinking or saying about us.

I know, I know! What others think of me is none of my business. But let’s be real…nobody wants to live somewhere where they’re the neighbourhood gossip!

Today, the neighbour with the aforementioned plant spoke to me, for possibly the first time in six or seven years. I think we were both nervous about the conversation, if I’m honest. But it turned out he wanted to offer us a kind gesture. It really took me by surprise. A kind sincerity from someone that I assumed hated me for the last seven years.

And it got me thinking…there’s so much hate happening in the world right now. But where does it come from? And there are a thousand answers to that question. But maybe one factor could be that we’re all perceiving things on a basis of assumption, and not fact. We’re not actually communicating with one another to understand. We seem to be living in a world of judgement and defensiveness. And for all the times I bang on to the homophobes about ‘Love thy neighbour’, and here I’ve been, literally not loving my neighbour. All based on my own perception of how he might feel about me.

That’s my revelation for today. Maybe people aren’t all arseholes after all!