Calderdale. Situated in the heart of West Yorkshire with picturesque rolling hills and laced with striking former textile mills, it’s a characterful town with a population to match.
I spent the entirety of my adolescence and early adulthood calling Halifax in Calderdale my “home”. My family and core friendship group still live there and I consider it to be one of the most visually beautiful places I know. But despite the scenic landscapes and historic Victorian architecture, growing up in the area, I felt othered. There were very few queer people around that I could relate to, and definitely no older LGBTQIA+ individuals that I could use as a blueprint for living a fulfilling life in the area. At that time, there were no local safe spaces, no queer youth clubs, and Grindr (which was still relatively new at the time) was filled with blank profiles and dead end conversations. It’s a familiar story that I hear from so many queer people who grew up in towns or villages across the North of England during the noughties and 2010s – and this is without even mentioning the instances of homophobia that feel so prevalent in rural areas but often go unreported and are so easily accepted as the “norm”.
With that, it’s no surprise that so much of queer culture comes to life in cities. Many of us seek out the nearest cosmopolis, craving some sense of community that is more easily attainable in concrete jungles like London, Manchester and Birmingham. We happily shed our rural roots to start new lives in places where we feel seen, whether that be through nightlife, art spaces or the simple fact that there are just more queer people – safety in numbers, so to speak.
Dreams of moving to London had manifested in my mind before I’d even hit puberty. So much of that idea was rooted in escapism – I had this sense that by “fleeing” to the capital, I’d leave behind the sense of isolation and otherness that had clung to me for as long as I could remember. The notion of leaving almost became a coping mechanism; “I’ll soon be old enough to leave and everything will be fine.” This negative association with Halifax has meant that, despite it being over a decade since I left, I still feel conflicted about the area. In my head, it’s still exactly the same as it was in the early 2000s, frozen in time and left behind while the rest of the world moved on.
On paper, Calderdale has progressed massively in show, and even launched its own Pride celebrations which are attended by hundreds of LGBTQIA+ individuals and allies from the area. But while I can see from the safety of my detached London life that it’s getting easier to be queer and happy in Halifax, I can’t seem to let go of the past.
