Sunday mornings are perfect for coffees sipped over cafe tables whilst gossip is shared, and eggs are pushed about the plate and onto a fork. Walking about my city with absolutely no aim whatsoever, just to wander through the streets browsing at store fronts and listening to my ipod. There's something really different about the way it feels when you spread out in front of a good selection of dvds on your couch on a Sunday that every other day fails to achieve.
I woke up this morning early at 8:09am (to be precise) and I lay in bed for about an hour before getting in the shower and listening to some amazing new music that was sent to me. I stayed in the shower for longer than usual, placing my head up against the wall and letting the water run down my back, I realised in this particular moment that I am not where I particularly want to be in life. Not in a bad way at all - in the grand scheme of things I'm further ahead of my goals then I ever dreamed possible but the past few weeks have been a stop/start chain of events for me and everything has been put on the backburner whilst I've tried to figure out how I feel after coming home and bearing this confusion of feeling as though I'm not in the city I belong in.
Leaving a country that I have become so accustomed to having lived in the one city for 24 years - is petrifying. I couldn't be more scared. The fear itself has made me confuse myself. I've been hiding behind not getting on with life as an excuse not to have to make any real decisions. I've been playing a game with myself where if I don't do much of anything at all, I can't really be forced to make any choices because as long as I'm sitting at home and allowing myself to wallow I don't really have the luxury of choice. But as I stood there in the shower I realised that this is really unlike me. I don't enjoy being unable to have what I want, I like that I've set up my life on my own and up until this moment I've always made sure that it was possible for me to get what I want. I don't mean to sound spoilt - because I'm not, at all. I've worked really fucking hard to get to a point where having whatever I want was possible and I don't want for ridiculous things so I think that in saying I can have whatever I want, it might differ to say if I wanted a yacht and a private island... I don't want for things like that. Not really. I wanted to travel and to live in the city, so I did. I want to go out - I do, I want to buy something - I will, I want to be somewhere - I'll go... But recently I've sat at home wishing and wanting for something that is so damn obtainable to me - and I know this to be true, yet I've made it so that I couldn't have this because of fear that when I get this I might royally fuck it up.
What if when I get to London my life is really different than it is in Melbourne? And not in a good or better sense. What if I can't seem to get what I want over there?. What if I fail miserably when it comes to setting up a new life? Is everything I've worked so hard to set up here then wasted?
For me the exciting and scariest part of it all is that when I get there, I leave here. I know that seems obvious in the literal sense but I mean that I leave here for good as far as anyone is concerned (I have no fears of coming back if I ever need to and I wouldn't say that would count as failing if I chose to come back here) but I leave with the knowledge that 24 years of life has supplied for me, I leave knowing that this is almost like a rebirth. No one knows me or my life or my day to day behavior like people do here. I get to start a fresh with all of what I know in my pocket, and what if I fail - does that mean that my entire life I have failed to be someone that is of any particular importance, interest or intelligence even? What does it say about me if I can't make it?
That scares me to death.
I know that I need to put my head down now and start again and find that drive that makes me so much of the person that I claim to be. I need to get to London and I need to prove to myself that I can make it anywhere I want to be... If I can do this - I think I could do anything.
I just don't understand why my heart aches so much for a city rather than a person like everyone else. I wonder sometimes if I've shut off and become so driven to achieve my own goals and dreams that I forget that sometimes you need to connect with someone? I don't feel lonely ever, in fact when I hear people talking about relationships and the people they like it almost makes me shudder when I think about it. I can't understand why people can't just have friends and then allow lust to be whatever it needs to be for however long it needs to stay without completely taking over their life and how they feel about themselves. I watch my friends self confidence get eaten away by boys that don't call or that do call but at 2am and for reasons that are quite obvious and I wonder why they want to throw themselves under this proverbial truck for something that is never really as good as you'd hoped or make it out to be once it's over. And it's always fucking over. Sooner or later in one way or another. I'm not cynical about it either, trust me - I romanticise life to the fullest, I just think my soul mate is my best friends, my true love is London town and I'll get my kicks from boys with quick wit and sweet faces but I won't promise them the world and I won't ask them for it. I'm sorry I just think that's realism.
I don't think that means that I'm missing out on some great love or that I haven't experienced that proper true love that makes your heart skip beats and what not... I have been in love like that. That scary, lose all control, can't breathe, can't think of a time where I was happier, want to be with this person for the rest of my life kind of love. I've been engaged before and I thought that was forever at one point obviously and I've had serious relationships I believed would also be the 'be all and end all' - I'm 24. I know what love is. I just don't think that it has to be with one person in a monogomous relationship neccesarily. And I don't think love needs to hurt. I think far too many people have made love into some kind of stigma where it's become so much about the Hallmark card meaning and forced that they don't realise the things they truly love unconditionally like their friends or the things that comfort them so much; so they force relationships because everyone is on about this idea of life being incomplete if you are single. I don't think you are automatically lonely just because you are alone in that relationship status sense. I think you can easily be more lonely in a relationship than you can in your own company and if you can't stand yourself, why the fuck should anyone else have to put up with you and how can you expect to be everything to someone else if you can't stand on your own two feet?
I know this entry is a bit all over the place, I'm feeling a bit all over the place lately. I've just been needing to figure it all out and today on my idle Sunday afternoon - I think I've got it sorted. Not all of it, just finally it feels as though I know where I've got to get to and what I've got to do to get there and writing it down and making a promise to myself sets it in stone.
So here it is... My promise: London, unless there are reasons beyond my control I will be there in August. And we'll start from the very beginning. By September I'll be without my soulmate in reach and I don't want to forget how I feel about life now because I'm at a point of perfect clarity from where I sit now and being alone in an unfamiliar city (country, even) can easily deter this. I don't want to run and jump headfirst into some silly relationship to act as some sort of replacement or padding to ease my transition. I'm doing this on my own so that I can look back at it and know that I am the sole reason for my successes and failures; and just hope that there are plenty more of the former.
It doesn't matter what you do, or where you are going; who you've been, or who you want to become, as long as you are what you are because you chose to be that way and you always stayed true to what you believe. As long as you spent your days chasing after moments that take your breath away then you've not wasted this life you were given.
And that's all it's really about right? You can wrap it up however you like but life is simply a story you get to tell and what happens or doesn't happen is all on you. I just know that when I tell my story, because I will - it's going to be epic. Because I want for nothing less than that. London will be my Act 2. Melbourne has been fun but it's given me everything I could want and need and now I need to move on and not become stagnant because I feel like there's no more story left to write here. Not right now anyway.
Plus, I miss the accents. I miss the tube. I miss the old houses and the way that they all looked the same for miles. I miss the red buses. I miss the 'offys'. I miss the Mile end house and the way it always smelt of weed and the boys that lived there. I miss 'scar non'. I miss Camden. I miss the sporadic bursts of sunlight. I miss Brick Lane. I miss East London so much. I miss waking up at 8 and not leaving the house until 2pm when I had already been baked and fully recovered. I miss TopShop and Tescos. I miss walking down in the morning to pick up Diet coke or Ribena Lights and a 99p Cadbury Dairy Milk and the way one of those chocolate bars would be the only thing I'd eat all day because I was too busy to remember to stop. I miss Liverpool station and the Starbucks there that we used to frequent. I miss going out in Soho with a hip flask of Bacardi in my bag for the bus ride, I miss getting lost down the streets of this wonderfully beautiful city without ever actually getting lost at all, I miss the people in London, I miss the way that reality is preferred as opposed to fiction there. I miss the way that whole city felt warm to me even in the coldest of nights, I mostly miss me in London. The way I felt and the person I was becoming. I'm going to get back to that, I've got too.
I have to get to London, I have to be that strong
If I can't get to London, then everything is gone
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