Hello from the grave, my darlings.
I am only writing as a prompt. I feel as though I need to prompt myself back into the world of the living as I’ve been so creatively dead for quite some time. My birthday is coming up. The end of the semester is coming up. My life in London is coming to a close before it even began. I feel choked, anemic and wheezy almost - and still? I feel so very very alive.
January came and went in a flurry of snow and accidents, but it wound its way around my neck like a multicolored scarf. I arrived in London with very heavy bags and a very broad smile, much like everyone else - not disillusioned, but excited. I roomed with a girl who made my life hell because London is like Chicago.
(- Like Chicago in the sense of its surviving history over wars and empires so cut-throat that they’d eat their own kind if it meant world domination, sure. It’s exactly like Chicago.)
I met people who have changed my life completely (oh, those tragic infomercials.) Not only completely, but have expanded my knowledge and perhaps even my palette. These, are who I will miss. These are who I will write short stories about, with bylines only they’d recognize. Those people are who I dedicate this small section of my life to. The laughter, the anger, the tears, the breakdowns, the secrets, the love, the life - oh the life of these people. If you knew, if only you knew these people the way that I know them; profiles, small life snippets, but confirmation of a small world after all.
I am going to be sad to leave a place that I can honestly call home. Europe, has always and will always be my home. Not that arrogant land to the West, not that arrogant soil that I trod on daily. Instead I think my home is somewhere more free-spirited. I make one guarantee and one guarantee only - I will return, I will study, and I will live here. When I was twelve I stomped my foot and pouted out the words that got me here in the first place. Now, nearly twenty-one, I am slightly less dramatic about my guarantee.
Oh London, what have you done? What have you done to the sane, simple girl from the golden fields of the Midwest? Why, shined off the tarnish is all.
I am constantly torn between staying in this place and returning home. Home, in the sense of the word will be exile for me. All the laughter and places I’ve seen will be lost on the young faces of those who are nearest to me. I say young, because I’ve magically transformed into the crotchety old hag that everyone knew I would be. Experience is what turns faces ashy - that pale gray of knowledge that only suits some so well. I won’t cover anything up with the pretense of youth. I’m ready to accept that I am a bit obscure.
I fell in love here. In love with life, with culture, with people, with things. I was enamored with a man who barely knew my name and every accidental idiocy that could’ve possibly happened, happened in front of him. I wrote him down in my book, twisted his fragmental images and pressed him between pages of a fictionalized reality - honest, but still just slightly skewed. I will miss the idea of him, if not the actual person, who in the end showed me a mirror image of myself. I learn, I am taught.
I have this pang of guilt for writing too soon. I feel as though there is something monumentous awaiting at the end of this page, but all I see the is blinking cursor. I keep telling myself that I will write more, I will document my life better, but in the end - I leave my memory to snapshot everything and instead save my words for those small moments when I can breathe life onto the page. I have withered creatively and flourished in every other aspect, and I think that it is time to do something that I can be proud of, not satisfied with, just proud of.
I want to move you.
January came and went in a flurry of snow and accidents, but it wound its way around my neck like a multicolored scarf. I arrived in London with very heavy bags and a very broad smile, much like everyone else - not disillusioned, but excited. I roomed with a girl who made my life hell because London is like Chicago.
(- Like Chicago in the sense of its surviving history over wars and empires so cut-throat that they’d eat their own kind if it meant world domination, sure. It’s exactly like Chicago.)
I met people who have changed my life completely (oh, those tragic infomercials.) Not only completely, but have expanded my knowledge and perhaps even my palette. These, are who I will miss. These are who I will write short stories about, with bylines only they’d recognize. Those people are who I dedicate this small section of my life to. The laughter, the anger, the tears, the breakdowns, the secrets, the love, the life - oh the life of these people. If you knew, if only you knew these people the way that I know them; profiles, small life snippets, but confirmation of a small world after all.
I am going to be sad to leave a place that I can honestly call home. Europe, has always and will always be my home. Not that arrogant land to the West, not that arrogant soil that I trod on daily. Instead I think my home is somewhere more free-spirited. I make one guarantee and one guarantee only - I will return, I will study, and I will live here. When I was twelve I stomped my foot and pouted out the words that got me here in the first place. Now, nearly twenty-one, I am slightly less dramatic about my guarantee.
Oh London, what have you done? What have you done to the sane, simple girl from the golden fields of the Midwest? Why, shined off the tarnish is all.
I am constantly torn between staying in this place and returning home. Home, in the sense of the word will be exile for me. All the laughter and places I’ve seen will be lost on the young faces of those who are nearest to me. I say young, because I’ve magically transformed into the crotchety old hag that everyone knew I would be. Experience is what turns faces ashy - that pale gray of knowledge that only suits some so well. I won’t cover anything up with the pretense of youth. I’m ready to accept that I am a bit obscure.
I fell in love here. In love with life, with culture, with people, with things. I was enamored with a man who barely knew my name and every accidental idiocy that could’ve possibly happened, happened in front of him. I wrote him down in my book, twisted his fragmental images and pressed him between pages of a fictionalized reality - honest, but still just slightly skewed. I will miss the idea of him, if not the actual person, who in the end showed me a mirror image of myself. I learn, I am taught.
I have this pang of guilt for writing too soon. I feel as though there is something monumentous awaiting at the end of this page, but all I see the is blinking cursor. I keep telling myself that I will write more, I will document my life better, but in the end - I leave my memory to snapshot everything and instead save my words for those small moments when I can breathe life onto the page. I have withered creatively and flourished in every other aspect, and I think that it is time to do something that I can be proud of, not satisfied with, just proud of.
I want to move you.