The tiredness and confused thoughts in my head do not seem to have abated much. I apologise that I didn't succeed in harnessing them better, and untangling them enough to make my last post comprehensible, but it was a case of having a 'jumbled-up haze' post or none at all. Maybe none at all would have been better, I honestly don't know.
As it is, things here so far have been a sad reminder of how I no longer belong here and perhaps, how I never did. I have been confronted with all the mistakes I made and all of the consequences of not having found confidence in what I was doing soon enough to make use of it and it's been painful to look at. As I waited last night for a bus to take me back to my lodgings from Victoria, I felt like a scorned visitor, who has no real place here anymore. As though unless I have some important, well-paid work to do here, I have no right to consider myself a Londoner. How long do you have to live in London before you can call yourself a Londoner? And does that get revoked if you have to leave in the end, no matter how long you were there in the first place?
In New York, there was a phrase going round that 'for up to 8 years in NYC, you're merely a 'zoo-yorker', just one of the millions who try and nestle in to a choice spot, but have to face the horrors of housing competition among the huge numbers of people who require it. During those years, you have to put up with some barely habitable places before you finally find somewhere (if you're lucky) viable to live in. Some never make it to the finding somewhere habitable stage. Maybe that's my experience with London really, although I lived here earlier on, years back, when it was still vaguely possible to afford to live on my own, albeit in a gloomy basement flat with no washing machine.
I had enough hope left back then, that made living somewhere dingy more bearable. Plus it was really very central, which is something I loved about it. The rent was quite high, but nothing like today's standards, and I was still prepared to spend a greater percentage of my income on rent than most people, even if it meant I never had enough savings to buy clothes anywhere other than in charity shops (a state which, sadly, has not changed in over ten years) and no money to go out for meals. I suppose that was my downfall and still is, but living alone means that much to me, that I continue to sacrifice all else, because it really does make such a big difference.
After a day full of crying (embarrassingly frequently) and feeling bleak about everything yesterday, I suppose I need to make an extra effort today to do fun and frivolous things. A silly film is lined up for viewing tonight and I think some chocolate ice-cream is in order at some point today. Other than that, perhaps I can say a fond 'hello again' to my old haunts , especially Kensington Gardens, and see if I can stop worrying about the future and how much I've screwed it up, for just a few hours at least. Funnily enough, the wise Swedish Faerie Godmother told me yesterday, "it's strange but sometimes when you think you've screwed life up completely, you find there are second chances." I hope she's right. She usually is, in fact. Being that she is both wise and utterly nutty, two qualities I very much aspire to having myself, she's always got a good point.
