SELF REALISATION POST
I have never truly been in love until now. At least, I doubt that has ever been the case.
When you’re in love, I assume you’ve got to be in it. As if it is an existence that quietly surrounds you, wholly and completely. And as much as it invests into you, you must also invest into it. And when your heart is not in it totally due to your hear being invested into something else, it is like trying to assemble a puzzle made from different sets. The end product, if any, will be unpleasant or mismatched or nonsensical. And in the end you’re met with the left over pieces of each aspect of your life which prohibit those already messily assembled from individually flowering into their proper being.
I have been torn for a while with what I guess can only be now known as homesickness - the vast, intense love I have for my home: my friends, family, potential and fizzling love interests, life opportunities which, were it not for my passion for exploration and willingness to accept that life can and bloody well should change, and that general feeling of “I could be really establishing myself back home right now”. I guess it is because I left a lot behind.
And maybe by now I would have found this “love” to ground myself in. Maybe by now my existence would have been complimented by the existence of another, like I have seen happen to all my friends back home. But, would I not be now sitting here in Hampstead Heath, North London, in the gorgeous afternoon sun with a new book and the promise of my new “settled” life in Paris only 4 days away? The fuck I would be!
The last few months I have seen, experienced, embraced, eaten and explored so much that I cannot help but be totally in love. In love with the new life I have made for myself. I think now that I can truly say I gave up nothing. Life back home is merely on hold. Whilst not a series of Friends, in the same way my life is able to be paused whenever I wish in order to go grab another scoop of icecream from the freezer.
I have danced in street festivals with people of all races, colours, nationalities; I have gotten caught in rain storms in italian cities and I have kissed boys and thrown caution and coloured chalk at holi to the wind. I have eaten my fair share of carbs and scaled hillsides drunken in order to get home. I have twerked. I have laughed. I have seen celebrities, licked the crap out of far too many gelati cones and barely gotten any sleep. And now, now I am here at this point where if it weren’t concrete before, it is now. My own apartment in Montmartre in only 4 days. I’m sorry, but this ain’t Newy’s Hunter Street Mall. This is something way bigger.
Sure I have been sometimes very lonely. Normally I revel in alone time. But when you’ve traversed the European continent for the past 6 months and haven’t been “settled” in over 9, there is a sense of lonely confusion and almost a desperation to have any sort of familiar company. So: to my friends who I have travelled or caught up with - even the simple moments of a rushed coffee date on your way to work - you will never really realise how much that has given me. To those home with an investment in my wellbeing whilst over here - those that sent me ghastly snapchats in the middle of the night, for example mum’s need to send photos of her feet whilst she’s in the bath - knowing you are thinking of me though I am no longer in your immediate life is so welcomed. And those who remain quiet but pray or wish for my happiness and sense of fulfillment - that silent reassurance is what keeps me going.
I guess now I can finally say I am in love. In love with this amazing, horizon-broadening killer of a life I have made for myself. And if “love” in the way hollywood knows it breaks through the ectoplasm of my consuming bubble of life love then so be it. In fact, that works for me. Until that, this little amoeba is gonna keep on keeping on and enjoy what it throws at her.
