confusion

While I was in London I wrote a long journal entry about all the feelings associated with being back in London, but I never got around to posting it. So here’s the short version: I miss London. I hated it when I first showed up in London in 2001—my relationship was on the rocks and I was alone. I don’t make friends easily and for the first few months I kept totally to myself. I found every reason I could to hate London; the people were rude, the streets dirty, the weather bad. I walked around quite a bit but never saw the beauty of the city because of my emotions.

All that changed over time and by the time I left London I had made it my home. I didn’t want to leave, I tried everything I could to find a way to stay but I could not find a job and had no money to stay in school. I met a lot of people in London and made some good friends and it was painful to leave. It did not feel like coming home when I came back to America. It felt like leaving home.

Last week when I stepped off the plane at Heathrow it felt like coming home. The accent of the announcer, the gray sky and rain, the smell of the tube, even “mind the gap” made it feel like home.

Seeing C███████ again was great. Seeing Liana was a blast, even getting pissed with the guys from the office was great. I spent £10 to take a cab from my hotel up to Islington to get food from the Barbican Kabob Center just like when I lived in London. It was totally worth it.

I still think that of all the places I have been London is the living city I would most like to in right now. Singapore is nice but I don’t think I could live there for a long time. I would like to live in Paris or in Tuscany one day but now, while I am still young and working London is the place I want to be.

Last Saturday there was a kiss. It was brought on by someone being very intoxicated and someone else egging them on with a dare. I told him to fuck off when he dared her to do it. He laughed at me. He knows that I like her so I don’t quite understand why he would do it. He should be encouraging me to look elsewhere, especially as he works for the same company, not making it harder to ignore my attraction to her.

When she climbed into my lap I should have pushed her away, but I didn’t. When she started to kiss me I should have turned away, but I didn’t. No, I enjoyed the kiss. It lasted over a minute and was not just a kiss but was really a kiss. Her hands in my hair and mine around her waist, her back arched, pushing against me. She kissed my cheek and neck. I should have pushed her away but I kissed her back.

I have not been able to think about much else in my spare moments alone since them. Some of my coworkers have said I should just go after her, others tell me that an office relationship is always a bad idea. I see both sides and it’s all I can think about. But then someone told me she said she enjoyed it that night.

I talked with her today about it. She did not remember the kiss. Too much alcohol I guess. Someone told her. One more reason I should not attach too much meaning to what happened. She told me I should be better off liking the other girl who was with us that night. I told her that logic plays no part in who I like.

I got my mind off of all this a bit by having lunch with C███████ yesterday. But afterwards I was reminded how much I miss her and how much I miss having someone in my life. I think I still have feelings for C███████, most likely because of the way our relationship ended. I just needed to see her and see her as a friend again and not a girlfriend. She is happy, in a relationship with someone for some time now. I wish her the best with him but can’t help but wonder what could have happened.

It’s just more drama in my life. I don’t know what to do. I will have to just play it as it comes. I don’t think anything will come of all this. Eventually the feelings will go away or I will go away. Either way I’ll move on.

It’s been two and a half years. It’s been forever and it was just yesterday. I stood on a street corner this morning just outside a tube station. I stood for an hour. I can’t even describe the feeling except to say; home.

I hated London when I first got here in 2001. Now I miss it more than any other place I have ever been. When I first got here the relationship I was in was on the rocks. I was alone and, to be quite honest, lost. I don’t make friends quickly as I am shy and don’t approach people. In the first three months here I found every reason I could to hate London; the people were rude, the streets dirty, the weather bad. I walked around quite a bit but never saw the beauty of the city because of my emotions.

I guess things started to change around the start of December. I was sitting on a bench in one of the gardens in the Barbican when a guy stopped to ask me for a light. I told him I did not smoke. But he stopped to talk a few minutes because he recognized me; he lived on the same floor as I did in Finsbury Halls. It was through P— that I met most of the people I became friends with in London. I traveled all over London with these people, partied and shopped, studied and talked. I started to be able to appreciate the city. I came to understand what Dr. Johnson meant when he said, “when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”

As I approached the end of my stay in London I spent a lot of time trying to find a way to extend my stay. Being an American it is nearly impossible to find a job here however without a great deal of experience. So all my efforts led to naught and I had to leave. Leaving was painful. By this time my life was in London; my girlfriend, most of my friends and everything I wanted to do was in London. I left quietly, early in the morning. I called a cab, loaded my bags and said goodbye to no one in person. I guess it was selfish but I did not want to deal with leaving. I wanted to just be gone.

Yesterday when I got back I felt the most satisfying sense of peace that I have had since I left. Stepping off the plane and hearing the accents, walking past the HSBC ads in Heathrow, riding the Tube into central London, seeing the black cabs, even the gray sky and misty rain were perfect. I feel at home just standing on the street corner. I want to come back. I have found nothing better in my travels.

Well not quite. But I will be traveling for work:

London: Oct 19th—23ed

Virginia: Oct 23—31st

Paris: Nov 1st—5th

I would like to catch up with people. Alas many people I do not have phone numbers for as I lost my phone a few weeks ago and some of the number were not backed up…

Normally I don’t have dreams I can remember but I had a strange dream on Saturday night (most likely this is somehow related to the level of alcohol in my blood when I passed…went to sleep.) This particular dream I only remember parts and the part I remember best was sitting in my parents back yard and digging in the ground. Why was I digging? I was collecting the buried Star Wars action figures I had left there years before. For some reason there where groups of three or four of these figures scattered around the back yard. I have no idea why I was collecting these long lost childhood toys just that I needed to find them all.

What does the title of this entry have to do with my intoxicated mental musing? On Sunday I called my mother to catch up—trying to get a hold of someone when you have a 12 hours time difference is a real pain and I had not talked to her in a month so I thought I should call her. Anyway, at one point she said ‘Oh, guess what I found while working in the back yard yesterday?’ I had absolutely no idea, I mean it could have been anything right? Wrong; ‘I found a couple of your old Star Wars figures where the old sand box used to be.’

How crazy is that?