There you go

When you give up everything and start to follow a dream, for long moments you feel very brave and strong. You turn into an adventurer. Nothing compares to this feeling, but it’s not constant. It gets to you alternately with fear, emptiness and sadness. 

The last days went by sitting on an emotional roller coaster. My farewell party was pleasant, my last day with the family a bit stressful… The moment when I left my dog squeezed my heart out, though I didn’t think I will miss her this much, maybe the most… My last evening at home, when I was supposed to run around the flat over-excited and pack the pieces of my life in and out of my two yawning suitcases – well, my last evening was the deepest phlegm. I was watching an air crash movie sitting on the floor, and I felt very-very lonely. I was not afraid. And I didn’t hope. Somehow the whole thing just didn’t interest me at all, it was kind of a pre-death experience, not that I know how that is. I was a bit nervous and eccentric at the airport, but at last I started to feel the adrenaline. And then I came loose. And I departed. And I arrived.

There was nothing felicific in it, but I guess I’ve never been this much self-assured before. Not that I did too many things all alone before. And now I came here, to London, to live here. I arrived to the Nothing, as a new-age errant, with two suitcases and some hope.

Believe me, there’s nothing romantic or heroic in it. You are small and invisible, and you have to stand on your own two feet. There’s no mommy and no siblings and no friends. It’s just you and the city. There was “helyijáratos buszjegy”, “feltöltőkártya”, “vigyázz lépcső”, “hatos busz”, “igen kérem”, “nem köszönöm”, “jónapot” and “viszlát”. And now there is Oyster Card, top up voucher, mind the gap, Victoria line service, yes please, no thanks, hello and bye. After two days, it’s not even strange anymore. Not the red bus coming from a different direction on the “wrong” side of the road, nor that there is no two people of the same nation on an ordinary 73, nor that you are not allowed to smoke anywhere. You start to know the change as well. You get your National Insurance Number Card and UK bank account. You try your best to get a job: London’s not as it was 5 years ago, but it’s not hopeless.

The weather is predictible: on even days it’s warm and wet, on odd days it’s sunny and cold. Good coffee is as rare as the white crow, but you can get good chinese food.

You are here. This is what you exist in. Here you wake, here you walk, here you lay your head. An unknown acquaintance, sometimes friendly, sometimes shameless, sometimes rude. A big and stirring city with an incomparable spirit. Impossible not to love, but it never takes you in fully.

It’s not Home as yet, oh no. But someday it could be. So I’ll stay and give it a try. Maybe it’s not a big adventure, but it’s my adventure after all.

~ by ronika on February 2, 2009.