I cannot believe it’s been almost 4 months since my last post! How time flew! It is precisely that realisation that brings me here this evening.
This evening I had a good conversation over japanese food with a new friend. ”My visa expires in August”, I muttered out, and as soon as I said it, I felt nervousness. I felt like, despite everything I’ve done, I’ve wasted the past 16 months dwelling on things. I spent a lot of time dwelling about my family and friends not being here, then I dwelled on the fact that I didn’t have as much money as I wish I did, about failed non-relationships, about still being as confused as ever about what I want out of this life, but mostly, I’d dwell on the fact that I’m dwelling. Counterproductive ”innit’‘!
Yet time doesn’t give a flying fuck, and it doesn’t await for you to be done dealing with things in your head. I guess it’s part of the human experience, to bathe in primitive feelings, and to aspire to have it all figured out…but to never ever figure much out. Still, there comes a time when you have to consciously train your brain to simply call it quits. I suppose having limited time inspires you the impermanence of everything. It makes you view things in awe and focus on nowness. And I guess, that is what I intend to do with the remaining time I have left, focus on now.
I felt like I got to London just the other day. In a way, I feel like the same person, and also like a completely different person. In a way, I feel both, more and less brave about the future.
Somedays, I want to go back home and hug my family and friends, take a long walk in the Maisonneuve park with my mom and dad and tell them how these past years have shaped me, sit in a cosy coffee shop with my sister while watching snow fall and listen to her stories about her patients, but I know that distance makes the heart grow fonder. Days like today, I want to stay here, and explore every inch of my new east London neighbourhood, buy flowers from the Columbia market every Sunday for the years I have left to live, listen to all the different accents, drink coffee from all the random coffee shops, continue meeting incredible characters, keep on going to pubs more days a week than I should, continue living in a city where age and social expectations are barely existent…But there is only so much red wine that my liver can handle, before it puts me into perspective: Whether this should last or not, this is now, so live it as such, live it as fully as your entire core permits.
Those twenty-somethings 