ch-ch-ch-chaanges
I arrived in London last September. I have never, to my knowledge, been more bright-eyed or bushy-tailed. Not when I was seventeen and transferring to my dream high school, not when I first went to college, not even when I boarded planes to exotic places like Egypt or Reno, Nevada.
London was my fresh start, my second chance to do this whole university thing right, to stay on track, to go the full mile, the whole shebang, etc. etc. I’d lost weight, I was feeling good, I was “ready” to really study, and my best friend just happened to be with me, getting her graduate degree: the stage was set for my long overdue metamorphosis into SuperMaya, the Platonic Ideal of Me that has lived in my head since before I hit puberty. It was LONDON, for fuck’s sake. How could it NOT be perfect?
Nothing — and I really mean NOTHING — went the way I planned. I dropped out of my course in the first semester, disappointed in the lectures, the people, the professors, and myself for not being willing to stick it all out regardless. I made some friends and moved to Camden. I decided Art School was the answer. Four months later, I accepted that it wasn’t. Since then, I have done nothing but cultivate my prodigious talent at doing very, VERY little, other than make time go by and speedily gain back the weight I worked so hard to lose.
Still, a year and a half later, I think I can say that I don’t regret coming here. Like the countless multitudes before me, I’ve fallen in love with this city. London truly is remarkable. I’ve met some great people and I’ve come to really care about them. We have dinner parties and spend whole nights just talking. Life is good here. A part of me, the part that inexplicably thinks it has millions in the bank, wants to live here forever and just figure my shit out as I go along.
Unfortunately, the rest of me very pointedly does not have millions in the bank. It barely has hundreds. This part needs to move on, to relocate someplace where a pack of cigarettes doesn’t cost ten dollars. (Oh yes. You heard me. TEN.) Someplace where I can continue on with this insufferably tedious journey of ‘self-discovery’ without squandering my (and my mother’s) life savings. A magical land where drunkenly logging into eBay at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday morning and placing outrageously high bids on every Bruce Lee movie ever made (“For SHAME! I can’t BELIEVE I’ve never seen Enter the Dragon. How can I even LOOK myself in the EYE!?”) won’t necessarily put me in the poorhouse. A place otherwise known as America.
After six years of doing everything in my power to not return to the States, next spring/summer I will be doing exactly that.
For as long as I can remember now, my first instinct has been to take refuge in the role of the jaded, disillusioned, pseudo-intellectual alterna-American, the one who makes cracks about what “Americans” are like, so crass, so uptight, so conservative and backwards. Always the fat girl who casually brings up her weight so everyone can feel comfortable, I’ve also become the American who mentions Bush so everyone knows I’m on the right page, that I’m not really that American. (Not my finest hour, perhaps, but true nonetheless.)
Despite all this — and believe me, no one is more surprised than I am — I’m actually really excited about moving back. I guess I never really bought into my own bullshit, not fundamentally. I’m looking forward to big open spaces, to long stretches of empty highway, to must-see programming, to old friends, to new people who prove that being American doesn’t necessarily mean fulfilling a stereotype, to seeing my grandma, to maybe getting a dog, to putting down some real roots for the first time since October 1998, to getting a part time job without needing a visa, to really giving a go at writing. Hell, I’m even looking forward to overly friendly American cashiers.
I could go on to detail where, exactly, in America I will most likely end up, but I’ve been rambling for a while now and it is somehow 7 in the morning already. I feel the need to watch an episode of Arrested Development (I’ve already seen every one at least fifteen times, but the urge never goes away) and then possibly get some sleep. I apologize for the abruptness of this closing. Part II of ch-ch-ch-chaaaaanges will be posted tomorrow. Or the next day.
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