Carrie (a close friend from high school) came to visit me this week. We hadn’t seen each other in ages and it could have been completely awkward, but it wasn’t. It was easy. It was like we hadn’t skipped a beat, as if our 12th grade English class had wrapped up weeks ago instead of years. We just slid right back into a sense of… familiarity, of acceptance. It was good to catch up. It was good to see that although we’ve both changed, both ‘grown up’ a bit, we still fundamentally know one another in all the ways that matter.
Which was damned fortunate, actually, because it turned out to be a fairly intense visit: we both took turns falling victim to this monster flu that’s going around here (and possibly the entirety of western europe, since Carrie was already ill when she flew in from Berlin). So the majority of our time was split between running around buying throat lozenges for each other and lying in bed producing phlegm while watching marathon sessions of Project Runway. You know. Good clean fun.
We only really left the apartment once: a mutual friend of ours (who is now in a ludicrously successful band) happened to be playing a show in London, so we went to see it, and him. (Josh Hartnett was there. And let me just say, that man has great skin. I mean, really amazing.)
He was nice and friendly and normal, our now-rockstar friend, especially considering the fact that he and I, at least, really only grazed past each other in high school. A friendly graze, but a graze nonetheless — we weren’t super close. Anyway, he was lovely, and after the show I got to see the inside of a real live dressing room inhabited by real live musicians. Within thirty seconds, I began to very quietly freak out. There was just too much legitimate indie cool in the air. Everyone I met was perfectly, disinterestedly pleasant, but legitimate cool never fails to kick my already hyperactive neuroses into overdrive. All the weird, gross things about myself that I usually manage to find funny somehow lose that edge of humor and become, simply, weird and kinda gross. (Which, in turn, makes my inner monologue all the more ironically, uncomfortably cringe-worthy, a la The Office. Which makes me do extra weird, gross things, like giggle for no outwardly visible reason. Out loud.)
I found myself desperately trying to act natural in a room full of people who… I don’t know. Who had created this remarkable music. Whose album I own. Whose show had sold out in minutes. And all I could think was: “What am I doing here?”
So I did the only thing I could do. I politely said goodbye and ran away.
Luckily, Carrie, my original friend, the one who was visiting me, the one I went to the concert with and abandoned when I ran away, was a really good sport about it. The whole experience forced me to admit to myself how limited my comfort zone actually is. Apparently, I just have a much easier time interacting with weird, I-sit-at-home-alone-and-obsessively-look-things-up-on-wikipedia ‘creative types’ than cool, I-get-up-on-stage-and-make-audiences-physically-swoon-in-the-face-of-my-undeniable-talent ‘creative types.’ Lesson learned.
I’ve spent several days now huddled in bed, hacking up grossness, groaning a lot and feeling sorry for myself, calling people up to demand sympathy and letting the flu take its course. (I never used to get sick this often before I moved to this goddamn country. I blame you, England. You and your imperialist germs.)
I’m finally beginning to feel better. My esophagus no longer feels like an excitable porcupine wandered through it. I also feel kind of drained. I don’t quite know how to explain it, but it’s a good kind of emptiness; things feel simpler. Somewhere along the line, between reminiscing about high school and coughing incessantly and sexing up Josh Hartnett (oh, if only), something in my head seems to have clicked into place.
I really am leaving London soon. I’m happy about it, but also deeply, truly sad. And this moment, this one right now, typing this — this is my life. I need to start living it.
…
*ADDENDUM: I have this really uneasy feeling that the “this moment is your life” thing might be a quote I internalized after seeing it used to great effect in 2002’s Unfaithful. It was the scene where Kylie Minogue’s real life eurotrash (ex?)boyfriend first seduces Diane Lane into having crazy monkey sex with him even though she’s married to Richard Gere.
So, yes. It seems nothing is sacred. Not even my personal epiphanies.
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