After finishing college I couldn’t stay in the countryside any longer. I was living in a county full of people whose idea of culture is drinking cider and comparing tractors. I needed out.
At the time London seemed like the center of the world. Every time I had taken a day trip there I felt a buzz of excitement riding on actual buses with two floors, instead of the coaches we referred to as buses in Somerset. I would stand on the left side of the escalators (the biggest pet-peeve of any Londoner) and gawk at the advertisements for plays and events going on around London before arriving at the underground, which at the time seemed like more of an experience than an actual means of transport.
The move to London meant freedom from the boredom of the countryside as a teenager. Freedom to do what I wanted and be what I wanted.
The move was initially a huge shock to my system and people from countries I’d never heard of speaking languages I didn’t know existed suddenly surrounded me. I felt like I had been living in a bubble my entire life and somebody had just let me out. I began to absorb the concept of the world in all its entirety by watching and listening to the diverse masses of London talk and pray and dance and sing and live. I watched life unfold in all its different ways and felt myself grow.
There are so many different sorts of people in London who are there for so many different reasons. So many potential friends and lovers and enemies. I savored the vast anonymousness of it and at the same time I basked in the knowledge London offered me the potential to become anything and everything I dreamed of.
Whatever mood I was in London responded; exhibitions, parties, parks, museums. A lot of it was free. A lot of it was incredibly overpriced. I felt strength from the knowledge and experience I was gaining simply by being in a place. There’s so much to discover by just wandering and taking buses to the edge of the city and back again. Always new sights and experiences and people to meet.
Although now I have chosen to move onto different places, London started a fire in me that is still burning alight now. I spent three years there witnessing my ambitions and dreams grow and London hardening me to the ways of the world. By the end of my time there I had grown into a sort of dependency that was difficult to let go of, and although I’m longer in London, London is still a part of me.
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