I’m so emotionally numb. I’m so numb. I haven’t felt anything for days. For weeks at this point. Months? I just want to mope. To cry. To feel something.
Today I went on a walk and ended up sitting on a bench at Fair Oaks. I never thought I’d be able to see the city from there. I’m often in such a rush, always with a plan, rarely straying from it these days, and so I don’t slow down enough to notice benches like that one.
But today I noticed it. I sat, and I listened to music and thought. I thought about the times I’ve allowed myself to sit and observe in the past. How some of those moments have been the most peaceful in my life. I miss the UK. Not because it was perfect- far from it - but because I was alone. It’s weirdly empowering to know no one knows where you are. That you could just disappear.
One of my favorite moments, one I had forgotten until this morning, was when I had been walking around London all day. I sat in front of Westminster Abbey. I had my backpack with me, with all my clothes and food for the week. I grabbed out an English muffin, a giant jar of peanut butter, and a banana. I used a plastic knife saved from a Costa cafe trip days before. This moment was quintessentially me, stretching my money to keep living in anonymity.
It was overcast - London after all - and I watched hundreds of people as I sat there, making my makeshift lunch and eating it under a church I had dreamed of visiting for years. I sat there for an hour, arguably the slowest I’ve ever allowed myself to be. I didn’t take a single picture. Didn’t write. I didn’t speak. Just sat and watched.
I had so much time to sit and watch those two months. So much time to wander and think and explore. I could’ve been anywhere. But I was in England, so now I romanticize it in a way that’s a little silly, but understandable.
I didn’t run once while I was in England. I let myself experience everything. I was slow. I walked. I strolled.
It's so silly because England was also a place where I experienced awful, awful moments. We’ll save that for the memoir.
But it was the ability to slow, to calm, to do whatever the fuck I wanted, that saved my life.
It was moments like this one - scrounging together lunch and sitting in front of one of the oldest, most beautiful, most historically significant places - that saved my life.