Arrival in London
I’m here. I made it. I feel like some of my blood has been drained out of me. My bones creek. How long has it been since I said goodbye to everyone? 17 hours?
My arrival did not go at all like I expected. The travel fatigue lowered my emotional threshold. All I want for now is rest and my book. I fell to pieces the second my dorm room door shut. Silence engulfed me. Solitude let my guard down. Stillness opened the floodgates. Why am I even here? I wondered. The volume and breadth of the literal ocean between me and all I had ever known came crashing down on me. I am the first one here, a day too early and feeling very alone (aside from the resident assistants in-training working downstairs).
I ate lunch by myself in the unfamiliar dining hall that had only a little bit of food left to offer me. Sitting there at the white plastic table with a piece of dry chicken and some soggy, cold vegetables, I was sure I had made a terrible mistake. My negative thoughts, my solitude, they echo throughout this empty building and quickly expand to fill it, warping out of my control. I know it will get better, I know it, so I have been distracting myself with unpacking. Now I am writing.
The newness and uncertainty of everything overwhelms me, but the slow trickle of wonder that comes from all my surroundings, it calms me. Not even an hour ago I was clacking along on the Underground, hands tense and sweaty from keeping my two suitcases from rolling away with every jolting stop. I sat on a worn fabric bench, segmented into chairs. The geometric patterns must have once been as bright as kindergarten finger paintings, but these would only share resemblance if the art had been used to dust an old castle.
Other than this and other evidence of frequent use, the Piccadilly line was pretty clean. The Underground wasn’t underground yet; it rattled on past ever-condensing neighborhoods of small English buildings, interrupted briefly by dimly lit underpasses filled with electrical piping or graffitied walls. The older man sitting across from me sat cross-legged while he read the newspaper. A leather briefcase laid at his feet. I studied his focused features under the fluorescent lights for a few minutes until it bored me. The hills scrolling behind him became flatter, the buildings flicking past his head became closer together, the trips into tunnels became longer until we had dipped fully under the city of London. I would have to wait until I emerged from the ground to set my eyes on the metropolis above me.
And emerge I did, right after almost missing my stop. I stumbled out of the tube and took a breath. Only one more obstacle to go: finding Atlantic House, the building I would be living in with the other visiting students for the next four months. I scanned the stations with my eyes and found a little green sign that pointed the “way out” with those two words and an arrow. I turned and mentally added another obstacle to my list.
A two-story set of stone stairs led up to the surface, and there was no elevator in sight. What if I had been in a wheelchair, I remember thinking. My dread must have been written all over my face as I stood loaded down with my two stuffed suitcases and a backpack. Not three seconds had passed before a man approached me kindly and asked “Do you need help?” Relieved, grateful, and mildly delighted to have heard a live British accent for the first time, I responded “Yes please, thank you so much.” He took the bigger bag from me, “It’s very heavy,” I warned him. Once we reached the top, breathing harder, he laughed and said “That’s heavy!” I chuckled and said, “I told you didn’t I?” I thanked him again and we went on our ways. I now understand that the kindness of strangers is the best medicine for a tired traveler.
Finally. After hauling my heavy load with my tired muscles across turn after turn after turn of uneven brick sidewalks, I had arrived. It all felt a little hazy. I noted how still my feet were just then, planted in front of 1 St. Albans Grove, Kensington, London, UK like they knew what they were doing there. The last time I was standing still in front of a building, I was at home. How did I get here so fast? My eyes blurred — they still believed I was in motion. My brain made sense of things a little more slowly than usual. Truthfully, it would not have taken much convincing to persuade me that I was dreaming.
London is equal parts every bit and not at all as romantic as it is made out to be. It’s strange to see something I’ve only either imagined or seen in movies right before my eyes, mingling with actual people’s lives, just rolling out in all its mundanity. No high-tension plot unfolding as characters pace the streets, no special effects making the historic buildings blow up, just people living their lives. People like me.
The mystery in between the layers of the city intrigues me the most. My home town has no such thing, everything is too spread out. Here in Kensington, winding narrow streets wrap around old brick buildings squeezed in between each other, all of them trimmed in wrought-iron fences, anything could be hidden just around the corner.
I desperately need sleep, and I still feel lonely, but I can’t wait to find out what happens next.
