Milestones

In which I talk about milestones long past, which I should have done when they happened, but didn’t

I have been living in London for three years and a bit, and I forgot to write about it on the actual day, which for the curious, was October 10th. I’m not sure when exactly I stopped journalling or writing things down, but I remember when I used to do it religiously, because I remember things from then way more clearly than stuff that happened to me last week. I had my first beer, for example, on the 5th of December the year I turned 18. My first kiss happened on January 12th.

I don’t remember the specifics of certain pivotal moments in my life, and I wonder if I should (or can) even place stock in my memory of these things, or if my feelings and memories are just the only versions of tangibility I can hold on to, given that I have no other facts.

Fact #1: This photo was taken during the first few months of moving here, with me buried in readings, completely at a loss as to how to read these texts. This is also the first picture I ever used for Tinder, lol.

I’ve always been a reader, but this ordeal was something else. I had told our course leader during my interview for the masters programme that I had no prior knowledge of “continental philosophy” and that the only philosophy I was somewhat familiar with was that of Camus and Sartre (as in, existentialism; as in, typical angsty adolescent inclinations), and when he listed off philosophers that I may know, I couldn’t say that I knew any of them. He offered me an unconditional place in the course anyway.

I had the interview thirteen days after my grandfather died, and I didn’t even realise then that I hadn’t processed this loss quite as thoroughly until after I’d moved. He had been bedridden for something like a decade, so I have entire parts of me that he never got to meet. Our single point of commonality was that we both loved to read. It was hard to see his memory go, quietly and then all at once. I remember when he first struggled to read books, holding open a dictionary beside him to look for meanings he had misplaced. I remember when my dad would test his memory and ask about Kurosawa and Ina (me). “The one who likes to read.” I remember trying to get at what his thoughts and feelings were, a weird miming exercise that required so much effort for so little. I remember, too, when he stopped responding altogether.

The anniversary of this loss made apparent to me that I had been living without him, actually without him, for a year. It was easier not to wallow in the empty feeling because I wasn’t around my family. It was easier not to throw myself into the grief, because I had other things to try and make sense of. It’s even easier now to miss him without an overwhelming sadness, because I had dealt with it, somewhat detached.

I do wonder if he would have liked how I turned out. I hope so.

I spent most of the year reading each text line per line, parsing each sentence and mining each paragraph for meaning (or what I think each meaning could be). I think I did decently. It felt, for the first time in a while, that reading wasn’t a lazy person’s luxury, that I was working towards something by reading all these words.

Fact #2: This was taken in the toilets at an all-you-can-eat pizza place that I went to in Camden after forcing myself to go to Frieze on the last, rainy day. It was the picture I used to commemorate my first year in London.

I don’t actually remember much about this day, other than that I wore too many things and was too hot for early October. The pizza was subpar, and the art was, too. Two men were sat at a table next to me, on their way to a birthday party and borrowed a pen. I think I had hoped that one of them would show an interest in me, but I think by this point, I just felt so completely lonely.

My sister and dad came over late in the summer to watch Wimbledon and the Queen’s Cup. My best friend and our mutual friend were over at the same time to watch Hamilton. I had moved into what I thought was going to be the best house, which would later on prove to be quite the opposite One half of that household remain two of the only people I have ever blocked on WhatsApp (and everywhere else) in my entire life. Painting was the only thing that kept me from unravelling completely.

It astounds me to remember this period, because I didn’t realise then how sad I really had been, but I’ll see something that I made then, and remember how I’d been crying on the floor making these drawings, for no reason other than I had nothing else to feel.

On the upside — after a very dramatic housing nightmare — I moved in with my current housemate, Laura, and this is the flat I have stayed in the longest since moving here. I met her through a mutual friend on Instagram and we did an Instagram call interview and viewing while I was on holiday in the Philippines. We met up the day after I flew back. The next day, she was off to Vietnam and Singapore for three weeks, and my oldest friend, Ryc, helped me move out the day after Valentine’s Day.

Laura has been the best person I have lived with, so far.

Fact #3: This photograph was taken at yet another toilet: Brewdog Shoreditch. I went there to meet up with a friend who remains one of my closest friends here. I had received news of my visa endorsement and was off to Manila in a couple of days.

Somewhere along the way, I suppose I decided that I wanted to live here a little bit longer. I graduated and had my brother and mum over that summer, which was the nicest London summer I’ve ever had. I don’t know why I felt like I had to be here, but I did, and so, I tried my best to stay.

I applied for a Tier 1 visa, which had a completely dumb name that they changed to an equally stupid one. I received the news on the 1st of October, on the couch with Laura, while watching T.V. She rushed out to get prosecco from the off-license, and I was on my way home quite quickly after that. On what would be my second year here, I was in Manila, particularly the visa centre, to file my documents for a five-year stay. I waited for my student visa for 43 business days. This one, I got pretty much immediately after filing. I flew back in November, and I’ve been here ever since.

And, I suppose you all know what happened.

I was meant to give myself a year here to get my bearings, but the way things have been going, that doesn’t seem like giving myself a fair chance. Though, I suppose, the concept of “fairness” has been completely wrecked by everything that’s happened this year.

Despite everything, I think I am in a better place mentally and emotionally and in many other ways that count. This has been the longest time I spent away from home or seeing my family in 32 years. I’ve never really been hit by homesickness, but I felt such deep longing for home in the first few months of lockdown. I know that I’m lucky that I can move around, although cautiously, desperately. I wish, sometimes, that I could go a little bit farther than I can. Maybe that’s a little greedy, but maybe that’s okay.

I know there’s nothing about art in this letter (except that Frieze sucked), but I hope it’s okay that I talked about my feelings for now. I’m not really sure where to go from here, but I think I can’t figure that out until I venture off somewhere. I think it matters least which direction you go, because you can figure out how to change the velocity of your movement later on, and more importantly, where to point to next.