Thoughts Before Leaving

I apologize in advance for a relatively disjointed post, but I suppose I am leaving for London. Would you really expect anything else?

This is what the morning of departure looks like: apprehensive, with just a hint of the crazy eyes. 

The main thought as I begin the final few days before leaving for London is that I'm not sure they've arrived yet. The thoughts, I mean. I'm supposed to be having thoughts of the London variety, but actually I hardly ever think about London at all.

Or maybe that isn't necessarily true.

Maybe I do think about it, but not in the way that I used to. The phase of speculating about how my life will be seems to be over, as does the phase of idealizing the way things will be. I'm done imagining scenarios in which I get off the plane and first person I meet ends up being my future best friend or something. I no longer fantasize about meeting my favorite British celebrities. I also now understand that my academic life won't actually consist of a movie-esque "studying" montage, ending with me receiving an award for Year's Most Brilliant Master's Thesis. No, these thoughts don't really turn up much anymore.

Now when I think about London, it takes the form of thoughts like: what bank should I choose? Are these shoes actually worth packing? Can I afford this? (No.) Do I have any idea how to get to my flat? (Again, no.) Is this a good idea? (I certainly hope so.)

Another common thought: I would like to be a college freshman again. Then I remind myself that - apart from being older and having better hair and immediate plans to move to another country - I'm in essentially the same position as I was four years ago. I'm starting over, just as I was then, and everything that now brings forth these feeling of nostalgia was, at that point, a total unknown. All the people I was about to meet, all the things I was about to do - I couldn't even conceive of them as we drove the hour and a half from my hometown to Ann Arbor, and I cried the whole time.

So far I haven't cried once about the impending London trip, and I'm not even feeling particularly nervous. If there's going to be fear, it generally sets in late at night and is always accompanied by these images of me wandering lost around London with more luggage than I can handle. Then I force myself to think about something else.

UPDATE (on the morning of departure): Well, I cried, but then I got through the part where I had to say goodbye to my family and remembered that I still have a working knowledge of how to be a self-sufficient grown-up. I mean, sort of. There is still a 50/50 chance that I will have a breakdown at the airport (sadly, this had happened before). Possible breakdown aside, I think I'm fine.

There's a long day of waiting ahead of me, followed by a long night of flying, followed by London.

I'm pretty sure this is a good idea.

Time Stands Still

In one month, I will be either in London or in the midst of my final preparations for the move, so it doesn't seem like nothing should be happening on the moving-to-London front, but somehow that seems to be the case. I think I'm caught in some sort of time loop in which I keep living the same day over and over, and nothing ever happens to bring me closer to the future. My life has devolved into a fairly pleasant cycle of breakfast/reading, running, lunch, wasting time on the internet or other miscellaneous afternoon activities, dinner, TV, and sleep. Repeat as needed.

Oh, summer. 

Relaxing (boring?) though this lifestyle may be, it's lulling me into a stupor. I can't say what would happen if I didn't wake up at about 9:30 in the morning, have a bowl of cereal and two cups of coffee while reading, then get ready to go for a run, but I suspect that it would be physically and emotionally jarring. I vaguely remember a time when I had a job. And classes. And I had to wake up before the sun had fully risen. I cooked my own food. I did my own laundry. I tried (sometimes in vain) to keep my apartment clean. Then I graduated and became a little kid again. Makes sense.

I'm absolutely certain that there are things that need doing - Projects of Great Importance - like deciding what I'm going to pack, opening a UK bank account, and buying a plane ticket. Every time I try to start one of these projects, however, their full complexity become clear, and I decide to put them off for another few days. Deep down, I think I assume that if I procrastinate for long enough, someone else will do everything for me. Except that's not how real life works. Some previous incarnation of myself understood that if I want things done, in most cases I'm going to have to do them myself. I don't think I completely understand this anymore.

Pardon the rambling.

A List of Uncertainties

1. Where specifically I will be living next year. In theory, I should be receiving pictures of potential flats so that I can give feedback, but this has not happened yet. These days I compulsively check my email, thinking each time that there will be something significant waiting in my inbox. Instead I find myself constantly sifting through (figurative) piles of spam.

2. Whether I can find a job in London. Seriously, I'll do anything just to have a source of income again. Wait, maybe not anything. Almost anything? No, that sounds dangerous, too. As a point of reference, though, a job in a coffee shop is currently my dream.

3. The extent to which I will have to decimate my beloved clothing collection when the time comes to fit everything into a surprisingly not-big-enough suitcase. You see, when I ask myself what I want to pack, my default answer is, "Everything." And then I remember that everything really isn't an option.

4. When exactly I will be leaving. Whether I can find a reasonably-priced plane ticket. What city I will be flying out of. Whether I will have any layovers (hopefully not - rushing through airports, filled with the nagging dread that I will miss my next flight absolutely terrifies me).

5. Whether I'll be happy in London. Whether I'll make friends easily. How intense the homesickness will be.
Whether I'll have an acceptable internet connection
What size my bed will be.
Where I'll do my grocery shopping.
Whether I'll be able to sustain my habit of eating excess Mexican food.

This is getting ridiculous. I'm going to stop worrying. Right now.

Wait, maybe now...

No, now. For real this time.

Thrifting with Sarah and Kimberly

About two years ago, I went through a phase during which I bought most of my clothes at thrift stores. This wasn't because I was broke or particularly liked what the thrift stores had to offer, but rather because I thought I would be very cool to have a skirt last owned by somebody's grandmother. Of course when I actually wore these thrift store "finds," I would invariably realize that they were not only outdated, but also unflattering and fairly ugly. After a summer of dressing this way, I ventured back into the mall, rediscovered the joys of H&M and began to dress like a normal person again.

Until yesterday afternoon, the urge to go thrifting had lain dormant for about a year and a half, but then, for some inexplicable reason, I decided that it would be fun to check out the new Volunteers of America Thrift Store. The fun didn't manifest itself immediately, and as I stared blankly at the racks organized by color and ran my hands over the synthetic fabrics, I considered how some past version of myself would have probably bought that floor-length, button-down, rose-printed monstrosity of a skirt, full of honorable intentions to cut it shorter for improved cuteness. Current me, though, was looking for usability and practicality.

I got relatively quickly back into the rhythm of thrifting - working through the racks; giving each item a quick glance; assessing for color, pattern, cut; subjecting anything that passes on the three previous counts a closer inspection - and within 10 minutes I had picked out a handful of potentially wearable skirts to try on. In the dressing room I remembered the first rule of thrifting, namely try everything on.  In the case of thrift-store clothing, it's impossible to know whether the size listed on the tag (if there is one) corresponds to current standard sizes, so I always - absolutely always - make that often frustrating trip to the dressing room.

After much debate, I ended up buying two floral print skirts and a red vintage purse.

I wanted to end this post by saying something really discerning about how my decision to buy usable clothing at a thrift store marks some profound change in the way I view myself, or how buying cheaper used clothing means that I've become more financially responsible. Really, though, I don't think either of these things are strictly true. What is true is that I've been reading too many of those Thought Catalog essays, and they're filling me with this desire to make every minor detail of my life sound much more significant than it actually is. Sometimes a skirt is just a skirt, and even if you only paid a dollar for it, owning it doesn't mean that you've grown up. It just means you have to find another skirt hanger.

Move On Already!

My bed was like a taco in the sense that I was sleeping on nothing but a brown sheet folded in half like a taco shell. The problem with the taco was that, unlike actual tacos, it wasn't warm inside. Too much air conditioning. My body, I suppose was of normal temperature, but try as I might to radiate heat, I couldn't warm that sheet up. I missed my duvet like you wouldn't believe. Any bit of heat I managed to squeeze out my duvet would capture and hold prisoner for the rest of the night. It was a clever one, that duvet, but now I've relegated it to a shelf in my closet in my parents' house.

My Ann Arbor bedroom used to be a warm and welcoming place. Now it's the blank-walled, bare-bedded, empty-closeted shell of its former self. The rest of the apartment has likewise suffered from the lack of my ridiculous amounts of stuff. It is no longer the place of freshly baked scones...

And comically-named bottles of wine...

And walls covered with possibly too many pictures. 

No, it's not my apartment anymore. It's okay. Really. I haven't (yet) had even one emotional breakdown about this development. I just have to keep telling myself that I don't have to spend the rest of my life in this post-graduation, pre-grad school limbo.

In its infinite wisdom, my sister's college guide magazine says, "life changes. keep up with it." But what about those times when life keeps promising to change but then decides to take forever to get around to it? What about those times when life says, "Sure, you get to go to grad school in London, but you can only earn this privilege by spending four months in purgatory. If you don't lose your mind, you'll have the chance to do something cool. But, knowing you, you'll probably lose your mind."? What about those times?

What about the times when you hang out with your friends and realize that you really may not see some of them ever again?

What about the times when you don't even care that your bathroom counter is covered with makeup residue and hair and wet dust (seriously, gross) because it's not really your bathroom anymore?

What are you supposed to do when in all of your dreams you're on planes and trains, and when you pick up your phone to call your family or a friend, it shatters into tiny pieces?

What about those times?

What are we supposed to do?

My advice: don't emulate me and get all angsty. Teenage-esque angst is never the answer - at least not at the age of 22. But what if I've reverted to the age of 14 in terms of maturity? Because there's a distinct possibility that this has happened, probably because I moved back home after college. I think I need to work on re-growing up.