Love in the City

When I first moved to London I arrived the day after my aunt’s wedding in Ireland. I remember I had started crying during the reception as my dad was lip syncing to some song, running outside and sitting on a field’s edge with my siblings sobbing because it was so rare having us all together and I was leaving again. The next morning I showed up to a dorm building just off Old Street, my taxi driver from the airport wishing me good luck. It is funny looking back, since the area is so familiar to me now, trying to remember it as a stranger. One of the first things I saw was a little boy taking a shit on the side of the street and thought “Yep, I’m in the big city now.”

The dorm room was small, the bathroom even smaller. The blue tile bathroom served as the shower stall, which took awhile to get used too, not able to leave my toiletries in there lest everything be constantly damp. The first thing I did in that dorm was cry. Then have to decide whether to leave my window open, with it closed the room got too hot, open I could hear whatever porn my neighbour was watching.

The university only offered accommodation in Old Street or Whitechapel, but the course I was required to take was a 30 minute train ride on the Northern Line to Wembley. From there I either took a bus or walked 20 minutes to the school. On my first day I met an American girl who I had lunch with, her mom paid for the two slices of toast I ate. I was so nervous I could hardly eat. From there I met more people including a gay guy from Jordan who I would spend my first night out in the city with. We went to G.A.Y. in Soho and met some folks, dancing away the night with strangers who’d I’d never see again. It was so exciting, we went to a few other clubs but it was more about the company. I hadn’t been drinking or smoking long, I only had maybe two beers that night. Anxiety was present in my life but it hadn’t completely taken over it yet so I didn’t need to take the edge off. I was just happy to be there.

That summer I met a guy while smoking out front the dorm building with the guy from Jordan. This man was not smoking and interjected into our conversation to correct us about something. He is still one of my best friends to this day. We’ll call him Bay since we bonded over both being from the Bay in California (despite him many times saying that San Jose doesn’t count, it was close enough).

Bay and I spent that summer exploring the city, someone had told him to “remember to look up” so we took our time admiring the architecture and the variety of it. Sacred Coffee in Carnaby became a favourite and The Station in Shoreditch (unfortunately long gone now). We were determined to find the best Chai latte and those places tied. Once a week we’d do “Treat yo self” days which basically meant we’d try a new restaurant. We continued this for the next three years, becoming roommates, frequenting Peckhamplex and Four Quarters. Prince Charles Cinema on occasion and The Tiger in Camberwell to visit the friends who worked there. We found The Ivy House too pretentious and stuck to The Waverly Arms. Lerryn’s Café was my place of solace.

Bay gave me the advice of “Go to a place you like because chances are the other people there like the same thing and talk to them.” So I was a familiar face at Review Bookshop where I’d chat with K and on occasion go grab her a coffee or breakfast sandwich from the workers café down the lane. Lerryn’s baristas would ask if I wanted my usual (mocha and French toast). The guys are Four Quarters on occasion gave us extra coins.

In London, for the first time, I felt like I was a part of the world. Having grown up in the suburbs of San Jose, fairly isolated socially, I’d never felt like I was a part of a real place, everything felt replaceable. The places we frequented where chain restaurants and shops. Although, even then, the employees at Hot Topic would say “see you next week”. A group of friends and me every Monday went to get Chinese food and snacks at the CVS where a guy who looked like Weird Al was always working and let us put chocolate in the freezer for next week. So, in a way, I’ve always been a creature of habit. I suppose the difference was in San Jose I was always looking to leave, in London I was looking to stay.

The other night, as I was getting ready to sleep, I imagined taking the train from Stansted Airport into Liverpool St. I was listening to Rachel Yamagata, not someone I associate with the city, but the image popped up regardless and I began to sob. I felt half awake, unsure if I was really crying or if it was a dream. It would be easy to say leaving London was the worst thing that ever happened to me in my adult life. Not exactly the act itself but the effects. I had to quickly wean myself off medication because I would not have access to it, leave a beloved job, leave all my friends, leave the place I had spent nearly a decade loving. I sobbed and sobbed into my pillow, as if the last two years had come crashing down on me, my complete reluctance to make roots is because, I’ll be honest, I don’t want to be here. I feel as if I’m floating, waiting to be “better” so I can leave. I feel trapped in this place. Then I got angry, frustrated, the image of spending my 30th birthday alone, unemployed, directionless keeps jabbing my side. I’m overwhelmed by expectation while still mourning who I thought I would be.

When talking to friends about London, we make jokes, I posture as someone who’s “over it”, that the city is dead, that I would never go back. I don’t know how to say that I miss it everyday. What I would give to push through the crowded paths of Dalston Lane again, climbing the fences of Haggerston Park, to yell at the cyclists on Regents Canal. I miss Atlantis Art Shop, the cat that bites, the piss stinking alleyways, the old men at the pub, the eccentric chatty lonely folks, the art students carrying oversized portfolios, the hay fever hell of spring, the archways of train stations, the way they would sway at certain turns, the bus drivers, rain on a double-decker. I miss everything.

London felt like a long love affair, the city always offering me something new, some way to reinvent myself, to grow. But I suppose, like any long term relationship, one can become complacent. I never wanted to leave but I was also unwilling to change. Looking back on it now, it’s easy to see I was depressed post-grad. Even with a job I loved, I wasn’t pushing myself any more. I stopped exploring the city or even going to the places I liked. It’s been a long time since I wandered the market in Crystal Palace, looked at the view of Southwark from Nunhead Cemetery or dodged tourists heading to Tate Modern. I stopped sitting in the park, stopped popping into random cafés, stopped trying to make friends with the baristas. I became a person I used to complain about: people who only ever wanted to go to the pub. All I wanted to do was sit on my ass and drink a pint. And by doing that I was neglecting my great love, the city. No more wanders down random lanes, no more grabbing something to eat at one of the many stalls on Bricklane. No, just a pint at the ol’ boozer. It was no way to live and like a fed up girlfriend the city started to push me out.

What inspired me to write this was realising it’s coming up on the 2 year anniversary of my leaving. Even the thought makes me want to cry. And like a shitty ex I want to run back to London and tell them this time it’ll be different, that I’ve changed and learned my lesson. But you cannot live the same life twice. It has been a long breakup, one that I’m not over. It’s hard because my whole life everywhere I’ve ever lived I wanted to leave, only in London did I want to stay. Even when I complained about the rent, the odd issues, the shitty government, I knew that nowhere else was like it. When I talked about leaving London, it wasn’t because I actually wanted to go, I wanted to change. Well, if you don’t change change will be thrust upon you and you might end up living back with your parents for awhile, heartbroken.

Maybe London will be the one that got away. Will I visit and reminisce about old times? When I was young and scared but eager? Will I see the city the same and changed, like a former lover getting a haircut. A change in the way they carry themselves. Will I smile and know things will never be the same but I also wont forget. And I think of how I’ve never been in love with a person truly and then think of the city that loved me back and what we had. I’m not at all crying while I write this because I miss it so much, couldn’t be me.

I started reading Saltwater by Jessica Andrews at the perfect time because 2024 so far has been the year of homesickness. In the book, she too is reminiscing about London, now moved away and feeling isolated and stuck. Unsure what to do with herself. I bought the book awhile ago but only just decided to read it, during a particularly homesick and sad week. It’s funny how timings seem to line up sometimes. I’m not one for fate but if I were I’d say reading this book at this exact moment would be such a thing (fate is banging at my door, begging to be acknowledged). It is almost difficult to read, I think the narrator and I would get on and grieve together.

I wanted to write about love for Valentines day and noted to myself how I have always been single, how romance eludes me. But love does not elude me. Though I do not have London, I still have many friends I made there. The great platonic loves of my life. Maybe it’s corny to say, but maybe not everyone’s true love is romantic, maybe it’s the friends we make, maybe it’s a city.

Thank you for reading and happy Valentines Day,

Enya x

And in honor of Valentine’s Day, here’s one of my favourite love songs (it’s obviously July Flame, I only like like 3 love songs):