With my departure for London just around the corner, the "Are you excited?" inquiries – the standard in almost every conversation since March – have all but subsided. My logic being that if I hadn't been excited about the big move and studying fashion journalism, I wouldn't have applied to London College of Fashion in the first place, I find the question amusing.
Still, no amount of excitement can change the fact that the process of moving abroad is difficult, too.
Original photo by Peter Lindbergh
I've never felt attuned to my hometown (much less country) and I knew I was going to leave since my mid-teens. On the other hand, this city is where I've spent the most of my life and where my family continues to live, so it's imprinted into me regardless of how distant it is to my beliefs and ambitions.
With a temporal distance of months and years, writers of expatriate novels and stories succeed to translate the initial tangled bundle of emotions into poignant strings of sentences and articulate coherences. My experience is still in the early stage; as the plane has yet to take off, there's no romanticism, no poetics, just quiet turbulences.
At first, this strange state misled me because it's not as (melo)dramatic as the previous complicated situations I had found myself in, but the truth is that this summer has been the most confusing time in my life. I worked rigorously for university in spring so that I was able to graduate early (I'd have to defer my entry to LCF for a year otherwise) and fell completely out of touch with myself as a result. I believed I'd finally have a chance to repose and regain my sense of self in July and August. I didn't. The summer ended up being a long wait, anxious as well as excited, but most of all disoriented.
My flight will be on time, but my sense of self is delayed indefinitely. Hence this is not a big, epic post that has it all figured out, one that I once expected I would write. I can only hope this transitory period is a rite of passage to new and possibly beautiful things that lie ahead.
5 comments
"On the other hand, this city is where I've spent the most of my life and where my family continues to live, so it's imprinted into me regardless of how distant it is to my beliefs and ambitions."
well said - this is a big part of why I cannot decide to leave for friendlier climates (literally and figuratively).
I'm sure your sense of self will come back soon (I think it's perfectly normal that it gets a little cloudy in such situations), it feels nice to have it :)
Thank you, I hope it does. As for your big move, maybe it will happen eventually, maybe not, but you will survive and thrive regardless even in these metaphorical (or not?) climates. :)
You wrote this post beautifully...and yes, this next chapter will be new but it will be filled with so many amazing things...I have no doubt about that.
Can't wait to hear how your first couple of weeks go.
XOXO
Thank you, Martha, I appreciate your words. And of course it is on my agenda to keep you updated with my London adventures.
Ha, tole se slisi zelo moja zgodba izpred dveh let. Podobna situacija, le da je bila destinacija Oxford, kjer, hm..., sem se vedno. zelo, zelo tezko je oditi od doma, ne glede na to, kako exciting je koncna destinacija. Se mi zdi, da zato, ker se ob takem koraku zaves, da nikoli ne bo vec cisto tako, kot je bilo. Ne glede na to, pa je tak 'izlet' neprecenljiva izkusnja! Zelim ti veliko poguma ter da v Londonu cim prej najdes svoje mesto! In - se morda kaj vidimo!:)