But I've come so far...
Oct. 10th, 2006 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueThere is little in my day that does not involve some measure of physical discomfort. Until two days ago, I was sleeping on a futon; I now have a proper bed, but am using sofa cushions as pillows. My feet hurt constantly; they're still cut and blistered, and the search for better footwear has thus far been fruitless. My shoulders often ache from the bag I carry with me, although the bag itself is as light as I can make it and still have what I need.
My hair is dry and tangled; I still haven't figured out how to adjust it to English weather. As for food, I rarely have much control over what or when I eat. I don't control my own schedule, or who I see during the day. My umbrella is half broken; when it rains, I have to hold it open with both hands. The lamp in my room has no shade. I am perpetually cold.
I feel as though I've been fundamentally demoted, and, in the process, impoverished.
Most of all, I've had trouble adjusting to the sheer mass of people in London. I faced my first Saturday in Covent Garden, and it was like being in a mosh pit, or a stampede - only it was everyday business. It's terrifying to walk among them, to become a part of the ocean of people - a loss of all identity.
Although I have never been asked to, I feel the strongest pressure of my life to conform - strange that in what is a form of art school, I feel discouraged from expressing myself, or being openly creative. I downplay my quirks, and my talents; it's the students and not the teachers that give me the impression I should do so. I'm terrified of being ostracized, and I can't tell anymore whether that's paranoid or astute. I keep imagining that will get better - and there was one moment, late at night in the editing lab, when it did - but it hasn't overall, and as time passes, I'm losing the memory of who I am when I'm not pretending.
Suppression of my self - the physical and the personal - is taking a toll; whenever I sit down to write, too much comes to mind, and with it, tears, and a pressure in my throat. Ciro gets the worst of it as the person I miss most, write to most, and am most impelled to be honest with. It's impossible to bridge that distance with words alone, and I'm left as frustrated and alone as I begun. I find myself avoiding or regretting new experiences because they're more to write about - and if I don't write about them, don't share them with someone, they might as well never have happened outside my imagination.
I do still believe that things will get better, and am aware that things are getting better - I have a bed now, and I've unpacked, and gotten things to hang on my wall, and I bought groceries today. My feet are slowly developing the right calluses. I'm proud of my increasing knowledge of the bus system. Other students are getting frustrated with the status quo, and are trying to reach out; several house parties have been scheduled.
As for Ciro, he'll arrive next Friday morning, and my joy is only slightly tarnished by the awareness that it wasn't his first choice, or even his second. I know we'll be happy; I know that I want him here. I know it was never a choice against me, but against London - against delaying projects in Dallas. I just wish I could shake the feeling of being a compromise.
My hair is dry and tangled; I still haven't figured out how to adjust it to English weather. As for food, I rarely have much control over what or when I eat. I don't control my own schedule, or who I see during the day. My umbrella is half broken; when it rains, I have to hold it open with both hands. The lamp in my room has no shade. I am perpetually cold.
I feel as though I've been fundamentally demoted, and, in the process, impoverished.
Most of all, I've had trouble adjusting to the sheer mass of people in London. I faced my first Saturday in Covent Garden, and it was like being in a mosh pit, or a stampede - only it was everyday business. It's terrifying to walk among them, to become a part of the ocean of people - a loss of all identity.
Although I have never been asked to, I feel the strongest pressure of my life to conform - strange that in what is a form of art school, I feel discouraged from expressing myself, or being openly creative. I downplay my quirks, and my talents; it's the students and not the teachers that give me the impression I should do so. I'm terrified of being ostracized, and I can't tell anymore whether that's paranoid or astute. I keep imagining that will get better - and there was one moment, late at night in the editing lab, when it did - but it hasn't overall, and as time passes, I'm losing the memory of who I am when I'm not pretending.
Suppression of my self - the physical and the personal - is taking a toll; whenever I sit down to write, too much comes to mind, and with it, tears, and a pressure in my throat. Ciro gets the worst of it as the person I miss most, write to most, and am most impelled to be honest with. It's impossible to bridge that distance with words alone, and I'm left as frustrated and alone as I begun. I find myself avoiding or regretting new experiences because they're more to write about - and if I don't write about them, don't share them with someone, they might as well never have happened outside my imagination.
I do still believe that things will get better, and am aware that things are getting better - I have a bed now, and I've unpacked, and gotten things to hang on my wall, and I bought groceries today. My feet are slowly developing the right calluses. I'm proud of my increasing knowledge of the bus system. Other students are getting frustrated with the status quo, and are trying to reach out; several house parties have been scheduled.
As for Ciro, he'll arrive next Friday morning, and my joy is only slightly tarnished by the awareness that it wasn't his first choice, or even his second. I know we'll be happy; I know that I want him here. I know it was never a choice against me, but against London - against delaying projects in Dallas. I just wish I could shake the feeling of being a compromise.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-10 03:51 pm (UTC)For a long while as I started to wear skirts more frequently than pants, applying makeup nearly every single day (something I definitely did NOT do at my hippie liberal arts college in Colorado) I wondered and feared that I might be losing my identity, the parts of me that made me uniquely me. After electing not to use valuable brain power towards this decidedly narcissistic avenue of reflection (that's brain power that could go towards conjugating verbs, after all) I sort of forgot about it and adapted to Japanese life, moving as one of the fish in the giant school of human traffic, learning how to half-sleep on trains and take up as little space as possible... and it was one of the most treasured experiences I've had in my lifetime. It was like a vacation from being American, from being neurotic.
After I returned, I wondered if I had been taking a vacation from myself. Once I integrated the experience, I settled on "not really." It felt more like a part of me had been able to rest, but other parts of me that had been more dormant for whatever reason for more of my life/youth in America got to finally surface and flex.
Whew! Sorry to wax nostalgic in your livejournal, but such is the temptation of comments.