Sunday 13 July 2008

With sadness so real that it populates the city and leaves you homeless again

I should have seen it coming. It was inevitable: homesickness.

Not having gas at my flat for a few days — and thus, no hot showers or hot food — set it off. I sunk into that listless, yearning despair, one that London's rain complemented so well.

How had I forgotten that this would come? I'd moved away to college, I'd studied abroad before. It was different this time, though. Before, when leaving, I was coming back to a known: Carroll, Athens. And back then, that was all I really knew. How could something I'd known so long be any good? Turns out, pretty damn good.

I started to have the same thought I had during an emotional series of flights from Columbus to London last month: Who in their right mind, with friends and family like mine, would leave them all behind?

It's a fine question. I'm sure part of the answer lies in elementary-school Eric, the proto-nerd, pouring over atlases in his free time. Or sitting in class, bored to tears, and staring out the window, dreaming.

Maybe, I thought, I haven't left really left anyone behind. Look at all these e-mails, text messages, Skype calls. Maybe they're right here whenever I think about them.

No worries: the gas has been turned back on. It was never really off, the mechanisms were just a little messed up. It was there the whole time, we'd just forgotten how to connect with it.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Getting me all teary-eyed at the end there, friend!
:)
Good job.
Not that it's been hard, these days.
*i'm making a face that conveys how annoyed i am with my hormones and precarious emotional state in general*
I missed you today - I needed to rant and vent my silly road-rage-inspired mood. Instead, I watched 3 hours of crime drama on TNT.
Miss you, obviously.

(And you're totally in your right mind, wanting to go to London. It's the people who stay behind, who don't realize that the connections stretch however far you'll let them, who are crazy, and who miss out. You know this.)

Ashley said...

Don't worry Eric. We're all gonna be here when you get back. And if you're lucky, I still won't have a life and will have all the time in the world to hang out. Haha.