How could I have forgotten to pay my respects to this house, to put it down in writing? This house, and the hardest times it brought. Moving into this place; the beginning of it all, where it all started. So much that happened, and also so much that didn't happen. Its white, crusty, brick walls, and my tiny room - made tinier than it was originally by a flimsy drywall down the centre. I clearly remember the first day I walked up the gray, slightly soggy stairs, lugging up my few possessions, filled with optimism and the fearlessness of youth. Apprehensive and frightened, using up all the ounces of bravery I could.
That night I lay in my new bed, the springs digging into my back, the radiator expanding and contracting like it was struggling to breathe. As I looked out of the window at the faint and faraway glistening view of the skyline of London; I knew a fundamental truth. That one day, definitely one day, I would drive past my now old, then ‘new’ window and look up to the second floor on the left and think “I used to live there for two years when I first moved to London.” The predecessor of myself would look back with all of the knowledge completely unbeknownst to me then.
All through my time at that house, I'd imagine my older self driving past in a car, up Leopold Road. This recurring vision changes toward the end, like a junction before the split second of seeing my brown hair being blown out of the passenger seat with the window rolled down. My face peering out of the car for a few seconds as I drive by. All the experiences of two years condensed into two seconds and a remark, “that used to be my room.” Sometimes I am explaining this to a man I do not yet know, who sits next to me. Sometimes I look glamorous and independent and established; sometimes I am a mother and I turn to the back seat and point out the window to my children.
The moment feels so certain. The certainty that it brings so undeniable and unavoidable. Like the endless rattle of the train of time. Stopping never for any of us. None of us. So I have this acceptance and I surrender to the fact that I can never stop it from happening. This moment will come, and it will feel natural and normal; because it was always going to come.
Sometimes in these visions, I am in the car looking out, looking back, and it's gray outside - other times, I can feel the sticky heat of summer and I am wearing sunglasses. Which is out of the ordinary, because I have always felt insecure and unattractive wearing sunglasses. Perhaps the sunglasses are aspirational to me. Representing someone I felt I could never quite be, someone way out of reach to me as I lay on my bed looking at the uneven dim, yellowish ceiling, one of the light bulbs bust. Someone I hoped to be, oneday. At Least most of the time I am telling someone, verbally, out loud about the 2nd floor, and the housemates I came to know, and lovers I had - and lost, and the way my body changed and all of the stuff that transpired in my mind in that little chapter of my world. At least, I think, I am not alone most of the time, I have someone to share this with.
Sometimes, though, I am alone. But, I share this moment with myself in a way which has felt so instinctive since I was a small girl, a teenager, and even now as a young woman. A super gentle, tender, soothing, encouraging, sister-like interaction with oneself. Like the feeling of someone threading their fingers through your hair to calm you down. That way. I've always been that way. Throughout the two years I wanted to be soothed so badly, I think of the word often, ‘soothe,’ the word itself is so delicate and comforting. So for most of the nights I slept on that bed, in the tiny room with the stained gray carpet, looking longingly out the window, to perhaps catch a glimpse of this future self of mine. A pillar of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel. Looking for her desperately, feeling her looking back at me.
A version of myself who got through it all, a version of my who possesses hindsight and strength and grace. A woman who survived, someone who could back into the window on the second floor and hold all the hurt for me. Just hold it. Just for the sake of a morsel of relief. And tell me everything would be okay one day, because she knows, because she's lived it. Us knowing, her knowing, me knowing, the moment would come.