Solace in the City

I've always told myself I hated London - I went for one weekend at the end of the summer a couple of years ago and found it congested, oppressing and stifling.

Then I managed to land myself a work experience placement at a very popular UK magazine (I don't know either) in London.

And now here I am, falling hopelessly in love with the dynamic, exhilarating capital. I left home yesterday under some heavy circumstances and sat staring motionless out of the train window for the entire 2 hour journey down, but by the time I was hustling my way out of Euston station I finally felt alive, lifted and almost happy - it was good to be in a different place again. I have missed travelling like I would a lost limb, I have missed being a stranger in a strange place.

Life recently seems like a series of badly timed events - I find myself awestruck by the ability of fate to leave me blind, deaf & dumb at what it throws at me, but when I walk the streets of London I feel all of my senses coming back to me. The heart of the city beats along to my footsteps, the people are diverse, beautiful, interesting. There is noise and colour at every corner, opportunity awaits every person who dares to seize it. This trip comes at a peculiar time of my life that I never anticipated - I had stalled at a crossroads and now I find myself taking a welcome detour into the city. It is undeniably a welcome distraction, a bustling hub of electricity that has no time for sadness or reflection, it's exactly what the doctor ordered.

I take comfort from being alone and surrounded by strangers - us humans are living, breathing proof that life goes on, despite adversity, the world keeps turning, the trains keep running, the sun still rises everyday. It is nice, sometimes, to be nothing but a spectator in a world full of performers.

As for my work experience, I was apprehensive that it was going to be a Devil Wears Prada remake and I would be running around with Demelza's Chai Half-decaffeinated Macchiato (nope, that's probably not even a thing) with tears in my eyes and some bitch on my back; but the awful truth is that everyone has perfectly normal names, is absolutely lovely, and drinks tea. I even got to write a few pieces that will hopefully go up on the company website. It was amazing, to actually work doing something I love, researching, contacting publishers, checking facts and asking for high resolution images. At one point I was writing an article on slippers, and I promise you, nobody has ever been so damn excited over slippers.

I can see now how easy it is, to lose yourself in a career - like a relationship, when you find the right one, you just want to go further and further into it, hoping that it turns out to be a lifelong passion.

I'll admit, with every high comes its low, and I have had an awful, suffocating sinking feeling when I have returned back to my empty apartment (as nice as it is - it has a HAMMOCK) but most of this is down to what is happening in my life right now and how much my heart longs for the comfort of someone. Being alone in a city full of people gives you a true sense of irony, but also of solace. I know that the streets are there, just down two flights of stairs and out of my front door, the tube (chancery lane) is a two minute walk away and then about 5 minutes (if that) to Oxford Circus, where I can be surrounded by people and noise and life and bustle and forget what it was that was weighing me down.

Life hasn't been easy recently, and the worst isn't quite yet over, but I am now forever in debt to London, I have found a soho state of mind here, I have found solace in the city.