I’ll begin to put out normal content tomorrow, but today, you get this.
At some point I thought home and didn’t stop till I left and I haven’t felt that way since. Here in London I’ve had moments where I felt exhilarated, moments I felt incandescently happy, but it hasn’t been quite the happiness that Oxford instilled in me. I never wanted to leave. If it had been me today, this person who’s managed to survive this long in London — I would have made it work for me. But I was so far from me today back then.
A Few Things I Miss
By Lix Hewett, Age 24 And 3 Quarters
1. My cat. He’s in Spain and I’m living in London and his name is Oxford. His name explains a lot of things about me. It hints that I’ve romanticized England a little bit, in my head and my heart and my memory. It hints that even though it feels impossible right now, London may not be where I want to set down roots. But mostly it reminds me that I wanted to live here since I was in Oxford six years ago now, the first time I met my best friend in person, the strange summer weather, iced vanilla lattes and sitting in a coffee shop with a book, the time I found a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets without two bricks’ worth of notes weighing them down, walking in the Botanic Garden and forgetting the flies as they flew past me and still having some faith in the educational system, the loveliness of the big old buildings, the sunset over Jericho and the thought of fall.
2. My childhood. This is a tricky one. More than once in my life I’ve had the thought of going back in time and I never wanted to unlearn my lessons, the realities and priorities I carry with me that shape who I am and how I feel and why I do. The further away I steer from the starting point, the harder it is to believe that I was ever without them, that I could have walked down another path and been influenced by different people. But sometimes depression weighs me down, and I wish I could leave my life in my parents’ hands again, trust them to keep a roof over my head and answer the door to strangers and tell me I’m all right as I am but here’s how I could be better, no pressure, all your choice, step by step, which I never got from my parents but I did get, eventually, off people I met on the Internet.
That’s what I never want to lose. I worry if I went back in time I might not do what I did, not every single bit, and lose them. And even though it’s a nice thought
3. Not getting angry when the world doesn’t listen and
4. Not getting angry at every little bit of bullshit, I don’t want to not be someone who acknowledges her failings and the ways she has it easy and will actually put her massive ego aside to support those who don’t because I’m only as important as the next human being and I neither need nor want more of that and I’m only as good as the choices I make every day with my time and my little reach, the only things I’m secure enough in – have enough of – to give away.
5. Financial stability. The illusion of it would work.
6. Chocolate. It’s only been a few days, but the weather’s got cold and I don’t have any and I need.
7. Being an only child, because eighteen years ago may be just long enough ago on the timeline for the things I miss to be real, solid and not slipping away even in the nostalgia-walled fantasies I sometimes have before I go to sleep, where no stranger in the night – human or thing or thought – can ever get to me before first getting through my parents,
8. Believing that there’s someone in the world who can protect you from anything, infallibly;
9. Believing my heart is safe on my sleeve;
10. Wrapping my feelings in words and making poetry with it all, so here’s a silly — but heartfelt — tablet attempt at it.