It must have been a couple of years ago, I was unglamorously emerging from the tube exit opposite St Pancras station, huffing and puffing while wondering how black my bogeys were going to be this time from all the sticky, Piccadilly-line commuter air, when I was hit with a somewhat cringe-worthy realisation: ‘I am living my dream’. Not just in a metaphorical sense, but quite literally.
10 years earlier almost to the day, my parents gifted me a three-day trip to London for my 18th birthday. Admittedly, the 72 hours spent on a cloud visiting the Natural History Museum and stuffing my face with Patisserie goodies in South Kensington looked somewhat different to my reality today, renting a tiny flat in Hornsey and taking a lung-cancer inducing daily Zone 3 commute but still, had someone told me back than that a few degrees, badly paid internships and one difficult career decision later I’d be casually passing St Pancras on my way to work, I would have recommended them to get an MRI.
My love for the British Isles started in my early teens. During a school exchange to Toton near Nottingham, a heady mix of S-Club Seven tunes, Galaxy minstrels and the discovery of GHD hair straighteners – you’re guessing right, it was the early 2000s – changed how I would see the world forever and made my frizzy-haired head dream of moving to the UK upon finishing school.
You would think that the reality of NHS waiting lists, Brexit, and the grotesque sight of people sleeping in the street only a few feet away from special edition aubergine-coloured Lamborghinis would have taken away some of that charm by now – but then I find myself sitting in a friend’s garden mistaking the sounds of a nearby shooting range for a woodpecker, and I realise, nope, my delusion when it comes to living in London still runs deep.
It must have been the red-brick, gothic splendour of the Victorian station building and the near-collision with a tourist taking pictures of said splendour that broke my morning monotony that day and reminded me of my fairy-talesque circumstances. Among the daily grind of making my way as a twentysomething with a literature degree and working-class background (read no generational wealth) in one of the most expensive cities on earth, I had somehow ended up sleep-walking through my dream.
So, just for a moment, there on the pavement, I could almost sense what life feels like for someone who uses #blessed unironically. Since I first set foot in Toton at age 13, the goal of living and working in London was my guiding thread and I had eventually reached its end. However, instead of a pot of gold and happily ever after or whatever you are meant to find at the end of these things, I was overcome with an immediate sense of dread. And a glaring, frightening, gaping emptiness inside of me, that left plenty of room for one question and one question only to ricochet through my anxious innards – ‘So. what. next?
For a couple of years following that moment, I considered going down the usual path for a white cis woman in a stable relationship with a regular income approaching her thirties. But however hard I listened to my inner murmurings as I saw friends adopt pets, throw weddings, start families, get mortgages and travel around the world, I couldn’t make out the slightest feeling of envy, jealousy or desire, indicating that I was wishing for any of these things.
All the while, increasingly bigger pieces of shit hitting the fan in the shape of global heating and pandemics and recessions made me question whether these dreams are something that I can or should want to achieve.
So instead, I am doing what any nineties babe with a huge amount of existential angst and no money for a therapist would do – I am starting a blog. To explore what kind of narratives about femininity and love and culture and success we tell ourselves and whether they actually lead to happiness, be that on a personal or planetary level. At the very least, shouting into the digital void like this allows me to delay making any real-life decisions until another day.