im conscious this city will always outlive and outweigh me. ive littered each pavement with sighs and idle talk and the emotional gubbins of life, falling out of my pockets and my mouth
ive scattered photo flashes on every side street of kings cross and checked my makeup on every reflective surface in bloomsbury, and accidentally dropped receipts or change or gossip in every one of the avenues. and life here feels quite circular: it seems to be all about making friends and you make friends from believing that, and almost nothing else feels good or worth it without those friends. so in that way, everything feels possible here, and every version of myself exists simultaneously here. it seems i have finally found a place big and bustling enough to embrace my multitudes- it appears my place in the world is London. on every corner is the ex-residence of someone greater and deader than me, however dead i may sometimes feel, who has achieved the spectacular in some capacity. i like that. i like that i am nobody and everybody here- and that there is always someone weirder, in a better or worse outfit, being louder and more presumptuous, or quieter and more self-conscious. there is always someone more extreme and i love it, i feel cut loose and unwatched, even if only by myself. lorde’s ‘liability’ is now just a song, a well-written ballad for a different person, not me. how could it be about me? im doing fine
ive been repeating this same piece of advice to myself since i was 17, and i’ll share it with you now: dont be cool, dont be hot, be warm. that really stuck with me, enough for me to have it written in my notes app for two years. i want to be friendly and warm and happy, i dont care for performing in my daily life anymore. it reminds me of a recent conversation i had with a friend. we were talking about pretence and instagram, among other things, and i asked ‘doesn’t it worry you that you fear death but you love halloween?’. the same is also true for me, and for most of us i believe; we love the commercial and the performative, but the bare bones of something is just far too scary to look at. we’re all taught to be skinny and we’re all scared of skeletons. being cool is never the same thing twice, never the same trend two years in a row. i dont want peoples liking of me to expire, i want to be remembered as warm or interesting or just kind. i want to be empathetic and dimensional. empathy is choosing to tie urself up in ribbons attached to everyone you love or like or know, and to accept the marionette-like dance of life. there was a version of me who thought love and friendship were like foreign affairs. i thought they were supposed to be cold and sterile and clinical in the way we viewed them. it burned me to touch warm radiators and it irked me to bear witness to vulnerability. im happy to be a different person now
i have been applying this wholesome attitude towards lots of things in my life at the moment. im embracing jellycats and sylvanian families, im enjoying the childlike wonder of the little things, reading what makes me happy, feeling my feelings deeply for once. trying to be less combative and defensive, and more open minded. im forever expanding my collection of vanilla scents: one from my best friend as a gift, one cheap spray i keep repurchasing for old times sake, one that is my mothers go-to, a reed diffuser for my room. i put pictures on the wall of my friends and family and me as a child and ‘melodrama’ by lorde, just so i dont forget who i am, and when i do my stretches in the morning i feel the warmth of being alive draped over me and i dont want to take it off anymore