My Mumbling Thoughts

Everyone can feel the end drawing near in the pit of their stomachs. It makes me sit up a little straighter, it makes my senses a little sharper and I wait on edge for the grand finale. Soon, all of this will be over. Soon, I won't have to worry about what this lecturer said about my essay, or what that lecturer thinks about my ideas for my final project. Soon, I'll go back to the way things were in Virginia and soon my life here in London will only be a story that I'll tell to people who've wondered where I've been for the past three years.

Soon.

But not yet.

At the current moment I'm mustering up enough energy to get me through the next couple of weeks, which I will inevitably be sat at Bridget clicking and clacking away at essays, proposals, chapters and character checklists. Finally I do believe I'm ready to start hacking away at the words that have been on constant repeat inside of my head for the past two months. Hopefully they'll be coherent enough for me to pass my final year and leave me feeling like I at least accomplished something semi-respectable while I've been here frittering time away as if I have nothing else better to do. It's a slow and tedious process, like squeezing jam out of those "simply made easy!" bottles, but I'm sure I'll get there in the end.

These days I'm more at ease with myself yet I don't think that I've fully realized that yep, I'm almost done with university. I try not to look more than three days ahead into the future, because looking any farther would surely make me sink back down into my self-loathing cave to never return. I'm looking forward to being done with all of this university nonsense, however, I'm sort of left standing with a dumb look on my face as to what I'm supposed to do after I'm finished.

I know I want to go home. I so desperately want to go back to Virginia. Whenever folks ask me here about my plans after university, for some reason I always say that I'm looking for internships, work placements (which I am looking and applying) and I wouldn't mind staying here for a while after the Student Life. I don't know why I tell them that, though. It's as if that answer is pre-recorded in my brain and the moment any variations of the question is asked, I spit out that automated response. And I don't really mean it.

Mostly I think it's just because that's what I say for conversational purposes, or maybe I think that's what people want to hear from me. And I don't want to tell them that I'm dying to go back home to my mother and my sister. Why leave the glamorous life of London to go back to the country life in Virginia?

Because deep down, y'all, I am a country girl. And the saying is so true: you can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl.

I left my "simple life" that I thought was boring and dull, to move over three-thousand miles away to a city that I love, yet taught me that I'm not cut out for all of this. My relationship with London has slowly grown to the point where all of the things that I once loved, now really get on my nerves and drive me up the wall. The sirens, the masses of people, the cluttered buildings, the noise, the different "scenes", the traffic, the constant moving, the drinking, the pounding, the smoke, the dramas, the heartache, the struggling, the Everything. I just can't do it anymore. I'm not built to constantly be on the go. I'm not a Modern City Woman. I can only wear high heels for so long before I'm slipping into my flat shoes so I can walk without contorting my body into some kind of weird pretzel figure.

And I think part of me finds it difficult to accept that fact. Maybe I'm not a city girl. Maybe I belong back in the quiet space of the townhouse wearing American Eagle jeans, flip flops and a t-shirt. I'm a simple gal. I enjoy sweet tea at any time of day. Give me a front porch with a rocking chair and stray cats at my feet any day of the week and I am happy.

Oh, but how I so desperately wanted to live out my fantasy as the Modern City Woman. I wanted to wear the high-waisted skirts, the crisp, fitted blouses and black stilettos that would cause a crowd to separate and recognize that I was a force to be reckoned with. That would've been awesome. It would've been hot. It is what I thought I could be here in one of the greatest cities in the world.

There are so many reasons why I fit and mould into The City Life. There are fantastic things about being in a city that I love, appreciate and am enamored by. They are beautiful, historical and a perfect battle ground for people to show what they're really made of in today's society. But the reasons why I fit aren't good enough for me to stay. At least not right now.

I miss the drawl of a deep southern accent. I miss the cowboys. I miss the sticky air, the vast openness, the symphony of crickets and June bugs, the sunsets behind the townhouse, the mountains in the horizon, the dust that my feet kick up, the funny tan lines, the hot rain and the fact that it takes me at least forty minutes to drive to the nearest city (hello DC!).

I miss home.

I am torn and a strange hybrid of City mixed with Country. I can't seem to find the right balance between both lives, or I can't seem to choose which one I'd like to stick with for more than three years. I'm sure after I take a break from the City Life I'll be dying to come back. I am such a fickle creature and wish I could hurry up and make up my mind. All I know is that right now my heart is dying for some fried green tomatoes, a tall glass of cold lemonade and some folk music playing in the background.

Posted by Sam at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Something unusual happened that caused me to disappear for the past two weeks. Something that I'm generally not used to and had to step back, recognize and deal with.

I was in a genuinely good mood.

Scratch that.

I was in a genuinely FANTASTIC mood.

Oh my god, I was over the moon, slap my knee, jump up and kiss my uncle thoroughly happy. And I soaked every last drop of it in as if I were a cactus in the desert during a monsoon thunderstorm. I tell y'all, it has been a while since I was so happy.

Now, I'm still quite happy. My mood hasn't dropped significantly nor has it continued to sky rocket, but it is a nice, stable happiness that makes me swell up like a balloon and float off into the clear blue skies that London has been blessed with for the past week or so.

Perhaps it's the lovely weather that has been stretched over the city. Perhaps it's the fact that I had a big breakthrough in one of my counseling sessions that made me more aware of what has been weighing me down. Or perhaps it's the fact that two of my deadlines have been pushed back giving me enough time to breathe and not stress anywhere near as much as I was stressing beforehand about all of my work.

I would have to say that it's a combination of all three.

Y'all, this is the last "official" week of my university life. After this week, I no longer have any lectures to attend. Yes, I still have work that I need to do and turn in after Easter, but once this week is through, university is kind of over for me. No more lectures. No more in-class assignments. No more homework. No more tutorials (unless we ask for them personally). No more. I'll be done. Finished. Kaput.

And I have never been happier in my life!

I did discover, though, why I was having such a difficult time writing before. While I do have some "mother issues" and some "fear with failure" issues, the main issue was that I was in mourning. I was grieving the loss of my university life that I never had.

I always say that I don't regret for one second deciding to come over here to study, and that even though it has been really tough for me, the life experiences that I've gained, the friends that I've made and the memories that I cherish are worth every other minute that I was sitting in my room on those low days sulking. These past three years have been... incredible, for lack of a better word. They have forever changed me as a person and I consider myself to be extremely lucky to even have had this experience.

However, the one thing that has always been a slight problem for me, but something that I tend not to think about because it upsets me so much, is the academic side of things. For all of this money that I've shelled out and that Momma has put forward, I don't feel like I received the greatest educational experience that I could have gotten. True, I didn't go to all of my lectures, and yes my attitude was pretty poor for most of the time, however, I don't blame myself entirely for it ending up that way.

Before I even stepped one foot onto our campus, I already had an image in my head of what it was going to be like. I had dreamt about what my lecturers were going to be like, what they would teach all of us young writers who were so eager and willing to plunge head first into a world of nothing but Writing All The Time. I'd be consumed with all of this creativity and university would be a safe environment where I could explore my different ideas and nurture soon-to-be fantastic, life changing projects. Everyone was going to drink hot tea in paper cups that they would buy from the local cafe and wear fingerless gloves, chain smoke and only wear cool, funky clothes that they would find in random charity shops.

I mean, it wasn't a "specific" picture, but you get what I mean...

So I got here, and that fantasy of mine was soon replaced with reality, which was less picturesque and more nightmarish. The lecturers turned out to be part-time, washed up writers that had mild success and thought that preaching to youngsters like myself would somehow gain them notoriety and massage their egos for not being the latest, greatest "thing". The modules that we had to take, the writing "exercises" that were designed for us, I had already done throughout high school and the enthusiasm that I was expecting from everyone was more like a chore that they were being forced to come to this place and try new things.

I was deflated. I was let down. I was saddened by the fact that my dream of an academic smorgasbord was more like a tortured jail cell and nobody else shared my conviction.

Of course there were other Life Things going on throughout the past years that distracted me from my work and brought me down, but the lack of warrant on the academic side of life didn't help boost me up either. How was I supposed to be motivated with my own work when our lecturers didn't even seem interested? How was I supposed to continue on doing what I love when they told us from the very beginning that most of us were going to fail? How was I supposed to stay focused, be a One Woman Cheerleader for myself and keep smiling every day when the work was lackluster, my peers were just as downtrodden and our lecturers were patronizing?

It sucked and I wasn't impressed.

So I developed a grudge. A really bad grudge against some of my lecturers and blamed them for my poor academia. According to me, it was because of them that I lost the will to write. I lost the passion to write. I lost the love to write. They took that from me, and I harbored some serious anger towards them.

I knew it wasn't completely their fault, but I decided it partially was. My university and my lecturers proper let me down, and I never really felt like I could go to them and talk about it. I just felt like another name on their list and resented them for shoving us all in the same category, for herding us around like mindless sheep, as if the last three years were a complete waste and the joke was on all of us. They should have been encouraging us to do better, to continue forward, to hold our heads up and never let the bad side of things get us down. But they didn't, and it was hurtful. At least it was to me.

So for the past couple of months, I was grieving and I didn't even know it. I was mourning the death of my academic life and carrying around this sadness in my chest, carrying this grudge, carrying this giant load of hate towards them and myself. Why did I do the full three years? Why didn't I just get out after the first year and decide to go somewhere else?

Because I couldn't. I wouldn't let myself do that. I just hoped that it would get better as time went on, and after all that bloody time and effort I spent years before trying to get over here in the first place! Hell no. I was going to finish even if it killed me.

Speaking with Maria helped me discover this. I said the things that I never allowed myself to think let alone say out loud. What if I made the wrong decision? What if all of this was a complete and utter waste of time and money? What if I was deluding myself into believing something that wasn't true?

As soon as those words left my mouth and touched the air, I cried.

And ever since that day, I've been smiling and being kind to myself.

Posted by Sam at 07:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Thursdays it seems will probably be heavy emotional days for me. Well, at least for the next five weeks anyway. I went to go for my latest counseling session and even though my new counselor, Maria, isn't as good as Fran was (in my humble opinion), it still did help quite a bit and gave me some new things to think about. Or perhaps, not-so-new things to think about, because we all know that I have "mother issues". I don't think that these "issues" are necessarily bad, but they do tend to hold me back from time to time. Which, I suppose to some people would be bad. I just think that it prolongs what I'm going to do in the end and I tend to think about things a lot longer than most people.

It's not a secret that I've been finding it hard to do my uni work for the past couple of months. I've felt no motivation whatsoever to take up a pen, or rest my fingertips at the keyboard and begin typing away. There's nothing there folks. It's just me staring off into space for three days, then going out somewhere to distract my thoughts from the fact that I have still yet to write anything. I suppose you could call it writer's block, but it's not the fact that I don't know what to write about. Because I know what I have to write. I know how I want to write it. I've done all the necessary reading, made all of the necessary notes and everything is planned out. All that's left for me to do is to actually write it all out.

Write.

Write it all.

After my first session with Maria, I discovered (through all of my incessant talking) that I have this massive fear. This giant, mountainous fear of failing. Not failing myself, because that I could handle and deal with. No, no. Failing my mother.

Momma. I cannot bear failing that woman anymore. All of my life has been one giant failure after the other (at least in my eyes). Even though I know she's proud of me and I know that she loves bragging and gushing to all of her coworkers, there's this tiny part inside of me that never wants to fail her. I only want to make her happy. I only want her to be proud of me. There's nothing more in this world that I want than to please my mother. And in my mind, if I ever were to fail her, especially fail at university, it would be the worst thing in the entire world. There's no such thing as failing in my mind. Failure is not an option. There's only planning every last minute detail, then executing all of the plans perfectly and finally living happily ever after.

My only problem is that I can't execute everything that I've been planning for weeks.

Maria told me that I need to spend some time alone for a while. I need to stop distracting myself and Just Do It. And through the next five sessions (our university says that after six sessions they'll decided whether or not we need further counseling or not) we'll explore the reasons behind why my brain clogs up like a rusted sink and fails me when it comes to important things like my final university projects.

Maria also told me that I need to take notice of when I do distract myself; what do I do? Do I go into the kitchen? Do I surround myself with the babies? Do I listen to music and get lost in my thoughts for hours upon hours?

Yes, yes and yes.

We'll also talk about that in my next Thursday appointment.

After my allotted fifty minutes, I called Trish up and smoked a cigarette.

I know! I know! But y'all would have needed a cigarette afterwards too. I was on the verge of tears (because I'm emotional cry baby) and it's hard to talk about Momma the way I was talking about her behind closed doors. My throat went really dry, I was avoiding all eye contact (the floor is an amazing space) and being as open and honest as possible with somebody who would gladly sit in silence once I stopped talking. Sitting in silence isn't fun. It's uncomfortable.

That cigarette was good. Damn, it was good.

Then for the next two days I decided to get out of the flat and wander around different shops by myself. I went into Kingston on Friday, and on Saturday I popped into Hammersmith. Both days were equally fulfilling and definitely helpful to clearing out my mental space. I just walked around with my iPod, combed through random dresses and thought about everything that I said whilst the sun was blinding me in Maria's office.

I am scared. I am so terrified about these next couple of weeks coming up that I can hardly stand it. I'm scared of failing. I'm scared of doing all of my assignments wrong. I'm scared that I might have to spend an extra semester here making up for not having enough credits to graduate. Most of all I'm scared that if I do fail, I'll have to tell Momma and deal with her wrath. I know how expensive it is to live over here. I know how much money she has put forth for me to live and study over here. I know what she has done and given up for me.

And I know that if I fail, it'll be another disappointment from me.

So there it is.

I now know, though, after talking to myself in Maria's office and thinking to myself on Friday and Saturday that me sitting around and staring at a blank wall waiting for some kind of fairy to come in my room and bop me on my head with their magical Motivation Wand isn't going to happen. I gotta do this. I just need to suck it up, knuckle down and squeeze every last possible word out of my fingertips if it kills me. And at the end of the day, whether I fail or not doesn't matter. Because the next day will arrive just as the previous one did before; the world will still keep turning. Somehow, I'll manage to keep going forward just like I always do.

Posted by Sam at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had sex with the only good straight, male friend that I have.

There. I said it.

I don't know why, because it's not like I wanted to. He was there. I was there. We were both so drunk. And, well, as the saying goes, "one thing led to another..."

I've known Ando since my first year of university. I remember seeing him in the bar and it was when I was going through the whole, "I'm over boy Sam, but not really over boy Sam and plan to disguise my pain by hooking up with the first fit bloke I see" phase. Right on cue, Ando waltzed through the bar wearing a yellow t-shirt and trendy jeans looking ever so fit and bearing a strong resemblance to this guy.

Ever since that fateful day when Trish pretended to be a journalism student to nonchalantly get information out of him about whether or not he was single, gay, his age and so forth, we've been good friends. My crush for Ando turned into friendship and nothing more. He had a brief thing with Carlene and so it has always been.

He dropped out halfway through second year, though, and we only see each other whenever he makes a visit into the city, one of those visits being this past weekend. We decided to meet for lunch, have a couple of drinks and catch up. Trish was away for her birthday festivities, Carlene wasn't responding to any of his text messages, so it'd just be us two for the afternoon, which was fine with me. I was a little bit unnerved when I thought that Carlene would be with us since I don't speak to her anymore, but it was just us two in the end.

We had lunch, had two pints and decided to go to another pub with a garden so he could smoke while we watched the football. It was Tottenham versus Manchester United in the FA Cup final, which meant absolutely nothing to me, but I watched with him anyway whist we drank many more pints and laughed and laughed about anything and everything.

The thing about Ando is that he's just like me, except a man. I talk to him about the guys I've been with and he tells me about the girls he has hooked up with, fancies and whatnot. Our relationship is so easy because we're practically the same and understand one another. And I think one of the reasons why I don't fancy him is because I know him now. We've passed that barrier that most guys and girls have to go through and there hasn't ever been a question of whether or not I fancy him or he fancies me. No. We're just friends, that's all.

As the afternoon turned into evening, though, and my vision became blurry and my brain wasn't thinking clearly, I did wonder for about two seconds whether or not Ando was flirting or making an attempt to flirt with me every so often. I just brushed him off, though, and told him to piss off and made a joke out of it. It was just him being silly and drunk and didn't mean anything. It wasn't until he was in my bed and kissed me that I finally thought, "oh dear."

There's always that fear that if you have sex with one of your best friends that it'll change the relationship. It'll never be the same and now there will be constant awkwardness because ick, now I've seen you naked and you've seen me naked. And that fear was there for a little bit. I was scared that I had just ruined my friendship with one of the few single, straight men that I know. Why! Oh why do I drink!?

But that fear soon dissipated once Ando woke up and asked me how I was doing. I was still me, he was still Ando, and this really wasn't a big deal. If anything, it was more comical. We laughed, he told me that he was not looking forward to being at work for 9a.m. with a massive hang over and I flopped back into my pillows and remembered him falling off the bed at one point and me laughing my ass off. It was a comfort that I haven't felt for a while with a guy and I was glad that we could both be so calm and casual about our drunken antics.

He gave me a hug and left early in the morning so he could catch his train, and I slept until it was time for me to get ready for an afternoon lecture. I don't plan on speaking to him now until he next comes down for a visit, but it's not weird and I won't be stressing over anything, because that's just how we are. It is a rare security for me that I'm comfortable with.

I'll tell you who did send me a text message though.

Why can't some guys just accept that I don't want to talk to them?

Posted by Sam at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)