Here/One Month In

Today marks the one month mark since I arrived in the USA. All my good intentions of blogging daily in the run up to leaving, and in my first days here went the way of all things.

But here I am in my new home, in my new city. And it's good. And it's strange. It's what I thought it would be, but also totally different... if that makes any sense. Maybe I didn't know what to expect.

I am now determined to be a good blogger. I'm feeling the absence of my time spent with my therapist, safely back in the Old Country, and the ability to spend a block of time concentrating on how I'm feeling. Here's a just a couple of the things that have made me think 'I want to blog this' over the last few weeks.

12 days in, I had left my first visitor at the airport after her wonderful stay. I was driving away from the airport in the muggy dark of early morning, when it hit me: I live here. It's not me who leaves anymore, it's other people. I was overcome with emotion and cried all the way back to town.

The house I'm living in is at the top of a hill. The area is wonderfully green, covered with tall, beautiful trees. Below us, on one of the main street out of the city, is a large commercial bakery. As I walk up to my back door (pictured above) I am wooed by the smell of freshly made bread. And as I lie in bed, or sit at my desk I can hear the mournful sound of the trains that trundle through the city with their heavy freight. It's an achingly beautiful sound that fills me with joy and longing in equal measure.

As Tears Roll By

The crying part of leaving has started.

To be honest I'm surprised that it took this long to really kick in, but it's now here in full effect and I don't think it's in any danger of going away for these last 17 days.

As I say, though, it took a while to come. There's been a few goodbyes at work with people going on holiday and missing my final days, and on Friday I took the opportunity of a quiet moment to clear out my desk. Not a tear shed.

Saturday afternoon I also said goodbye to one of the teams I've been working with for the last couple of years, and nary shed a drop. On Saturday night my two best friends from university came to stay. We went out for dinner and then danced into the wee-small hours, followed by a chilled morning of brunch and watching (bizarrely) High School Musical. When they said goodbye there was a sniff and a small tear, but nothing major...

Then last night at dinner mum finally crumbled. Having prided herself on keeping it all in for months, she was cross at being the first one to crack, but crack she did and she took me with her.

With the tears have come some real revelations. I know that in trying not to be in a state of grief for the entire last three months I've actively suppressed any big 'leaving' feelings for a long time. Just last week I described feeling somewhat numb - like I'd stepped into the boat along time ago and was now simply along for the ride - but now every sinew has woken up and joined the chorus - I'm really really going to miss my family.

This is something I've had to explain to mum. I'm not choosing to leave them - I'd take them all with me if I could - but in the same way as mum knows she can't choose my life, I can't choose theirs. I see that life is easier if your family is near - particularly for those with children. I see what I'm going to miss living apart from them, and not even a long drive away, an ocean away. It's a big big thing.

I also realise that, as much as I've wanted to move to my new city for a long time, I know now for certain that if it were not for my love I wouldn't have the strength to leave my family.

Singing My Heart

If you're the type to get icky with the slushy love stuff, then look away now.

This afternoon, listening through to some new CDs I discovered a song that sang my heart to me in a way that had me almost instantly in tears.

Randy Newman, songwriter extraordinaire, has a new album of wonderfully bluesy songs... but at the very end, he's slipped on his own version of an unabashedly slushy love song he wrote for a movie, and that was originally sung by a lovely Canadian called Chantal.

It took me out. Maybe more-so because of his half singing/half speaking style (which at times reminds me of Kermit the Frog, but somehow still works) seems to add weight to it. Anyway. Here it is: My heart in lyric form.

There's something in your eyes
Makes me want to lose myself
Makes me want to lose myself
In your arms

There's something in your voice
Makes my heart beat fast
Hope this feeling lasts
The rest of my life

If you knew how lonely my life has been
And how low I've felt for so long
If you knew how I wanted someone
To come along
And change my world the way you've done

Feels like home to me
Feels like home to me
Feels like I'm all the way back where I come from
Feels like home to me
Feels like home to me
Feels like I'm all the way back where I belong

A window breaks
Down a long, dark street
And a siren wails in the night
But that's alright, 'cause I have you here with me
And I can almost see
Through the dark there's a light

If you knew
How much this moment
Means to me
And how long I've waited for your touch
If you knew
How happy you are making me
I never thought I'd love anyone so much

Feels like home to me
Feels like home to me
Feels like I'm all the way back where I come from
Feels like home to me
Feels like home to me
Feels like I'm all the way back where I belong
Feels like I'm all the way back where I belong

To Do

23 days from today I'll have said my goodbyes and be waiting to board. Today this doesn't fill me with excitement, but with the kind of fear that freezes me into a little tub of pure procrastination.

Whilst I know that doing even one of the things that's nagging in my mind would totally knock the fear on its ass, I sit here and blog; check emails; drink coffee; think about watching an episode of Heroes; and pretend that it might just go away.

Maybe I should make a list... that always whiles away the hours.

• Check I have travel insurance that covers me for health till December
• Pack the boxes
• Find out if any of my US friends coming over soon can take anything back for me
• Transfer household bills into Sis's name
• Cancel standing orders/direct debits etc
  
• Invoice magazines I've been writing for for nearly a year and who have yet to pay me
• Make appointment with financial fella

You know what, I could actually do most of that today. In fact... I think I will. After I've had a really good look at Facebook.

one step closer, getting brighter

When I first made the decision to move to another city in another country it was about change and community in almost equal measure.

I've needed change for a while, felt in a constant holding pattern with work, life, and in the absence of love. With the aspect of community, while I have some incredible friends here in London, my new city has had a strange feeling of home for a long time. The people there are my people and in their company I somehow become... more.

In recent months there's been another reason to feel it my home, in that my love and I found each other - and he is there. To call it a burgeoning romance would be only partly true in that it feels more like an explosion. The outcomes are sometimes similar too, in that is has been far from easy, but these are stories for other times. Today I post this, a home made video that a nice stranger on YouTube made for this song, which my love sent me this morning.

He marked the email "a song for the 4 weeks":

Wandering through starry skies
And when tomorrow's day arrives
I'll be a morning closer to the
Brightest hour here with you

There She Goes! Here She Comes!

This afternoon I went to my great aunt's funeral. At 93, she'd lived an incredible life and was a wonderful human being, so the service and time after were the perfect mix of sadness and celebration.

In these last days before the off it was also magical to spend time with this wider chunk of my family. People I love dearly, but rarely get to see; mum's cousins and their children - my second cousins - who I feel genuinely lucky to call family.

My great aunt was the only girl among 7 children, and possessed the rare and wonderful combination of a natural grace and a wicked sense of houmour - something I see reflected in my cousin C. The easiest and most generous of people to talk to, after an hour in her presence you feel like you're shining.

She read this poem by Van Dyke, often used at funerals I understand, but it also reminded me of my own coming journey across and ocean, and the pull from either side.

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says, 'There she goes!'

Gone where?

Gone from my sight ... that is all.

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says, 'There she goes!' there are other eyes watching her coming and their voices ready to take up the glad shouts 'Here she comes!’

stepping into the stream

I've tried to leave London before. Or, I've certainly thought a lot about it.

I went to the new city that's to become my home for a decent chunk of time once before but, although I loved it, it didn't seem right to stay. Now I realise what was really happening: It's not that I wasn't ready to stay, it's that I wasn't ready to leave London.

All my young life I dreamed of moving to London, living life in the big city, commuting to work on the tube, striding through town with a briefcase and a purpose - a big-shot girl-about-town. The day I walked towards what has been my place of work for the last decade all this flashed through my mind with such clarity that it brought me up short. I stopped dead in the street and looked at the building. I actually work here.

When I dipped my toe in the water 5 years ago, toying with the idea of moving on, I was a long way from ready. The water was warm, but it was fear of the current that kept me from going in. Inertia in all her glory keeping me from being willing to submit myself to being swept away from the good things I'd come to know.

The other day my therapist asked me to explain how I'm feeling about the move right now, in these last days. Whilst there is the mix of excitement and grief, at the moment I feel like I'm just going with the flow: The decisions have been made (ticket bought, notice given, flat sold, and room rented) and, having stepped into the stream, I'm now simply moving with the now-unchangeable force that is leaving. I may as well sit back and enjoy the ride.

It's going to be emotional.

New Start

In 30 days I uproot my life and move the the USA.

Here is where I'll write all about these last days of hopes, goodbyes, endings and beginnings, and a whole lot of whatthehellamIthinking?!s

Here is where I'll measure the spans, and beat out the rhythms of my new days.

Here is where I plan on being as anonymous as possible, whilst still trying to engage in some kind of community.

Here is where my heart may be read.

Here is where we'll see.