United Kingdom
Friday, July 4th, 2014
Hi I love traveling alone and I want to do this forever.
I think I will.
When I arrived in London, I was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed and alone. I flew in not only on a friday the 13th, but on a full moon as well. My flight from Wichita to Chicago went relatively smooth- only twenty minutes late. My second flight from Chicago to New York was nearly six hours late because of some biblical storm in NYC. When we finally arrived at JFK airport, we circled until we were out of fuel because everything was so backed up. When we touched down, we waited thirty minutes on our landed plane to park at the terminal. Then we were legitimately locked in our gate’s hallway for ten minutes. The power on my third flight from NYC to London went out and that might have been the scariest bit of my trip. My luggage was lost for two days and I was in my own daze.
EVERYTHING WENT UP FROM THERE
I’ve never felt more in sync with my brain. It’s fun to test my limits. I’ve met the most interesting people, I’ve navigated cities all by my lonesome, and I’ve learned more about myself in the past few weeks than I have in my entire existence. I don’t really have many pictures of London which is odd because I was there for actually ever. Pictures and even words have been so secondary lately. There is no way I can do any sort of justice to this planet, so I kind of just decided to live it.
I met up with one of my friend’s from back home friends. Who lives in Georgia and happened to be in London at the same time as me. We did touristy things and ate weird foods and I like her. I made so many lovely friends in London, but it was nice to get away from the speedy city of London for a few hours and make my way to Bath, which I’m still lusting over. That’s a city I would live in. I specifically love all of the parks. Everyone just straight up chills wherever- reading, drinking, talking, being. It’s nice to see that kind of relaxation. (update: Bath didn’t compare to Amsterdam)
I visited the Roman Baths- which were being emptied and cleaned (lol what?!) Aside from the fact that the Romans were architectural geniuses and the baths still function properly twenty centuries in the future, the part that intrigued me the most was that they thought the hot springs were the gods and the goddesses, so of course they bathed to heal and socialize, but they also wrote lists of wrong doers, saying things like “Kurt stole two silver coins from me. He deserves to be without a mind and a tongue” and they threw these comments in the hot spring in order to get the gods attention. Some were just lists of names. A hit list for the gods? Like high school only in the first century. They actually had a preserved skeleton of a Roman who lived in Bath, which intrigued me because hello, anatomy and bones and all things odd.
I miss my family. I’ve never been away from them for this long. I miss my kitten. She isn’t a kitten anymore. I miss my bed. I miss being able to be naked whenever I want. I miss peanut butter. I miss constants. But I’ll miss this. I’ve never felt more present. Everything from “home” has melted away. Every problem, every boy seems irrelevant. I don’t know how to small talk anymore. I don’t know what I’ll tell people about this trip. This journey has forced me to face myself and to reevaluate absolutely everything from what I’ll do for the rest of my summer to what I’ll do for the rest of my life.
I have all of these stories that I don’t even feel like sharing with anyone. I know. The people I was with know. That’s enough.
Even this general post feels odd. I couldn’t begin to describe any specifics to anyone but my journal if I tried.
I know I’m posting this from Paris on Independence Day, and that’s weird. I’ve never not seen fireworks on the fourth of July, but honestly I’ve never felt more independent. I wanted my life to change and it has. I wanted to feel and I have. I’m not even two decades into this world and I’ve done done things that dying humans wish they would have had the courage to do at 18 or 20 or even 90, and I’m at peace.
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Wondering & Wandering