{"id":42,"date":"2015-01-19T14:45:52","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T03:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emmakateco.com\/?p=42"},"modified":"2018-08-24T13:11:43","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T03:11:43","slug":"london-living-loving-and-leaving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emmakateco.com\/london-living-loving-and-leaving\/","title":{"rendered":"London: Living, Loving and Leaving"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]FYI You can read the final edit of this post on\u00a0Huffington Post<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the \u2018full story\u2019 xx<\/p>\n\"\"\n

It ends with the long haul on the Piccadilly line. Twenty-three stops, Heathrow-bound. Hands in lap, mind adrift and wild. At each point on the line, memories dance to life:\u00a0that one time when; the hilarious morning of; the night when two worlds collided<\/em>. Then, a stop you hadn\u2019t yet ventured to. A missed adventure? Probably. Too bad; it\u2019s too late. Onward the carriage hurtles.<\/p>\n

A handful of commuters filter out at each stop, and return above ground to their \u2018another\u2019 London day. I have no\u00a0another<\/em>\u00a0days remaining; the visa expiry in my passport is uncompromisingly stamped hard and definitive, dated today.<\/p>\n

By the last few stops, all there is left are a few suitcase-clutching travellers facing the same fate. Destination: the sky. Fast-forward and here I am – navigating my way through the labyrinth of airport walls throbbing high with emotion – to the line up. Plane after plane transcends into the night sky; leaving a trail of flickering lights muffled through black sky. Then, nothing. The engine of my plane roars. Lift off.<\/p>\n

And suddenly, I\u2019m gone, too.<\/p>\n

Just like that.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Leaving London is like stepping through the reflection of a mirror, unravelling a life refracted in almost perfect symmetry to setting it up. Retracing and untracing, learning and unlearning. Some parts of the reflection no longer match in symmetry, where life has shifted. My grandfather won\u2019t be there to welcome me where we said departing goodbyes. Adelaide has gained an Apple store. Engagement rings sit snuggly on friends\u2019 fingers; all reminders that parallel life through the mirror has also kept moving. I study myself in the reflection. Much the same, yet I feel expansive. A more lived, worn down, beamed up version of my pre-London self. Hardened; softened; cracked open with the sheer whelm of adventure flooded through.<\/p>\n

My two years in London were the most messy, thrilling, devastating, turbulent, sun-drenched (figuratively), rain-showered (literally), best years of my life.<\/p>\n

The youth mobility visa is an antipodean rite of passage for many twenty-something Australians, with feet on the ground and hearts in the clouds. One non-descript evening, my friend had sent me a simple message: \u201cSo\u2026 want to move to London with me?\u201d and I replied, \u201cYes! Let\u2019s chat.\u201d without even thinking it through. Having recently returned from a stint living in California (her) and France (me), wanderlust tugged relentlessly at us both. And so, a handful of months later, we did.<\/p>\n

We moved to London.<\/p>\n

It began with a one-way ticket, a suitcase full of curiosity for the big unknown; with shoulders heaving from giant sobs and the silhouettes of your closest caught steadfast in your vision, like when you stare at the sun for too long. I had stepped through the Adelaide International security gates and left every single constant behind. As he stamped my passport, the border patrol guy casually asked, \u201cYou got a job there?\u201d and I shook my head. \u201cThat\u2019s ballsy,\u201d he said – and waved me through the gate.<\/p>\n

That very moment is like running through a red light. There\u2019s shock and piercing silence as you catapult down an empty road not quite ready for you; a road you\u2019ve declared and claimed for yourself. The path behind is already gone; only uncertainty lies ahead. It\u2019s impossible to undo, and too late to turn around.<\/p>\n

In the first days of London, we drank endless cups of Yorkshire tea, survived on Terry\u2019s Chocolate Orange and kept hope for finding our London home buoyed with every hit of refresh on Gumtree. We did, soon enough, albeit unfurnished, in Zone 5 and thus not officially in London. We held rental keys to our tiny flat above the vegetable shop, and woke on the first January morning to blinding snow blanketing pitched rooftops. Furnishing our nest exclusively with Ikea (with the help of three jumbo trolleys and an entourage of burly salesmen), we stayed up most of the night drinking wine and making inappropriate jokes about screwing [the] Allen [key] hard.<\/p>\n

And once assembled, with our prized Lak table and our neighbour\u2019s unprotected wifi, the CV-sending onslaught commenced. Day by day, we built our lives as expats with intention. Terrified, exhilarated and determined, from the ground up.<\/p>\n

London is a strange world where you can buy sandwiches at the chemist, and wine at the supermarket. When the sun comes out, everyone flocks out of hiding to enjoy picnic spreads in Hyde Park, but you must pay hourly rent to an inspector for your deck-chair time. The day sky is eternally grey; the night sky vivid orange. Winter air effortlessly filters through ten layers of clothing, while summer days are expansive and stifling in equal measure. It\u2019s an over-populated, vibrant, chaotic hub; a swarming melting pot of culture, yet it can be a very lonely place. London is a city that is conservatively progressive, austere and uncompromising, understated with eccentric swagger. London is a proud, purposeful contradiction. It\u2019s alive, charming and impossibly infectious.<\/p>\n

Time is distorting; life is perpetually on the run. Scurrying down escalators becomes common ritual; a four-minute wait for the tube stirs audible outrage. Signal failures, unexplained rail cancellations and engineering works are all so common that you\u2019re in fact lucky when you\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0make it to something on time.<\/p>\n

In London, you can live many different lives, but one thing is non-negotiable: you\u2019ll live on the edge of experience. No matter good or bad, it\u2019s all heightened. Adrenalin becomes a part of your everyday. London steals, and crushes, and floods your heart. You cry, often. Not in sadness, but in moments where you\u2019re just really\u00a0in it<\/em>; utterly eclipsed.<\/p>\n

Overwhelmed, awed and inspired, you live more aligned to the heart of it all. Rootlessness and holding no constant sense of belonging is uncomfortable, but standard. Life is transient, as friends arrive and depart at varying moments on the timeline. You\u2019re constantly somewhere between welcoming, bonding and letting go, stacked and overlapped with timelines of other arriving\/disappearing friends. Homesickness appears suddenly, with no apparent trigger, and dismounts you. But most of the time, missing loved ones becomes a dormant throb, rather than active longing.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s entirely possible to love and hate London with ferocious and equal intensity. You fall hard, in, and back out of love; sometimes hourly. Emotions fly like fireflies in all directions. On good days, you\u2019re invincible. Because you\u2019re\u00a0there<\/em>, and you\u2019re living your dream. On bad days, you want to tumble over the edge of the world: frustrated and perplexed, isolated with the intensity of such feelings. In despair, you raise one hand to surrender; and in the other, fiercely clutch your Vegemite jar. Tomorrow, you\u2019ll rise, steadfast and determined to endure.<\/p>\n

Six months in, you start to connect the dots. Happily absorbed in a heaving peak-hour crowd of bobbing heads, it feels much more than a morning commute: it\u2019s a big, wonderful adventure. I signed on as a designer for a big-time publisher and tried a grown-up 9-5 job on for size. Coffee to go. Oversized headphones. Patent heels. Paid holidays (what?)<\/p>\n

After one year, you find flow. You\u2019re on a first name basis with staff at coveted coffee spots; you\u2019ve figured out the unspoken rules of the land, and traipse each fluently. Returning from a weekend trip, you have a distinct feeling of returning \u2018home\u2019.<\/p>\n

With just my camera, wandering feet and wayfarer spirit, I ventured to different European destinations on more weekends than I did not. Every single cent earned, that didn\u2019t go to rent or living, went to losing myself in strange and wonderful cities. Copenhagen. Helsinki. Lisbon. Sardegna. Istanbul. Reykjavik. New York. Paris (times six). \u201cHow can you manage it, every weekend?\u201d my colleagues would ask, fascinated. I\u2019d respond, \u201cHow could I\u00a0not<\/em>?!\u201d The proximity of venturing to different cities is something that anyone hailing from remote Australia could surely never take for granted.<\/p>\n

Approaching two years, when life feels stable and you\u2019re on the precipice of (really, truly, finally) belonging, you have no option but to pack up your things and leave. Hello, visa exile. Alessandro Barrico wrote, \u201cIt’s a strange grief to die of nostalgia for something you never lived\u201d and for me, that\u2019s exactly how it felt to leave London. Severed, incomplete; a beautiful home you simply can\u2019t belong to anymore.<\/p>\n

I had always assumed I had far more than two years spread before me. HR had stressed that sponsorship was a simple, rudimentary procedure. As it turned out\u2026 not so much. At one point, I wrote to a lawyer in desperation, \u201cThere just isn’t any alternative option available to me, is there?\u201d and she replied with, \u201cHaha- yes there is! Get married!\u201d But\u00a0of course<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Dear visa man, you can take the girl out of London, but you cannot (ever) take London out of the girl.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll miss the exceptionally happy conductor at Bank station. I regret not stopping to say just how much I appreciated him. I\u2019ll miss dewy morning wanders through Hampstead Heath. Acoustic nights up the crooked staircase of the Stoke Newington flat. The Mecca that is Borough Market: piles of rainbow chard, cheese wheels the size of tables, wooden crates heaving with apples still attached to orchard twigs, pigeons hanging from rafters, and paella in pans you could bathe in.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll miss gliding along the DLR and gazing up to lofty Canary Wharf skyscrapers blanked in pre-dawn fog, while trying to understand the subtleties of my lover\u2019s jazz in my ears. I\u2019ll miss the endless stretches of time for wandering alone, the feeling and unfeeling; the comfort of\u00a0anonymity<\/em>. I\u2019ll miss watching Wimbledon finals in ye olde English pubs. Jugs of Pimms and lazy, sun-soaked siestas at London Fields. The cartoon-like black cabs; the squirrels and foxes. Soho streets on sticky summer nights. The abundance of blooms at Columbia Road Flower Market, my happy place. I\u2019ll miss nights out in underground speak-easys; the Friday night rush to Heathrow for weekend adventures. Plump Waitrose raspberries. And Pret a Manger.<\/p>\n

On landing in Adelaide, the first thing I noticed was how sweet the air is. The sheer\u00a0spaciousness<\/em>\u00a0of sky. I gasped at the stars; I had forgotten about those. Life here is simpler.<\/p>\n

Now, some weeks on, I sit tapping on keys into the wee hours, hangin\u2019 out with the moon and my mug of English tea propped beside, a still occasionally stubborn British lilt, and quid hiding in the crannies of my purse.<\/p>\n

London very much feels the world away that it is; yet achingly close. My heart is tangled up in so much over there, and I don\u2019t mind. I can close my eyes to be right back inside treasured moments. I\u2019m so far from where I belong, yet right at home. Or perhaps, so far from home, yet right where I belong. I can\u2019t even be sure.<\/p>\n

Returning makes you feel permanently in-between. Not all here, not all there. A duality; a chasm between two parallel lives that cannot coexist.<\/p>\n

In leaving, there are parts of myself that had to remain behind. There are parts I could only ever find again by going back. And that\u2019s just the thing: I have no way to. My London-me, and what I had to offer, reached limit. Unable to become; unable to go further, simply because of the bureaucratic process.<\/p>\n

Words crowd my heart, but never begin to summate the experience. Memories are made of the dust that suspends in the air and catches alight in the sun, glittering and elusive and unfathomable all at once.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll continue to miss London every day. But for at least a while, it\u2019s time to play on home soil, and stockpile some Aussie rays. Until the next adventure.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a potent Portuguese word, with no direct translation in English, to describe it more precisely.\u00a0Saudade<\/em>: The state of nostalgic, profound longing for an absent something. The love that remains for something that you know will never exist again. It conjures both sadness for the missing, and happiness for having experienced the memory.<\/p>\n

This is what it feels like.<\/p>\n

London called, and I followed. And in those two years, London became my enabler. Because when you step outside; like\u00a0really<\/em>outside of your everyday existence, and far away from everything you know, all of the collateral padding falls away.<\/p>\n

All that is left is a poignant, courageous core of truth, and a crisp, blank page, ready for your adventure.<\/p>\n

You discover how you want to write your story. Then, you scribe it, honour it, and live it, word by word.<\/p>\n

And for me, it will always start with these two:\u00a0heart first<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

Image Credit: Top image taken by Caitlin Carey, image above taken by me.<\/em><\/p>\n

Have you ever moved to a country away from your home? How did you find the experience – living, loving, leaving? I\u2019d love to hear your story x<\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]FYI You can read the final edit of this post on\u00a0Huffington Post. Here\u2019s the \u2018full story\u2019 xx It ends with the long haul on the Piccadilly line. Twenty-three stops, Heathrow-bound. Hands in lap, mind adrift and wild. At each point on the line, memories dance to life:\u00a0that one time when; the hilarious morning of; the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emmakateco.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emmakateco.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emmakateco.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emmakateco.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emmakateco.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emmakateco.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emmakateco.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emmakateco.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emmakateco.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emmakateco.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}