London Calling

In applying to graduate school, I have a lot of self-examination to go through...How was London.. What did I learn...Why the experience and why the motives....

Indeed, 3 years ago I left the comfort and familiarity of my French life to "escape" to London. I guess Paris was never the booming, latte-ridden, cosmopolitan city I was dreaming of. I felt misunderstood. " Just wait till I get to london" I was telling myself. Teenage angst is an ugly thing, I reckon.

So... off I went...I took planes and train rides, just like thousands had done before me. But the thing was, I was different, or so I was convinced. That was my very own El Dorado. And I intended to make the most of it.

Sure I had come to benefit from an education. But the truth is, I wasn't coming to London for school. I was coming for shoes. and clothes. and life.

I had come to London before but I remember as I got there, alone for the first time, to start that life I had planned, that Paris and France existed for me in Black & White. I was scared, sure, but eager to raid the all-dancing London technicolor.

I got there, one gloomy september morning, looking for the veil of anonymity: I figured no one really belonged in London and therefore I stood a chance of actually fitting in.

As well as shoes and clothes, I had high hopes of finding lots of men. London, there again, seemed to have a mass of untapped potential. I firmly believed there was no stranger in this city, only future ex-boyfriends I had yet to meet.

I think my dad got a glimpse of my intentions because upon departure, he made me a weird lecture on how no one wants to marry a second-hand car or something....

Escaping parental control and peer-pressure was exhilarating. I could be anyone I wanted to be. Lord knows, I could even be myself. I fully enjoyed the fact that no one was there to tell me to sit down for dinner. Actually, I spent most evenings celebrating the freedom of Not Having To Sit For Dinner.

I imagined myself living in squat, some sort of glamourous loft with arty friends and a gorgeous writer boyfriend, who actually modelled to earn a living.

So there you have it. That was my London. Did it turn out to be that way? It hasn't.

I realized that having dinner standing up isn't that comfortable in the end.
I never had a writer boyfriend. ( well one did write letters, but although he was well into his mid-twenties, he wrote like a 6 year old...spelling mistakes and all)
I moved into a flat which had my name on the contract and where I was required to pay rent.
I worked into a glamourous environment and hated it.
I ended up going to school because my brain was screaming for intellectual nurturing.
I'm not the Eddie Sedgwick of my generation and I destine myself to work in Finance.

But I wouldn't have it any other way, to be honest.