it drips on my head through a hole in the roof
Been a while. Hello again, again.
I am sitting on the floor of the balcony. It’s my boyfriend’s apartment on the 9th floor of a 10 story building, 4:28 AM on a Friday in late June. At home, 3,896 miles away, it is now 10:30 AM on a Friday in late June. The hotel room we occupied for two weeks in April, 5,581 miles away, exists at 6:32 PM on a Friday in late June.
The sky here exists in a semi-permanent state of clarity. I sent a few pictures I took over the winter to a friend, recently. We’ve known eachother since we were children, but we rarely speak. We’d known of each other, vaguely, by existing in the same school year, but it wasn't until a group outing organized by the charity organization that we were both beholden to the benefits of that we actually spoke. I remember it so vividly. It was for Halloween, a ghost walk. Tour of the haunted sights of the city. The street lights cast the world in tones of orange. I had no friends. It felt like everyone else in the group knew each other. I was wearing a jumper emblazoned with the words “NORMAL PEOPLE SCARE ME” in the American Horror Story font. I was 12 and annoying, with unspoken crushes on both Violet Harmon and Tate Langdon, alongside a small-but-growing collection of sincerely believed but supposedly ironically worn clothing (this would come to include shirts with such slogans as “zombies eat brains - you’re safe!”, “i speak fluent sarcasm”, and “the book was better”, all retired by age 14 - though I did pull off the letter transfers on the aforementioned jumper until all that remained was “NO PE E SCARE”, considered the peak of humour by myself at the time and as such remained in the rotation for a good while longer.). I walked at the back of the pack with my social worker. I recognized the one other lone girl as one from school, and committed myself to an attempt at communication. I remember it taking a while before I found my in - passing by a pub named after the Titanic. “Isn’t that unlucky? What if it started sinking into the ground?”
The sky, though. It’s pink and blue now. I sent her the pictures of the ground covered in bright white and the sky the colour of a baby’s blanket. She was shocked. “Winter is supposed to be grey.” She’s right. I’m not used to these open skies and views from balconies that span for miles either. The earth is as vast and endless as the heavens here. It’s prairieland, all big and flat. Everything big and flat. Roads, buildings. Each building feels as if it is itself an island, surrounded by concrete ocean. My immediate view contains a car park in prime visual real estate. I’d like watching people get into and out of their cars more if it didn’t feel like such a waste, knowing it never fills to capacity & knowing there are another 15 within walking distance.
It’s so strange here. Like home but not. I find it difficult to explain the level of culture shock experienced by one leaving the United Kingdom for the superficially similar nation of Canada without sounding honestly ridiculous. It’s not terrible. I have no friends. It seems like everybody else knows each other. I feel now as I did as a lonely child, alienated at the Halloween event for Young Carers. But I truly have nothing to complain about. I live with a lovely, loving partner who fills me with a very real happiness through his proximity. I do not need to worry about work, or bills, or food, or study. Not while I’m here. So why do I feel so terrible? What am I so upset about? Am I even upset at all, or do I just want to believe I am? Why am I even writing this blog post? Who is this for, really?
