The Unbearable Lightness of Leaving London

Foray 015: My goodbye to the city that raised me

Age makes everything much warmer and softer. Smiles stretching skin, sun melting butter. Streets and cities are no different.

London eventually melted, though it was so frozen when I first laid eyes on it. I was eighteen and living by King’s Cross. I didn’t know anything about the city or its neighbourhoods, the difference between East and West London meant nothing to me. I simply pulled up a Google Map of the city and stuck my finger by the Eurostar station, thinking it would be convenient to live so close when I wanted to return home to Paris.

The daytime wasn’t warm, but it was the evening that really scared me. Watching the streets roll by at 4am on my way home from the club. They looked cold, often empty save for a spare drunkard every couple hundred meters. The worst of it was in the City, that god awful intermediary place. The buildings there looked desolate even under the sun, never quite enough humans to give it any body warmth.

It started so cold. I wondered whether I would ever feel as comfortable here as I did in Paris. Comfort to the point of insanity where I felt I could walk anywhere at 4am and because I owned the roads, I’d be safe. I wasn’t sure that logic would pass unscathed here.

But sure enough, it did. Eventually. I moved, then moved again. I tried out all different parts of London. Went to small raves where everyone wore snake-like contact lenses and big balls that began with a prayer from the Archbishop. I proved myself wrong, and then wrong again. I was happy to be wrong as long as I could eventually be right and after 6 years, I’m happy to report I was.

I wish London on everyone. I wish it, especially, on the eighteen year olds. It is the perfect trial run. It is the perfect city to become an adult in, to test out your limbs, a first draft of life. It is very good at raising people; it is far more nurturing than any city in the US, but not to the point of coddling as the capital cities of Continental Europe are guilty of. It is a good place for a first heartbreak. A first job. A crisis of career. A moment of nerves and some tears of trepidation.

It is a good city to become an adult in. It holds back judgement, with no reigning morality or choice of preference - it lets you figure out what’s right. I attribute that to it’s history of here and there and maybe that; complacency and coasting are the key traits of the aristocracy, while striving and creating are the key traits of London’s melting pot.

At odds with each other? Maybe in a different city. Here they sit together like hot and cold water, parallel before conjoining, rising up before sinking back down. Two lane highway, everyone going the same direction.

If I had to offer some words of advice, I’d say; don’t judge London by its British people - you’ll find there aren’t as many as you thought. When you wake up in the morning and look out your window at the sky, try to delight in how close its shade of grey approximates blue but don’t ever expect blue itself.

My words of wisdom, six years of experience. I give it to free for the new Londoners, whether you’re eighteen or up:

Go to the Seven Sisters cliffs, just walk, get lost, see some good things; marvel in the shape of the grass. Live in East, West, North and Central London - they all feel like completely different cities and no, it’s not the same if you just get brunch there. The tube is amazing but if you can take the bus even better, and you’re legally allowed to get aggressive in trying to snag the front row up top (the only “Frow” in London worth having). The Rothko room at Tate Modern is brilliant. Check out my favourite painting ever in the National Gallery off of Trafalgar Square, “Surprised! (Or, Tiger in a Tropical Storm)” by Henri Rousseau. Get high tea at the Wallace Collection. Get high in Hyde Park. Shacklewell Arms is great, Corsica Studios too. You’ll find Chiltern soon enough.

Enjoy it. Break your first Boris bike and your second too. Forget London is in England and imagine it all begins and ends here. Buy a pack of tobacco and lose half of it trying to roll.

It’s all apart of the game.

Once six months pass and you’ve only gone to member’s clubs, you know you’re cooked and it’s time to think about moving. But we’ll cross that bridge when you get there.

British men are… interesting by the way. I wish you godspeed with that. Also - despite the way these same men cry about Mayfair’s watch thieves, London really isn’t that dangerous.

The worst thing that I ever encountered in 6 years was once, in my first year of living in London (go figure), a homeless man entered my apartment building behind me when I got back from clubbing at 3am with his big white wolf-looking dog. I stood on both feet, stared him down and told him to leave. And guess what? He did.

You just need some conviction.

At 18, I’m sure you have some conviction. I know most of my friends, the people I became adults with, moved to London at 18 too. 18 year olds are London’s prime currency, bread and butter. I never can fully understand people who move to London when they’re older, in their mid to late twenties or such (no shade though). You have to come young to love it, young or very, very old.

And I did love it.

I loved it so much that at times I could barely believe it was real. I used to pray to the city like it was a great God, muttering underneath my breath “Thank you London!” anytime something good happened. If London was a religion, I was the head priest, pontificating with a great big greedy smile.

Yet here I am, on the doorstep, saying goodbye to the city.

Eighteen year old me would never believe it.

But I will do it, I will steel myself and say goodbye.

I can say goodbye to the city I grew up in. I can say goodbye to the street corners I’ve cried on and bars I’ve kissed in. Goodbye to old schools and apartments. Goodbye to old clothes and lives, personas donned then discarded.

These are the things I can say goodbye to.

What I can’t say goodbye to is my friends. I won’t. I draw the line. I don’t even want to say ‘see you later’ or ‘à bientôt’. I don’t want any of that shit. I never want to see any of my friends later.

I want to see them now.

I think this is the first time I’ve had to force myself to write. I think this is the first time I didn’t want to say anything. 

These are all the things I can’t say goodbye to:

Running rampant around East London, calling you up and goofing a whole Saturday off. Talking of the betrayals and the antics, squeezing in any sun we can, smoking weed, laughing; going crazy for the fun of it.

Walking on highways that were supposed to be forests. Spending whole weekends then weeks together, never tiring of each other. Finding the bus as fun as the club, whispering things only we think. Same person, different font.

A two-person brown leather couch. 100 pounds off of Facebook, 100 hours spent on it together, 100 secrets shared. An unknown face popping up at my door, coincidence and God’s way of staying anonymous. 

Sage burning, ashes thrown down rooftops and into neighbour’s balconies. Holding hands as we press publish, singing Brooklyn Baby, crying on the fire escape, chasing McDonald’s with ginger tea.

Black cab pick up, racing over and above Hyde Park. Purple, green, yellow baubles glinting in the light, telling me a story I can barely believe is real. Thinking how beautiful it is, how funny, how surreal. 

There are so many people I can’t say goodbye to.

At what point in my life will I look around and feel that I have enough time? I’d like to know the answer.

It was supposed to be now, or maybe a decade ago. Perhaps when I was a kid or when I have kids, or at some point between now and when my kids have kids. 

There is always something I’m missing. Something I’m getting a lot of and need more, something I’m having none of and need some. I feel it when I’m with my friends, I feel it when I’m with my grandparents, I feel it when I’m with my dog or in the sun. How do I get more of this and when will it be enough?

I fear I may be greedy; I want it all you see. I don’t want to leave my grandparents for a minute yet I live the majority of my life away from them. I want to keep my best friends constantly besides me yet I move away. I want my dog and he’s not here. My parents neither. 

I have newness, sure, and change. I have excitement and possibility and the unknown, great. We all do, to different amounts. But what is it with time and when did it become the conductor?

I don’t even know how old I am anymore. What do I measure it by? What counts? 

Our personal quirks slowly shape our experience of time. Looking back on large swathes of our life, we can see ages dissected and demarcated, based on thoughts and feelings, inabilities and capabilities and things broadly out of our control.  

All big decisions feel like lead. They weigh on the soul and mind, the yes or the no of it. You hum to yourself at the hairdressers and the bus becomes your personal battleground. Whether it drags on or ends abruptly, there is a significant change in tune the minute the decision is made. It goes from being a calculation of furniture moved and friendships strained, new situations sought and tenuous connections made to something altogether simpler. Lighter. 

The suddenness sharpness of a decision settled on and shared morphs this altogether protracted inner turmoil into quicksilver. Now you must move, now you must get on your feet. You’ve decided you want to catch the bus and now you must rush for it.

It’s funny to feel yourself being pushed.

“The only thing I miss about London is Whole Foods.”

Zita, my best friend and roommate of 5 years, is in Paris now. She left London at the same time as I did.

“La Grande Epicerie just does not hit the same.” she says.

In a fit of glee, she once called Whole Foods from bed to order two martini glasses, a shaker, vodka, vermouth and olives. The two of us stayed up till 4am, drinking martinis and chatting in our pyjamas. It was genius. It was everything. It was young. It was happy.

London is done, but at least we did it together.

That, I get to have forever.

---

Thank you for reading my love letter to London. I really appreciate it.

Another piece of London advice I didn’t mention: If you’re a big reader or writer, I implore you to go see the London Library and, if you have the cash, get a membership. Writing a Substack in Virginia Woolf’s favourite writing room? Now that feels different.

If you enjoyed this week’s newsletter, please feel free to share it with your friends, loved ones or enemies - no such thing as bad press! Likewise, please think of subscribing, leaving a comment or a like (all free!).

This week’s song is by English legend Vashti Bunyan. Everytime I listen to it I think of walking around the city on a spring’s day, wandering out a bit too far. It’s beautiful.

Also another British legend left us today, the incredible actor Dame Maggie Smith. This news floored me as I assumed she was immortal. She was truly an inspiration for generations.

If anybody wants some more London recommendations, feel free to message me or comment down below. I’ve spent six years cultivating a wealth of knowledge that is now of zero use to me, so I’m more than happy to share.

See you next week.

All my love.

- Jasmine