(sleep deprivation and beer)

I was born in this city.

I tend toward such a defeatist attitude at times (I can’t even proportion properly, around so long and a mystery to myself even still), but I can’t reconcile things in my brain, feel anything besides careless in this last bit of time. Part of me feels like I’ll die in this city, too. Like every moment might be my last. Standing in the snowbanks waiting for a cab, I can’t see getting home or going to bed. I can’t see getting up in the morning. I want to run through traffic. Surely if my time in this city is at an end, so is my time being a person?

Maybe I will die in this city. Here’s hoping it’s after one hell of an adventure.

It’s scary to think about changing. It’s scary to think about Friday nights with different company. It’s scary to think maybe I’ll pine for these people from across the ocean. It’s scarier to think that maybe I won’t.

You never really know, do you?

It’s scariest to think that maybe I’ll be forgotten, or maybe I’ll be remembered as a cautionary tale. Avoid the loud ones, they’re too this, not enough that. It’s terrifying to think that maybe it’ll all be exactly the same for them and I’ll never be thought of at all. You want to believe that 26 years on this planet is worth something.

Who knows what I’ll become across the ocean?

It’s scary to watch a car drive away containing three of my nearest and dearest and think that they’re probably better off without me. After a night at the pub, and in general. It’s scary if they’re going to miss me soon, if I’ll somehow leave some hole in their life.

Because I shouldn’t, really.

It’s scary if the people I adore most don’t feel the same about me. Unrequited love sounded dreamy at 13, but double that and nothing could be worse. Unrequited platonic love sounds agonizing, and I want no part of it. I’ve no time or energy or ability or magnetism for romantic love, but tell me the friends who mean the most to me don’t like me as much as I like them, and I’ll crumble.

The amount of times I’ve convinced myself no one likes me.

The amount of times I’ve been proven wrong, and it still makes no sense.

I categorize people sometimes, decide the people I like best are just like me in one way or another, and I think it’s because they have traits that I admire, that I could see myself having if only I improved. But then I feel like I’m dragging them down with me, and that’s not fair.

It’s the great hope that London will fix me, that braving the great wilderness of being Leslie On Her Own will propel me to reach my full potential.

Maybe I’ll always get drunk and sad that some of the people I like best mispronounce my name, as if that really matters, and maybe I’ll pine for the ones I see infrequently who not only get it exactly right but who remember unexpected details about me besides.

Who knows, really? I don’t know what tomorrow will hold, let alone my imagined London future which seems further away with every passing day and no sign of that one final document I desperately need.