leaving on a jet plane
I really didn't expect Toronto to be this hot - I think I've been away for so long that I've completely forgotten what the weather is like here in the summer.
The past few days have been spent unpacking, shopping, packing, and spending time with family. Last night I was greatly saddened - not to mention worried - when I saw my other baby, Cuddles, for the first time in nine months and discovered that the cataract in his right eye is much worse now than it was in September. He used to love going out for walks in the morning; I am told that nowadays he refuses to go out because he cannot see or hear very well, and relies solely on his sense of smell. Witnessing his tendency to walk into walls and bump into people because of his poor vision made me want to hold him forever and kiss him better. Just like people, dogs also grow older.
Tomorrow I'll be seeing D again, when we meet at the airport for the start of our European trip. Final examinations and other assorted issues have not given me as much time as I'd have liked to think about our trip, and now that it's a day away, I cannot believe that it is upon us already. We will be starting with a few days in Rome, followed by a journey around Italy including Pisa, Florence, Milan, Lake Maggiore, Lugano (on the Italian-Swiss border), Venice, Ravenna, Assisi, Pompeii, and Sorrento. Following that, we will be exploring the south coast of France by rail, stopping at Monte Carlo, Cannes, St Tropez, Aix-en-Provence, Avignon, and Nice - I hope I didn't miss anything. God I can't wait!
As such, packing awaits (as does laundry, ironing, cleaning, replying to e-mails etc) and thus I shall have to love you and leave you for the time being. I will do my best to keep in touch whilst I am away, but in any case I will be back in July.
Take care of yourselves, I'll miss you.
snapshots
How time flies, how things get done, how people come and go.
This is a momentary respite from unpacking four 32 kg suitcases brought back from London, as well as packing for the European trip which is starting in only four days.
Final examinations of my undergraduate career (a frightening thought, that) went well for the most part. Decision and Risk, Medical Statistics, Computing for Practical Statistics, and Forecasting were a breeze; Statistical Inference could have gone either way, but Actuarial Science was needlessly difficult. Revision is not exactly my favourite pastime, and where in past years I've always revised in my flat, this year I was far less distracted revising at the library. So the library it was - every day, from morning till night. What an existence that was.
Events were bittersweet in the days thereafter. I had expected epic nights out, but we were all so knackered from revision that after a relatively quiet dinner or two, we said goodbye - goodbye for the next three months, I should hasten to add. In many ways, completion of undergraduate studies has not hit me yet. We have spent the past three years with the same group of people, growing up and growing older together. And here we are - at the end of it all. It feels like it was only yesterday when we first got here.
There were, however, many happy occasions - dinner with one of D's best friends as well as his wife (both have just moved to London); lunch with A who was visiting London with her family; an end of exams party at R's in Harrow; dinner with a group of friends that evening; Z and L's joint birthday party which consisted of dinner at Pizza Express and then drinks in Soho. How could I forget the summer ball, which I attended with D - it left me with one of my fondest memories of him thus far: dancing to 'I Want To Dance With Somebody' in the dark, our bodies pressed together, staring into his eyes, arms round his waist, and seeing how lost in the moment he was - and so, so happy.
It was strange having to move out of my flat, not to mention D's - which was a second home of sorts by the end of the year. We spent a couple of days cleaning our respective flats, but when I went over to his late one evening, it was devoid of warmth. Boxes were stacked up against the wall, and everything as I'd remembered it had been packed away. Suddenly the events of the past nine months began playing over and over in my head, in a bittersweet slide show, and the gravity of the situation hit me rather unexpectedly. As we lay on the bed's mattress side by side in the dark, he softly said, 'I can't believe it's all over, and here I am, moving out'. I tried to hide the fact that tears were rolling down my cheeks. I wiped them aside. I buried my face in his sweet-smelling shirt. After we locked up his flat - by then completely empty - and walked across its hardwood floors for the last time, shoes making echoes across barren floors, life went on.
D and I went for a lovely dinner at Hakkasan - it was the last night we'd be in London together, at least for a few months. The following day, we took a train to Wales - Llangollen, specifically - to spend a few days at his father's place. I had a wonderful time, and it helped take my mind off matters - although the memories came rushing back, once again, when D dropped me off at the train station. I watched as he waved goodbye and slowly disappeared from the window as the train pulled away from the platform. When I arrived back in London, it was rainy and dreary, and my flat - which had become his as much as it was mine - was cold and empty. I had a sleepless night, one which involved seeing his face in the darkness, but reaching over and realising that he was not there beside me.
My mum arrived in London the following day, and for the four days that she was here, we went out, we shopped, and together we packed up the past nine months of my life into four suitcases. It soon became my turn to leave the place that I'd called home, but it was made less painful by the fact that my mum was there and that I was not completely alone. It was lovely seeing my dad when he picked us up from the airport, as well as our house, after so many months.
So I'm home now. Everything seems the same and yet
different. I feel unsettled - bits and pieces of my life are lying scattered across the floor. I do miss my life in London. I'll be back in England in the autumn, but it seems like light years away. The events of the past few weeks have left me feeling somewhat empty - not to mention drained - and D's absence is of little consolation (although I am counting down the days till I see him next). I can only hear his voice over the telephone, and at night I try to reassure myself that he's safe, that he's sleeping under the same sky. A sky that - from the tiny windows of the airplane - seemed to get lost within itself, stretching across infinite distances, endlessly.
