Change: Part II

Read previous post, "Change: Part I."


I didn't get excited about London until approximately the time that my plane from Chicago was passing over Nova Scotia, about to start the Atlantic crossing. I know, because there was a moving map in the seat back video screen that showed our progress. Until that point, I was pathetic. I cried on the way to St. Louis, and after that breach of my carefully crafted Not-Thinking-About-It Blinders, I went into shut-down mode and subscribed to the silence and apathy of the completely defeated. I felt like I was trapped in the downward spiral of doom. But you know all this because you read my previous post.

Let me, instead, tell you what coming to London is like. 

The whole getting-into-the-plane-and-settled was is like living in a movie. You know they speak with British accents, but then when it's happening, it sounds so cloyingly British that you almost don't believe it. She has to be faking, right? And there's really refined classical music playing on the intercom. Should there be a doily on your armrest? Maybe. You're not really sure, and you suddenly feel under-dressed.

You start keeping tabs on the people around you, noting the things they do and the way they act. They'll all have nicknames by the end of the flight: seated next to you are the PDAsians, who seem to be fighting the urge to somehow yoga themselves together in one ball. Then there's North-African Kanye, his mom, and Liver-Spot  Ears (later known as The Guy Who Opened the Window at 3 A.M. U.S. Central Time and Ruined Your Ability to Sleep and Compute Time Measurement). Directly behind you is the Guy Who Periodically Jostles Your Seat. You can't tell if he's really being a jerk, or if he has a kicking child in his lap. A couple of rows in front of you is the goldmine who gets a new nickname almost hourly: Safari Guy, Delicate, Loaded Geek, and Bug-Eyes (so called because of his hyper-utilitarian sleeping mask). Then there's the staff: Angry Kurt Hummel on Estrogen, and Frenchie.

You're in the aisle, which is nice, but also means that any unstable walkers may use your head to catch their balance. They may not notice their mistake. You eat dinner during the movie, and though it's after nine o'clock in the timezone you're coming from, you eat everything, especially the marbled cheesecake. Afterwards, you kind of wish you drank coffee or tea just so you could use the cute cup on the tray.

Anxiety hits for a few moments as your plane flies over Ireland, without any explanation, and suddenly goes away. Your plane hits the ground within the hour, whatever hour that is. You follow the mass exodus through the airport and up to the area marked "UK Border." When it's your turn to face the immigration officer, you hear the word "study" slip out of your mouth, and immediately begin to fear that you're going to get grilled; she asks you what you're studying, you blurt something short about art, literature, and culture. She jokes about you liking poetry and sends you on your way. You feel slightly odd about spending your first moments "officially" in the country being made fun of.

Certain things stand out to you upon your arrival to England. The familiar upside-down red triangle signs with the unfamiliar "Give Way" posted on them. How you rarely see the word "Exit," but instead see the words "Way Out." Elevators called "Lifts," and Restrooms called "Toilets." Instead of going to Baggage Claim, you go to "Baggage Reclaim"—you can't decide which of these terminologies makes more sense. The "Toilets" look like port-a-potty stalls and, coincidentally, also happen to smell like port-a-potty stalls.

The next couple of hours go by in a blur. You have moments of feeling completely in control and other moments where you feel like you're drowning. You feel confused because it's really Wednesday night, but your brain feels like it's still Tuesday. (You blame Liver-Spot Ears for opening that window and exposing you to sunlight in the middle of the night.) Weirder yet, your body feels like it's floating in water, which you find both alarming and oddly appropriate. You discover stress-induced pimples that weren't there when you got on the plane in Chicago; you wonder what it must have been like for the crew to watch those develop over the course of the flight.

You buy things. A curry chicken bake, which is basically Japanese curry wrapped in pastry. Some basic groceries. A cell phone. You discover the transition to the chip-n-pin credit cards, and that there are sometimes fees for paying in cash. This is not going to help those zits. There are so many things that are out of your control, and although your brain is exhausted, your body is even worse off. Your legs were shaking when you got off the plane; now you've traipsed across the London suburbs for a few hours—hardly helpful.

You want to transition to London time as quickly as possible, so you decide you're going to try to stay awake until the earliest legitimate bedtime before collapsing. Your resistance crumbles a small bit and you give in to a short nap. You're dismayed to find that you can't use your favorite TV shows to keep yourself awake: country restrictions, whose idea were those?

You find yourself completely alone in the flat. (You have to suppress the urge to call it an "apartment.") You pull up your metaphorical blinders so you can't see your anxiety and the tsunami of culture shock headed your way. You write a weird blog post in the second-person and wonder what made that happen; it's the kind of strange change in writing style that you're unsure about.

Which, oddly enough, is kind of like your whole life right now: a series of strange little changes, each one bringing its own measure of malaise, slowly compounding in your head. Even the successes seem to be seasoned with this strange uncertainty, but maybe that's just the way travelling is when you've only been in the country for ten or so hours.

Change now isn't something you have to anticipate as much as it is something you have to navigate. Navigating is easier than anticipating, at least for the mind, so despite how unsure you feel about all of this, you feel better about it all now that you're here.

But you should go to bed now. And you really should stop writing blog posts when you're mentally and physically exhausted.