London Girl

I stare at her. Pale girl, brown hair pulled back into a bun, wisps falling around her eyes, staring at the ground. She clutches her knee to her chest, sitting on a rock by the little black brook. Like I’m looking in a mirror, the girl is me.

***

At 5:45 a.m. London time, I walked through Heathrow Airport with tired eyes, heavy legs, and a broken heart. The trip of my life was just beginning. I ached for something beautiful in front of me. And there it stood, a black and white travel bus with 14 rows of seats accompanied by Glenn, the charming and speechless driver, and Valerie, the chatty tour guide with a new raincoat and pair of black riding boots each day. A week before this trip, the love of my life had brought me a cold bowl of Chipotle and told me it was over. But now, now I was going to really live.

My first time to London. I wanted to see it all, the Eye, the museums, Abbey Road. But more than anything else, I needed to be somewhere new, someone new. I had dreamed my whole life of exploring some place like this, a place full of history, literature, and love. At 20 years old, I had finally arrived. But I also found myself at a cross roads. No, that’s too dramatic. I wasn’t at a cross roads; I just felt lost. Dubuque, Iowa had been my home for nearly three years and I was sick of it. I wanted a change of pace, fresh faces (fresh male faces). I wanted to wander down unknown streets. I wanted to be somewhere where no one else knew me and I could just sit in an open market or square and observe. Breathe all the way out.

I’m the type who becomes fully invested in things that she loves. So I loved a man. Well, a boy honestly. And I couldn’t let him go. We had parted ways amicably, left with a hug and a laugh at a foolish joke I made. “I’m gonna meet some cute English boy in London,” I said to him. “Hope you like crooked and rotting teeth,” was his response. I can’t remember now what I saw in him. All I remember is sitting on the couch of my sticky, green apartment and staring at the blank T.V. screen as he tried to explain how he didn’t actually love me. How he thought it was for the best that we separate. We were always better as friends. Well then, chief, why did you corner me, drunk out of your mind, and tell me that I was the one you wanted to be with just two months before? The one. That phrase is tainted. I didn’t think so much could change in two months. There’s no way that much could have changed in two months.

I walked around in a daze after that and kept walking through it as we unloaded off the coach bus and into the early morning London air. The streets began to fill with Londoners heading to work, people running with backpacks, raincoats and trendy boots. My glasses were making my head ache.

Trying unsuccessfully to wipe the tired from my eyes, I looked up. In front of me was Buckingham Palace. The Queen, William, Kate, they were all inside. My head spun a little. And at that moment, it was real. I was awake and in London and I felt so at home. One look around and pieces of my heart were already engrained in the cobblestone streets and a large concrete fountain, woman carved on the sides, topped with a golden angel. I went up to it, reading the sign. The Victoria Memorial.

I’d never been here before, I had to remind myself. But the statue of the strong, prominent queen, the gray marble, was so familiar. Closing my eyes, I felt a bit free, like for the first time I was an individual. My own person. They say that the city brings that out in you. Sometimes I think I was meant to fall in love with places. London was no exception.

Looking at Queen Victoria, I completely immersed myself in that sense of freedom. Though I was with friends, with an entire class in London, I was an individual again. No one to tie me down. No drunk boy to take care of, no one to worry about but myself.

Yet something still wasn’t quite right. I felt empty. Why did I still feel empty? I hated to admit it, but I didn’t want to be an individual, I wanted a partner to rule the world with. In the back of my mind I heard Janis Joplin belt out “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” And so walking around this beautiful city, I felt alone.

But how can you feel alone in a city? There are people literally everywhere. Maybe this forced time as an individual was what I needed.

***

A few days later, I found myself at Oxford. Secretly, I had dreams of going to school here. Sitting in coffee shops or bookstores or libraries, an oversized Oxford sweatshirt my most faithful companion. I’d be forever engulfed in freshly bound books, a cup of tea steaming next to me. This was bliss.

I wandered a three-story book store for what seemed like hours, running my fingertips over some of my favorites like Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, and Jane Eyre, an entire nook devoted to Harry Potter. It was here that I bought my first cup of authentic English tea. I sat down, looked out the window at the blocks of tan concrete buildings. A moment later, my roommate Caroline sat down across from me with her own cup of tea. A fellow English major and lover of London, Caroline was just as much in heaven as myself.

“Hey, take a pic of me with my tea and croissant,” she asked, glowing and face burnt from the afternoon wind.

I smiled and pulled out my phone. My favorite thing about Caroline is how direct she is. Some people might call it pushy (I do on occasion), but at this point in my life, her honesty and assertiveness were exactly what I needed to drag me out of heartbreak.

Having tea in the book shop with Caroline, I could feel my heart again. It wasn’t so heavy, wasn’t weighing down my chest. It was satisfied. It was home.

***

On our last day in literary London, my friends and I woke up early and took the Tube to Abbey Road. I had promised my father a picture, a replica to the Beatles 1969 album cover.

Stepping out into the crisp, morning air, I didn’t feel any magic. I walked steadfast, with a purpose. This was my last chance to find this place, this spot that I had so significantly pointed out in my mind for months before. Music, like books, is transformative for me. When I listen to John, Paul, George, and Ringo I felt pushed back into a different era, a simpler time. The words they put together and how they sing about love and loss and life inspires me to write in a similar way. They capture people so easily, something I admire greatly. Discovering their home decades later, I felt that this place must be significant. Being the greatest rock and roll group of all time, they had to find prestige and beauty in this seemingly insignificant place, Abbey Road.

But I couldn’t find the spot. I stood with my phone out in front of me, holding up their album cover to the blocks around me, trying to match the trees and the roads. After about half an hour wandering up and down the road, I returned to where the Abbey Road studio building stood.

“Maybe, it’s just this street right here,” my friend said, clearly a bit annoyed and tired from walking so much this early with nothing to show.

I doubted her. This place was so boring. No one was even here waiting. I was sure crowds of tourists and fans would be searching for the classic picture. There were no trees, no sunshine. But we lined up like the band did along the cross walk 50 years before, the four of us arms swinging and long strides. When I looked at the picture, I saw it. It was the street.

Of course, the street had no markings, no sign to signify its historical importance. It was just there. And in January, the trees were bare and the color of the album cover faded and dull. I couldn’t help but think the spot was chosen because it’s ordinary. Because the Beatles found something sincere in a place that was ordinary. But I’d been living in ordinary for too long. I needed the London air, the busy streets. I needed the city. Or so I thought.

The excursion to Abbey Road helped me discover that the place I was going didn’t particularly matter. I always tend to find beauty in the scenery, wherever I go. What mattered was getting away from a toxic boy who made me feel insignificant, being in a place with shared values and things that I love instead. I fell in love with London not because I was heartbroken, but rather in spite of it.

***

I loved many things about London. Actually, I loved everything about London. Many of our days were spent walking through museums and art galleries. While wandering the Tate Britain alone, fully immersed in the culture with my dark jeans and coat and linen scarf I bought at Marborough Palace, I came across a painting called The Black Brook. Painted by John Singer Sargent in 1908, the image features a young woman with brown hair resting alongside a book. I was struck by her. I stood two feet in front of the eye level painting and opened a google doc on my phone. I wrote this:

The Black Brook. Anne Marie Ormond.

She's only fifteen, it says.

She has a smooth, elegant figure,

hands linked warmly around each other,

pale skin glistening in the morning Sun.

But she is looking down.

Not up at the racing creek next to her,

or behind at the thick cattails and wildflowers.

She looks down to her side,

clutching her body in towards her.

Perhaps she is shivering,

though the warm colors around her

remind me of warmth.

She sighs.

But she's only more beautiful with a face of woe.

It took me a minute to realize I was writing about myself, that the girl next to the brook was me. Face painted with woe, longing for an unrequited love in a beautiful, romantic place. But the beauty around her meant nothing. The place couldn’t heal the brokenness she felt inside. Maybe I was reading too much into the painting and the look on Anne Marie’s face. Maybe I just was looking for things to remind me of what I’d lost. But I knew one thing for certain, even after the wonderful, romantic, independent journey I had through London, something remained a bit off.

***

Nine months later and I still think of London. Time passes differently; I feel that part of myself is still there. Half of my heart, as the cliché goes. But here’s the thing. Since I’ve given half of my heart to London, it no longer wonders about him. It just took some time.

It took nine months for me to realize that I did find love in London. I found it in the Tate Britain staring at The Black Brook. I found it at Borough Market trying falafel. I found it in the West End seeing Wicked. Love is more than giving yourself over to someone else. It took me nine months to realize that I found love as an individual. That what I felt along those cobblestone streets was freedom. Though I didn’t want to be alone while I was there, I realize that was an imperative part of the journey. While I watched the world around me, I started to understand the importance of perspective. When I stopped looking for the signs of romance, I saw the world differently. I saw the beauty in the ordinary. And I think that’s the whole point.