Once Upon a London

Uncertainty and anxious tickles took over my darkened room in late February of last year. I was told by *him* to choose my luggage carefully. I was reassured that I would make it there and back, safe and sound.

For eight months, we had been chatting consistently. Topics ranged from our lives, our love interests, and our careers. We shared pieces of our past and tied together sacred pauses in our present.

I came across his posts on Instagram and found him charming and cocky, absurd and intoxicating. The sun seemed to shine when I spent my stolen winter moments updating him on my baffling existence. He didn't mind that I was a single mother, he didn't seem bothered by my profession. He told me often, "NO PICTURES. NO ART." How do you argue with someone who embodies art?

I was naive to let the understanding of that small statement get away. Life has a funny way of illuminating you when you find yourself down a dampened, obscure hallway.

I had packed for an hour or two, imagining what it would be like to finally wrap my arms around his handsome frame. I let myself day dream, but sometimes those day dreams were unpleasant.

What if he doesn’t like me? What if I don’t like him? What if the plane sinks into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean and I plummet to my death? Or I drown?

I hadn’t told anyone where I was going that could do anything about it if I came up missing. I was escaping the US for a narrow three days. Some of the people I work with laughed about how short it was, others tried to tell me a million places I “must visit” - but I wasn’t going to do any of the things they insisted upon. This trans-Atlantic voyage was for me, and me alone. “Come to London and let me be your reprieve.”

So, I packed. My camera, my phone, some leather gear. Lingerie, mostly. Maybe I took some pants, maybe I didn’t. The clothes were not as important as the experience. I also took my makeup kit.

I took one photo as I left for the Blue Line to O’Hare. It was my shadow on the ground, a splitting of the woman whom I had been for the last thirty years and the possibilities of what she would become.

When the flight touched down, my stomach remained up at 14,000 feet. It climbed higher as the car drove me to the flat I’d rented for us to share.

As I arrived, I called him. He came down, all leather jacket and skinny jeans. His frame was tiny, but bigger than I imagined. I almost wept at the sight of him. When he looked into my eyes, I felt my world slide into place. I had spent countless hours looking into these exact eyes, separated only by 4,000 miles and two screens. Wild...

We went inside, and I asked if I could hug him. Our first kiss was anything save magical. It was lopsided and badly timed - it made me concerned that maybe we wouldn’t be a good fit.

As the night wore on, my fears were assuaged. We fit perfectly. Laying in his arms and talking about life, about how crazy this was, it felt like heaven. In that moment, I believed Heaven was a place on earth.

At some point after midnight, we opened a bottle of Merlot. He poured us each a glass and handed mine to me. I admired the way it danced around the edges, reflecting rubies back up at me. It seemed to me that the entire moment was like finding buried treasure. I was lost in sensation, allowing the warmth the wine brought to seep into my mouth, my body, my soul.

As the night became the morning, and the morning became the night... spending time in his arms felt like I had done it a million times before. There are souls that we connect with once in a lifetime that I feel are reconnections from our past lives; though four thousand miles separates us today, I know that when we see each other again, and while it may be in another life, we’ll pick right back up the same place we left off.

(To be continued)

Cheers to you, the reader, and thank you for coming on my journey with me. May you find your own private peace, where familiar comfort washes over you.