They say life goes through cycles. We ride a particular ride until some sort of critical mass is reached and we move on to the next chapter. Sometimes these cycles are the weight of the same mistakes that we tend to make, or the process through which we come to realise something important about what we are and what we want. They are like births that we have not asked for, but when they come they change everyting forever.In my life in London I have gone through a lot of these chapters, of these births. I have been the insicure teenager that spends a lot of time thinking, the twenty-something that works hard and plays hard, the good person, the bad person, the one that feels he has a lot of friends and the one that misses the friends that he has lost. I have been the poet, the drunk, the career crazy, the poor, the not so poor, the lazy, the sexy, the ugly, the thin, the fat, the clever, the stupid, the hurt, the hurtful. London knows a lot of things about me.
I feel a bit like this today. It is my birthday, my 29th birthday. My brother and his girlfriend are sleeping in the other room. I have been awake since 5:30am.
I am not sure whether it is the sunlight that awoke me, or this strange feeling of submerging from some strange depth. I have been down there for a few months, breathing as well as I could, swimming up as fast as I could. This feeling woke me up this morning. I went to the gym and pushed as hard as I could. I sweated, it hurt. I kept pushing.
The sun outside was a cold bright furnace in the 6am London stillness. My dad won't wish me happy birthday this year. I have felt down about it for a while now.
Today though, I feel peaceful. Today, whilst I push and sweat and swim upwards. Today, whilst I bathe in the cold sunlight I feel that happiness is possible again.
Today - of all days, just like a Mrs Dalloway moment- I realise that I am changed in a way it took me ages to understand. Some sort of lesson that sinks in after a long time. A birth, a new beginning that looks like the same as before.
Happiness is possible again.
London knows a lot about me.
