Brand New Day

There is nothing worse than waking up thirty minutes before your alarm is set. Absolutely nothing. An hour? Still a realistic amount of time to fall back to sleep. Fifteen minutes? A short enough time to come to terms with the fact that you don’t stand a chance. But thirty? Limbo minutes. You could try to sleep again, but you know you’ll be counting every second wasted at the attempt, the pressure looming that you’re doomed to not make it. And surrendering a whole half hour before necessity is just plain lunacy. But one must be chosen, and the former always prevails, though rarely ever successful.

So there I was, 11:37am cursing the seven minutes I consciously watched pass, one by one, floating into a sea of dreary nothingness, next to the 327 sheep that had gotten me no closer to the mockery one calls slumber. Ok, fine. I can see how you could question my whinging about being forced awake at 11:30 in the morning, or even more so why the hell I’d be setting an alarm for midday to begin with. In order to sufficiently respond to that, I’d have to explain all the things I did to lead up to my 6:00am bedtime, and that is something best left unheard… mostly because I can’t quite remember.

So now you begin to negotiate the value of “morning” tasks against the amount of sleep you could gain if you fobbed them off. If I don’t shower, I could sleep for another 30 minutes-- 40 cuz it’s a shampoo day. You start to set your alarm forward. I think I have some leftover peanuts in my purse. Another 15 minutes saved from making breakfast. Makeup’s overrated. Ten minutes.

And then suddenly forty-five minutes have passed and your best friend is poking your polka dot panty clad buttocks protruding from a poorly constructed fort of covers and pillows meant to block out the heartlessly imposing sun as he obnoxiously repeats the words “Wakey, wakey” enough times that you want to shove the leftover bag of prawn cocktail crisps you can feel lodged in your thigh down his throat.

Thus we have it: The day I moved to Ireland.

Despite my slightly irresponsible night prior, and my relentless fight to press time the morning of, unlike my last country uprooting, I managed to drag my ass, with ample time to spare, to Gatwick Airport where I once again said goodbye to London, cried in public, then cried on a plane, and then once again in public, and voila! found myself standing in my newest place of residence: Dublin.

I had decided a long time ago that Dublin was going to take me in, but only recently decided that I was going to like it. Before then it had merely been a temporary portal, a base by which to fling me back into my Clapham life as often as humanly possible without arousing suspicion at customs. I had spent six heartbreaking months dreaming about returning to my home, my love, my London; Ireland was but a pinch of dust in the wake of the prodigal son’s return. But after spending six days immersed in the life I spent 180 days fantasizing about, I realized, to my welcomed surprise--which was even more surprising-- that I was ready to move on. Funny, how life does that to you, the crafty bitch. We think we want something, we reckon we’d kill for it, then all it takes is having a taste of it again to see that we no longer need it. That we can let it rest and find peace in knowing we are ready to open ourselves up to something new.

I will always love London. And I know, without a doubt, that I will one day call it home again. But in this chapter, we must go our separate ways, and pursue whatever it is that will bring us back to each other. Whether it’s in six pages, or six hundred, or even in the bloody sequel. It doesn’t matter. Because, as I once said when I first arrived some two and a half years ago:

It’s not the destination, it’s how you get there. 

And man, I've heard these roads are mighty rocky....