I woke up on the day I was to leave, which was, now, almost three days ago (edit: now, over a month ago), and I wasn't scared anymore. I'd been terrified for days, crying over leaving Skye, having nightmares about forgetting my visa, stressing over packing, and suddenly it was silent. I was leaving.
I enjoyed my favourite part of the day - drinking coffee while watching new YouTube videos in bed - at home for the last time. Mum and I got food from Bellagio for lunch, but not before she made me change out of what I was wearing - which I thought was very cute - because it "look[ed] like [I was] in [my] underwear". We ate it in Queen's Park (oops illegal), and then I walked to Bondi Junction for the last time to pick up an iPhone cord. And then, I got home, and it was suddenly time to go to the airport.
I sat on my suitcases to close them, and Oskar helped me load them into dad's car. I wanted to take Horace, because I would miss my car, but I forgot to verbalise this request. While mum and dad got ready to get in the car, I went back to my room and said goodbye to Skye, who was sleeping in her bed. It was hard. I cried. She had no idea what was going on. I thought about how confused she'd be when I didn't come back. I'm tearing up in this Starbucks just thinking about it.
I then had to conceal the fact that I had been crying about the cat, which I did semi-successfully. Oskar and Felix didn't even leave their computer and video game respectively to say goodbye to me, and Hugo wasn't even home.
Mum spent the entire drive to the airport, and half the time in the airport, on a work call. Dad was very pissed off about this, but I told him I suspected it was her coping mechanism. I don't actually know if that's true or not, but it placated him.
There was a bit of panic on my part at the airport, because I wasn't allowed to check in until I'd filled out some forms that I'd been told I didn't have to fill in yet. But the lady at the counter was really nice, and so was the man at the check-in desk. He forgave 5 kilos of overweight baggage and changed my seat on the second flight so that there'd be a possibility I'd have a whole row to myself to sleep across.
I thought mum and dad would be able to come with me all the way to the departure gate, but it turned out that they could only come up to this ^ point. And so, earlier than expected, we had to say goodbye. I think I was caught unaware, because I didn't feel too sad, and I didn't cry. I went through immigration to the departure gate, where I bought a $6 bottle of sugarfree Solo that the girl at the till gave me for $2. The kindness of everyone felt like a good omen, or, to put it less superstitiously, I felt a good energy. (Is that phrase any better?)
As soon as I sat down at the gate, I messaged Laura, "can you psycho-analyse the fact that I cried saying goodbye to my cat but not my parents?"
In a very Laura fashion, she replied, "There's no wrong or right time to cry. Do you want to talk about it?"
We chatted until it was time to board the plane. I had a whole row to myself. The sun was setting a pretty pastel colour, and then, just as we were about to take off, the sunset darkened to a brilliant orange:
Not even they can stop me now
Boy I be flying overhead
...
Now my life is sweet like cinnamon
Like a fucking dream I'm living in
Baby love me cause I'm playing on the radio
The song aligned so perfectly with what I was seeing, my intentions, my ambition, that I felt, then, that I was doing the right thing, that everything would be OK - better than OK.
And then, the sky darkened very suddenly to black, and I wondered if that was a foreboding metaphor - I hoped not, and chastised myself for thinking of life as a text to be analysed.
I discovered that I had two hours of free wifi, so, of course, I spent two hours watching (and making) tik toks. After my two hours ran out, I discovered that I was very bored. I didn't feel like reading, or writing, or watching TV, so I just lay across the row listening to music and until I fell asleep and woke up in Singapore.
I thought I'd be able to roam Changi Airport for the 8 hours of my layover - I'd told Eloise that I'd send her pictures from the butterfly garden - but I discovered very quickly, when they lines us all up after we got off the plane and gave us green wristbands to wear, that this would not be the case. Alas, I had to spend all 8 hours in a confined waiting area, where people from various flight were herded until their next. Luckily, there were many empty seats, so I found an empty row against the wall of the room, watched tik toks while drinking Coke Zero from a vending machine (the distinctive taste of South-East Asian coke) and slept.
(During my sleep, I would be woken periodically by a man with a microphone and a speaker announcing flights, and where these people should queue. The Singaporean accent in the tinny sound system reminded me of something in my childhood that I can't quite remember.)
I didn't set an alarm, so it was very lucky that I woke up properly pretty much exactly as it was time for me to board my flight.
It turned out that I would not have the row to myself on this second flight, but there was a spare seat between me and the man on the end. It had rained while I was sleeping, and the sun reflected off the now-shiny tarmac.
We took off, and I was very bored. The wifi wasn't working and I didn't feel like reading, didn't feel like watching anything. All I could do was listen to music and think. This ended in, of course, me crying.
 |
| so hot! |
I couldn't wait for the flight to be over. I counted down, watching the real-time flight map: 14, 8, 6, 4 hours. Finally, we landed in Heathrow. Because I'm Australian, I could use the electronic gantries, and no one even checked my visa. The thing that stood out to me, there, was the amount of accents among the Heathrow workers.
I took a cab - the black cabs of Sherlock, which are, it turns out, the only types of cabs here, to my hotel. The taxi ride was quite torturous. We were stuck in traffic that barely moved, and it took half an hour and 70 pounds to get into the city. I later learned that it's much cheaper to take ubers here. But whatever. I got there. Halfway through the cab journey, in my sleep, it started raining, and some of it reached me through the ajar window. I thought, already?
The check-in process was quick, and after pulling my two suitcases and duffel bag through a comically-long and labyrinthine corridor, I was in a quiet, clean hotel room. My plan was to have a shower, then go out and buy some dinner, maybe a meal deal I'd heard so much about through the UK participants of eating-disorder Instagram, but I let myself lie down and of course I did not get back up. I fell asleep, right there, at 6pm, even after spending 80% of my 31.5-hour journey asleep. I woke up at 2am, had a shower, called mum and dad, fell back asleep until 6am, when I decided I was up for the day. And thus began my first day in London.
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