Leaving New York City

Chapter One – I thought I heard you say “I like you”

Facebook is a mean motherfucker.
Mick; lovely guy, had a great time, spent a good night with him last Wednesday, almost didn’t wanna let me go the next morning, told me that it would be great if we met again; motherfucking Mick is thirty-two and has a Swiss girlfriend who looks like she could be forty.

Frank; the guy who made me go to Glastonbury, the guy I ended up kissing and almost sleeping with in our tent, the guy who was so caring and sweet; Frank has a girlfriend, and not a pretty one.

A friend’s friend whose name I forgot; Spanish guy, nice, funny, the guy who played along; that guy is fucking twenty-seven.

I never would’ve found out those things if it weren’t for facebook. But on the other hand – I never really wanted to find those things out.

Seriously guys, what’s up with the age and the cheating? I mean, I know that it was my decision too, but at least warn me. At least have the courtesy to tell me before I read about it on your profile.

With the Spanish guy, it was just weird, cause I never thought he was that old and I wondered why he would hang out with nineteen-year-old girls.

With Frank it hurt a little, just because I never thought he’d cheat on his girlfriend with me. But at least he told me – afterwards, but he did.

I don’t know why, but with Mick it really did hurt the most. Maybe because I was sitting in a friend’s kitchen and had to listen to the CD her boyfriend burnt her (Songs that make you think of me), maybe because it’s that time of the month again and I’m slowly but surly entering the emotionally distorted phase, or maybe just because I can’t get his “You’re so lovely” out of my head.

Why would you tell somebody how cute and intelligent and fun and interesting she is if you have a girlfriend?
Why would you go home with her?
Why would you do that?

Yes, facebook is a mean motherfucker.
But at least that bastard’s telling the truth.

I am stuck in London Heathrow for the next three and a half hours and I can’t get over how extremely bored I am. I haven’t slept at all, I had a bad breakfast and even worse coffee. Our flat was crowded yesterday night; with a lot of nice and chatty people to keep me awake and some cocaine to keep them awake, too.

Everything is kind of weird because Anne is moving back to France for good on Tuesday so yesterday night was our last night together. I was really sad; after that night time incident we started bonding again and we ended up having lots and lots of 3am conversations about everything and anything. I re-read the chapter I wrote about her and I cannot believe that I had so little to say about her. She is an awesome person; she’s funny, cool, but intelligent and thoughtful at the same time. We really got along so well lately, it’s a shame that she’s leaving. To be honest, I’d say that she was my favourite flatmate.

Funny how you don’t realise things until you actually see them.
I still can’t believe that I am going home on holidays and I won’t be working for the next ten days. Although everything turned out a little different from what I had planned. I wasn’t planning on not sleeping, for example, and I wasn’t planning on not having a shower and packing at sunrise. And most of all; I wasn’t planning to feel weird after two weeks of me being so excited that I hardly spoke of anything other than my holidays.
So now I am here, in London, between Prada, Gucci and Chanel, with my laptop and my book and my sheet music and my big blue bag and I still don’t realise it. To be honest, I don’t even know if I want to go home.

Funny how you don’t realise things until you actually see them.

I can’t even listen to music today. Everything that heightens my sense for emotion just makes me feel sad and confused again. Every melancholic song off this marvellous Opera Album makes it harder to keep those thoughts away from me.
Could it be possible that I, the person who is supposed to know me best, just made the worst decision in my life?
I keep calling my mom in the middle of the week, when usually we only speak to eachother on Sundays to keep the bill down. I called her several times in two days, sometimes even twice or three times. I cannot wait to go to Switzerland, see my family, my friends, sleep in my bed, in my bedroom, play on my piano, have the people and things I love around me…
I keep thinking about my father and how we never really got along, how much time I wasted having arguments with him instead of actually listen to him or spend time with him; I keep thinking about my mother and what a great woman she is, how many sacrifices she made and still makes for me, I keep asking myself if I can leave her and my father alone just like that, when actually I am supposed to take care of them like they did with me for nineteen years; I keep thinking about my niece and that she will grow up without me, I keep thinking about how angry and disappointed I was at my Godmother for never even caring and I wonder if I’ll end up being just the same.
I wonder if I threw my future away just like that, by coming here in the first place, exactly at the time when I was making so much progress with my piano playing.
I keep thinking about all the things I miss; my music teacher, the choir, the church, my piano, my room…

How can someone choose a city over her own family?
Over her own flesh and blood?
Over the responsibility she has towards her parents and her niece?

When I had my confirmation, I made a promise.
I promised to honour my parents and take care of them in sickness and age.
When my niece was baptised I made a promise, too.
I promised to always be there for her, whenever she needs a helping hand, consolation, or just a friend.

How can I keep those promises when I’m not even in the same country as them?

I desperately try to build up a cosy home here, get all things sorted and have an organised life. But every day there is something going wrong. I grew up being the youngest of the family; I always had either my parents’ or my siblings’ help. I didn’t have to go through anything all alone, they were always here to support me and give me strength and confidence whenever I needed it the most.

It is true, I do love this city. But Edinburgh doesn’t give me what I expected to get when I got here. It doesn’t give me IT.

So what do I do? I already signed out of the University in Switzerland. Means that I loose a year anyway, doesn’t matter what I do, whether I’m here or there, working or not.

I don’t know what to do. Once again.
All I know is that I really want to go home now.

It still hasn’t struck me yet.
Can you believe that? I live in this country for eight months now and I still haven’t realised where I actually am.
I can’t believe I missed out on so many occasions. I’m in Scotland and I haven’t even been to the Highlands yet.
This magic, this feeling that I got when I was here on holidays, these amazingly pure rushes of inspiration I got, all that made me choose Scotland over America, Edinburgh over New York.
I remember while making my decision, I put on my contra list for Scotland that by living here I may destroy that magic, maybe I wouldn’t be able to feel it as I enter real life here as opposed to the holiday experience.
Just now I realised that is exactly what happened.
I mean, yes, I did get carried away in the beauty of Edinburgh, and in the end, it’s what made me stay here. But that special feeling I never got with any other place, person or thing; that still didn’t happen.
I admit I was a bit disappointed when I arrived here and didn’t get that feeling.
Back on my last holiday here, that magical thing made me make up an entire story, with real life links, and real places where the story happened, with all the characters wholly formed in my head. And that was in just two weeks.
I still have those desperate attempts of writing the story down at home, in my Scotland photo book. From pieces of bags I ripped off because I ran out of paper to scribble all my ideas on to, to the empty, meaningless attempts to recreate what Scotland gave me; back home, in Switzerland, in my room.
As soon as the memories of those two weeks started to fade, my story started fading with them. I never got to write more than ten pages, maybe even less.
Obviously when I arrived in Edinburgh I expected to have produced thousands of pictures, drawings and stories by now.
But I guess I was just too busy working a full-time job six days a week to really take into consideration that it didn’t happen.

I don’t know what I am going to do about it. A few days ago I had the idea of going on holiday to the Highlands – completely alone, isolated, far away from a big city but exactly in the striking environment that inspires me so much, armed with only my laptop, pens, paper and my camera.
I don’t know when I will be able to do this, or if I ever get to do it. I don’t know but maybe I should go even a step further.
My absolute dream is to work in a castle as a tour guide or something like that, you know, one of those friendly people in kilts, willing to tell you the castle’s history when you ask them to. Maybe I should take other Universities into consideration, further up north. Maybe I should just find a job in the Highlands and see how long I can stay there and if its inspirational impact is enough to feed my longing for a big city lifestyle.

I wish I had Internet. I could have sorted out so many things concerning this by now. Shit… I really wanna do this.

Ok, here’s the thing. This whole dating thing doesn’t seem to work out for me. It doesn’t matter how nice and caring the guy is, it seems like I can’t connect with them if there is no sort of sexual tension going on between us. Basically this means if I don’t sleep with someone on the first date, or if I don’t get to know him through a one-night stand, there’s no need to bother anyway. I just got home from a date with Liam; nice guy, kinda indie, plays guitar in a band, but with the most girlish laugh I’ve ever heard and very very nervous. He talks about everything but in the end, says nothing. He’s nice, but that’s it. The first couple of minutes I thought „hey, nice sense of fashion“. After the first couple of hours I thought „come on, give it a shot, he seems nice“. After almost four hours I made up an excuse to go home as quickly as I could.
I’m in the bus, deciding what Arctic Monkeys song I should listen to and of course – I get a text from him just two minutes after I left him.
What the fuck.
I don’t know if I should keep in touch or not but I probably will. I really want to see him play the guitar; maybe he’s a completely different person then. Or maybe not. Maybe I should just stop trying to go on dates and just have one-night stands. No awkwardness, no hassle and in the end, you get what you want. It’s less cruel to ditch a one-night stand than a date.

I keep looking at the flowers on my nightstand.
Yes, I’m buying myself flowers because there’s is no one who buys me some.
But to be honest, I’m actually fine with that.

I don’t want all that relationship drama, I just don’t. Even Beth’s „oh I think I was kinda jerkish to you“ thing is too much. I don’t even know why she started that sentence; in my eyes she already is a jerk by telling me between the lines that I’m her sex pet. But that’s alright for me and in a way; I do now treat her as that as well. In the end, she was the one who didn’t want a relationship. But it seems that she still wants the drama.

I keep thinking in my head if the theory I’m about to write down really can be seen and most of all lived that way. It goes against all my daydreams and fantasies of the perfect romance; it goes against everything I secretly long for. But right now, I’m almost convinced that this is how things work for me.
The theory: There is no way I will be involved with someone if there is no physical attraction the first time we meet.
I’m not just talking about „oh he’s cute“. I’m talking about getting wasted and ending up having sex with a stranger.
Of course, not every one-night stand is the beginning of a new relationship. Sometimes it’s even the end of one. But if that condition is not fulfilled, it’s not even worth trying.
I am not going to sleep with someone I’m not attracted to.

That said, I’m not gonna end up being Liam’s girlfriend. But maybe I’ll be his future band member.

To be honest I don’t know where to start. He’s a guy, same age as me, and he started working for Coffee Republic in June, I think. The day I met him the first time my supervisor told me to not even try to hit on him cause he’s got a girlfriend. I was like, okay, so that’s sorted then. I got along with him really well, he’s a funny guy and we seem to be into the same kind of stuff. But about two weeks ago or so I started to notice that we got along REALLY well... almost too well for a guy that’s taken.
Well, Tuesday last week was Jill’s goodbye night for her workmates (Jill’s a French girl who used to work with me and is moving to London with her boyfriend). I got drunk; I got very drunk. In fact, I got so drunk that I ended up in an electro club with Scott and Jill, made out with a complete stranger who wanted to take me to his hotel room and nearly passed out on the floor of the smoking area, puking on my own arm. Turns out Scott was at least nice enough to get me a cab and make no big deal out of it the day after at work. It was on this said night that Jill asked Scott if he was single. His answer: „Well, I am now!“
So, basically the story’s this: He’s been together with a girl for two years and four months but she broke up with him some weeks ago. Same old story: They were together for too long, it was getting boring.

But now, ever since that night, we can’t stop getting along just a little too well for workmates, we can’t stop making a little too many jokes, or laugh a little too often in each other’s presence.
I seriously wonder if the others notice our behaviour, if they talk about it and what they think of it.
I wonder about a lot of things. You know, Scott is certainly not the guy of my dreams. He’s too skinny, too... normal, maybe. But he’s a cool guy, he’s nice, I like him.
I mean... you know this stupid thing I have with guys, I told you before, and I’m sure you will hear this many times to come, but I can’t help but wonder if this could lead to something, whatever that may be. I know, in my mind I know for sure that he’s going back to St. Andrews to continue his studies by the end of August and that’s gonna be it. No meeting, no seeing eachother after work, nothing. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Of course not, how could it be else. That guy just got out of a two-year relationship, what the hell do you expect? Besides... I don’t wanna be the one he fucked only to get over his ex.
Although at this point, I don’t even know if I minded.
The worst thing is that every time I’m being pathetic, so pathetic that I really want to slap myself, I actually notice it. I notice me being pathetic, I notice all those utterly stupid giggles whenever he says something, it doesn’t even need to be funny. I notice every single look I give him, every single time he comes near me, every shift we share.
I manage to notice all that, but despite of me being fully aware of it, I still don’t know how to control it. Yes, sometimes I really do think that I am addicted to drama. I can’t just lead a normal life, without the emotional roller coasters and all that. No, of course not. I have to seek some drama to entertain my sick mind; sometimes I even think my mind is doing that on purpose. Leading me from one daydream to another, not able to just be and be happy, waiting for the moment dream collides with reality and everything collapses.
You know, even while I was writing those lines I secretly hoped that it actually will lead to something. I know it won’t but my heart and my mind just can’t compromise. I know with 100% certainty that it will not happen – not in a million years.
But I still hope.

I just got a letter this morning saying that I have to pay council tax. I have no idea how I am going to do so. I don’t have money at all and I just spent the last two nights getting extremely drunk in bars on expensive alcohol. The few couple of quid I have on the side I saved to buy a piano and a plane ticket from Basel back to Edinburgh. Now I don’t even know if I can afford that. I’ve been down this road before, not having money, and I survived. But this time it’s different… This time I am messing with the council and no one messes with the council without getting in danger.
I really am a starving artist.
Actually…
I’m not even an artist.
I’m just starving.

Right now, without paying any tax of any kind, I hardly can afford my lifestyle.
With that council tax I will have to pay on my own, I won’t be able to afford anything at all. Not even food. Not even my rent.
I am so worried I can’t even think. Every time I light a cigarette I think twice because God knows when I will be able to buy another packet.
Two days ago they cut off our Internet and most of our TV programmes because we didn’t pay the bills.
I don’t think it will get any better.

Chapter One - The Non-Relationship Relationship

Yesterday night I agreed not to have a relationship. After only the fourth date (and the fourth time in bed, for that matter) I was asked THE question: What do you expect from this?
I must admit, I’ve already been thinking about that, but I never would have had the courage to speak it out loud. It was already clear for me that Beth is too much of a wild child to be tamed and after hearing her twin sister say “yeah but that’s because you’re a cheater” during a conversation the three of us had, it was definite. I knew that this “thing”, whatever you may call it, wouldn’t be good for me and I knew that at some point, there would be pain and suffering involved. The only thing is that now it’s official.

Incubus say: “Love hurts, but sometimes it’s a good hurt and it feels like I’m alive.”

I was listening to this song on my way home, after not sleeping over at hers for the first time and I wondered: Can pain ever be good? I understand that it makes you grow wiser and stronger and in the end, you gain experience. But is it wise to keep yourself involved in something you perfectly know will cause you pain?
I don’t know if this will break me, haunt me or make me happy. The fact that when I’m sleeping with other people, I’m not actually cheating on her isn’t much consolation and after I got to think about it all, about her question and about the fact that she would ask something so important so soon, it dawned on me that she probably had some girl sleep over every other day and that I wasn’t anything special at all. Actually, now that I think of it, those friends of her must have seen so many people come in and out of that bedroom. I wonder if any of them knew my fate before me.
I mean, I’m not the holiest myself and God knows I like to flirt and yes, I actually do understand that there are people who just can’t be monogamous, but I believe that it only needs the right person to be able to sacrifice the privilege of sleeping with more than one person at a time and not feeling guilty.
And although I did answer her, although we talked about it and pretty much have it sorted, I still don’t know where this is gonna lead. I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle this, because, you know, I really like her. I don’t know if I’ll be an asshole and just stop texting back, I don’t know if I’ll just go on being a friend she occasionally sleeps with, I don’t know if this is what I want and if it’s enough.

I don’t want to be the girl she just texts whenever she wants to fuck someone.

Insecurity. It grabs a hold of me when I want it the least.
This is not how I imagined it to be.
This is not how I want it to be.
This is all going wrong.

Just because of my fucking meaningless insecurity. Crashing all my illusions, over and over again. You know… sometimes I could really slap myself.
As soon as I see a guy the first thing I think about is if he is taken. I don’t see him as a possible friend or guy I would hang out with. No, of course not, that would be too easy. No, every guy I fancy even a slight bit I see as a potential boyfriend.
And as soon as this first thought comes up in my mind, there’s no turning back.
I start interpreting everything. I start noticing how many times he looks at me, I start looking for a ring and wondering if he’s already taken. And then I think to myself “of course he’s taken… just look at him”. But there’s still this hope in my mind, this thing I can’t get rid of. I look at him talking to other women and I get sad. I get sad because he’s not talking to me, I get sad because he doesn’t even know me and I realise that I’m just – once again – trapped in my own fantasy.

That’s exactly the moment I want to slap myself.

I just did it. I just wrote the blog. It’s 3.32 in the morning and I just wrote THE BLOG.

Here it is, for you all to read in its glory.

The Blog.

Okay.

I've been putting this off for a long time now... I think it is time.

I am, now for all to see, officially staying in Edinburgh.

Don't be sad or mad or start asking questions, don't hassle me, don't make me re-think what I really want.

A lot of things have been going wrong and are still going wrong. Basically my whole "plan" went wrong and the best thing to do would be going back to Switzerland as scheduled, on 30th August. I don't like my flat, I wanna move, I can't get into the University I so wanted to go to, sometimes I don't even have money to eat, my papers are a mess and after all, I am still alone in this city and I don't even have a piano.
But despite all those things, I still want to stay here.

Edinburgh has something of its own... Something that makes you fall in love with it and you can't help it. You can't imagine how often I heard people tell me about how they were supposed to stay here for a couple of months and now they've been living here for years.
Well... now I am one of those people.

I don't know when I'll be coming back to Switzerland, or if - all I know is that I want to stay here and that is exactly what I am going to do.

My parents keep asking themselves and me what they did wrong and why I don't want to go back. I know that they will never read this, but still: They didn't do anything wrong. YOU didn't do anything wrong. This is just what I have to do now.

And to prevent all those annoying questions: Yes, of course I miss you. Yes, of course it would be cool to hang out together again. But you have to understand... Edinburgh is about three times bigger than Basel and sometimes it still seems too small to me, I would feel completely lost in Switzerland. The UK is a major country (whatever that means), modern music history is being written here everyday, authors, artists and musicians live here, this is where it all happens. I can't go back to a country that holds the biggest Military Tattoo, the legendary Glastonbury festival and probably the most diverse history of literature to a country that is just... small.
I don't feel like I belong in Switzerland... Call me mad but I always had the feeling I was made for something bigger, something with more importance than just the bank secret.
Don't get me wrong, I like Switzerland, it's the place I grew up in, it's where my family is. But my heart always belonged to Italy and now my mind belongs to Scotland.

I don't know what I am going to do here, my rough plan is to work full time until next year and then start University. Don't ask me questions as the answer will be "I don't know". But I'm fine with that now, and you should be too.

And remember... just because I'm not in the same country as you doesn't mean that we can't be friends.

Yours forever loving,
Antonia
<3