This Train Is Ready To Depart, Please Mind The Closing Doors

My previous blog stands as a record of nearly every day in one year of my life. I can look back through it and say "This is where I met Robby" and "This is where I was in the hospital the third time" and "This is where I landed my dream job." (It didn't turn out to be, but that's definitely how I felt at the time.) This blog should be a record of my exciting times in London, but I think it just boils down to petty bitching. Maybe when I look back on it in a year I can say "Oh, this is where I blah blah blah" and be more excited. I guess when I was writing the last one I wasn't thinking "I'm sure gonna want to know this in a year!"

Yesterday I finally got out of Ken House for the first time since Thursday. I've discovered (well, I'm continually discovering) that without structure I tend to go crazy, and sometimes that means I don't leave the house for the whole weekend. During the week I'm fine, I'm great, I don't have panic attacks like I used to, but give me a day without deadlines and sometimes I won't get out of bed. I worry about this. But anyway, yesterday I ran out of food and I wanted some exercise, so I decided to skip the Sainsbury's and walk to the Tesco. I'd seen the Tesco in Earl's Court when I caught my bus to Belgium, so I knew the area and the general direction it was in. I walked up to the Earl's Court Tube station (my main reference point, always have a main reference point when you don't know where you're going, that's how you can find your way back) and walked down Earl's Court to the right. I hadn't been down that way in a long time (maybe never, I don't go to Earl's Court much) and I was pleased to discover an Oxfam shop not too far in. They had a coat I wanted but it didn't fit. They had about a million books I wanted also, but that's because I have a Book-Buying Problem. I didn't buy any because I'm living off of my food stipends (£40 a week) and I shouldn't spend my precious food money on books that I'm probably going to leave here in two weeks anyway. So I left the Oxfam shop and continued walking. About 400 miles down the road, I figured out that I guessed wrong about where the Tesco might be. I thought about where I'd been when I saw it and realized with shock and horror that it had to be on Warwick Road, which is on the other side of the Tube station. And I didn't know how to get back to Warwick Road. So I made the only feasible choice: I got lost. I wandered around and around and sang songs under my breath (as usual) and had a nice long think about some things. I don't generally panic when I get lost, because it happens so frequently. Eventually I stumbled onto Earl's Court again, cut through the Tube station (thank God for unlimited Oyster cards) and came out on Warwick Road, where to my utter lack of surprise, the Tesco was about two blocks away. The walk there took me more than an hour, the walk back took about 20 minutes. I'd like to credit my mother for this one; I get my laughably poor sense of direction from her. Once when I was in Girl Scouts we tried to drive up to a camp site together and after several hours we figured out that we had driven entirely off the map. And we had all the food. So when we arrived at the camp site much, much later in the night, I was not the most popular Scout, but I was the most well-fed.

I have Sunset Rubdown's "Jason Believes Me, You Can't Trust Your Dreams" in my head. It's a beautiful song. The part I'm stuck with is

"Hold on,
Ho-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-old on
You say you're gonna die
They say you're gonna come home."