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28
Out18

thank you, october

by M

There are times when life happens so quickly there's simply no time to sit down and write about them. I’ve been trying to not be too hard on myself for not writing about certain things by making sure they’ve been well documented in other mediums. But now that october is coming to an end I think I need to really reflect on the past few weeks because there is no way I can let this month go unnoticed.

 

On the 1st Michelle and I picked up the keys to our flat and then went for pizza and spent the night at my uncle’s. Uni started the following day and we came back, packed our stuff and after the sun had set we moved in to our new home, with nothing but a suitcase and a bottle of champagne. We order sushi and drank our champagne and took ridiculous selfies and we couldn't stop laughing, we weren't tipsy or anything, just the surrealism of it all was enough to drive us a bit crazy for the evening. The following day Jemma came to “help us unpack” and she talked and talked and talked and Michelle and her clicked so well–it made me so happy. She ended up spending the night, the first guest in our tiny sofa bed with improv pajamas and a random array of sheets. We’ve been here for 3 weeks and I’ve already lost count how many times she’s stayed over at this point.

 

Less than 2 weeks later, Carline flew over and her and Jemma were back at my place for the night. I locked us out (which is always the first impression I strive for, ofc) so we just sat in the dark in the corridor waiting for my landlord to come and open the door for us. We just chatted as though we had been hanging out together for ages which in a sense we have. Then we made mac and cheese and waited not so patiently for the morning to come. Jemma woke me up at 5 and by 6:30 the 3 of us were out the door, with a bag full of snacks, piles of books and a pair of socks, ready to face what would be one of the longest day of the year. We got off at Piccadilly with the sunrising above the buildings, streaks of pink in the sky. And then we waited, we sat there in the middle of Leicester Square and let the hours pass us by and the city wake us up. And as we did, the butterflies in my stomach took flight too. It was 11:30 when security let us off and the 5 of us took off to have lunch. It was such a beautiful day; we walked through Covent Garden all sunshiny and bright and we had food and talked and everyone had a spring in their step. By 3:00, after a lot of waiting and worrying, we found ourselves front row in the pens and so did most of the amazingly lovely people we met that day. It was the most incredible, chill, happy, exciting vibe. Everyone there loved every second of it, I'm sure. And it felt like the past few months all added up to that—even before we saw him, even before anything had happened..so much had happened already that led to that moment, just being there, with those specific people, it felt like it really was just the cherry on top. And then he arrived and brought that amazing, contagious energy with him, and he had fun and we had fun and the sun shone just for him, I swear, even the sunbeams got caught up on his eyes and reflected of his curls. He shone and so did all of we, despite the tiredness and the sleepiness, we wouldn't have had it any other way. He makes things so special and he made us all feel special too. Then we watched the film and I cried like a baby and of course was sweapt off my feet by his performance.

 

When I wrote about meeting Timmy back in February I didn't dream I’d be doing it again just a mere 8 months later. Although a lot of things have changed (and some changed nothing at all) since then, I’m still struggling to find the right words to write about this experience or to write about him altogether. I keep saying that when of all the things I expected 2018 to bring me, a fandom was way down low on the list; yet I cant even fathom my life had not let myself fall (or rather dive headfirst) into it. So many things happened because of this, and so much of it has changed me for the better. Many of the people close to me right now and especially in London I met through CMBYN/Timmy and I'm so proud of that, because these are friendships I made solely by myself, by getting out of my comfort zone in this crazy city that so often feels ruthless but that's so blatantly generous too.

 

After LFF, Carline stayed for a few days and we had the cutest time getting brunch and high tea and matching piercings and more pasta and sleepovers. Then they left and in a blink of an eye the whole thing was over. But October had no time to lose, so before I knew it I was picking Mags up at the station. We did touristy things and less touristy things, ate a lot of delicious food as we always do, played dumb games and had chill nights. But most of all, we went to see the Musical Bae, Tom Odell live. Man, I love him so much. It was so different from any other concert because I knew exactly what to expect and somehow it still managed to be better. I think in a way it felt like coming home, listening to these songs that have seen me grow up and have turned into the soundtrack of my teenage years. He said “London is the greatest city in the world” and then called it his adopted home and I Felt that. I knew exactly what he meant, I knew exactly what he was feeling because I was feeling it too.

 

And of course it comes down to that, it always does. It's been a year and it still feels absolutely surreal that I live here. But yesterday I was thinking of missing home and it hit me that home doesn't feel any more home than London does. They're different homes with different meanings, but the feeling is the same. October really helped consolidate that because with all these people coming and going and staying over it felt like I was home. Navigating the tube by heart, taking my friends to secret spots, making plans in central—all the while it didn’t feel like the London from films or books or dumb BuzzFeed quizzes. First and foremost it felt like my city, my habitat. I lost count of the times I stopped for a split second in the crazy whirlwind of a month, looked around and thought "this is exactly the life of my dreams.” And I mean exactly. To the T.

 

one thing i really, really like each time is saying goodbye to my friends in the tube. "ok, i'm going this way." and then we hug and i always say thank you for coming and i mean it. like yesterday, after suspiria, claudia and i hugged twice and it was a proper hug, like a squeezy hug. or when michelle and i go different ways (rarely lol) and we say "see you later" and it's true. or jemma heading back south when i always go north, we hug and say talk to you later knowing that by the time we get to our platforms we'll be texting again.

 

and i always end up thinking about it how the bakerloo line is my means of transport, like this tube line in london is my local public transport, and i ride the train with some music or a book or sometimes nothing at all, and in those moments just being here, existing here, breathing here, living in its most basic sense—it's enough.

04
Out18

by M

this city is a gift that keeps on giving 

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18
Set18

2018-09-17

by M

a bunch of weird shit happened today:

  • jemma and i met in the tube, as in the same train, same car, came door, as we were coming from totally different parts of town
  • we had lunch at camden market and then chilled in primrose hill
  • it was 25º and super sunny
  • we went for a flat viewing that turned into a bunch of flat viewings that turned into
  • michelle and i getting a place and signing a contract and being able to move in october??????
  • walking around selfridges as though we actually mean it looking for a blazer (don't ask)
  • more food with jemma
  • hanging in a hidden pretty lit courtyard just talking until like 10.30pm

honestly i'm just so confused rn life is way too good and i mean way too good i'm not sure why this is happening or how but these things truly never go over my head i'm so grateful and i feel immensely, unironically blessed

05
Set18

2018-09-04

by M

i keep absentmindedly thinking about going back to london as going home

you’re probably sitting on the floor in the dimly lit attic, worrying. trying to find the words to write the things you want to say, not knowing what you want to say. the tic-tac of the clock that has been ever-present, far beyond a childhood memory, now you hear it like a drum in the pit of your stomach. time passes and it passes you by, and now you know it’s forever. there’s no going back.

 

you worry about the future. you worry about first impressions. about failure and disappointment and loneliness. about money and jobs and adulting. you worry about finding your place in a city you barely know and that has little, if any, resemblance to your current surroundings. and you worry about goodbyes. about literally everything that makes your life yours and yourself and how you see it coming to an end. a sort of reversed light at the end of the tunnel. you worry and so you pay attention. i’m here to thank you for that. maybe paying attention makes things hurt a little more, maybe they sting a little deeper, break your heart a little harder. but you let yourself linger on the moment with “the mitigating bliss of those who are too superstitious to claim they may get all they’ve ever dreamed of but are far too grateful not to know it could easily be taken away.” it’s bittersweet bliss but bliss nonetheless. so you let yourself dance around while you make dinner, the sunset spilling all over the kitchen, everything shines. you remember what it sounds like when you hear dad’s car outside and his steps up the stairs. you make the most of saturday sushi dinners, you put your phone down, stay a little longer. and lunch on sunday with the family, you don’t postpone, you don’t cancel, you don’t complain. you go for walks in the woods with mom, you talk about everything and nothing light-heartedly and you think about how long you’ve come. you go to the barn as often as you can, stay a little longer and you tell yourself again and again: this is where you belong. where the sunset splits between tree branches, your nails are dirty, your hair messy and the universe kissing your skin. i haven’t forgotten about that.

 

you learn that people are very much like the sea, they come and go and waves, and you can never turn the tide. you make the most of your 'now' people. you go the extra mile, stay a little bit longer, be a little bit gentler. you worry about every moment you’re not spending with them and the long stretches of time that are to come. you worry about forgetting and being forgotten and the inevitability of it all. you try your hardest and come out surprised, in both good and bad ways. it doesn’t matter as much as you think it will. distance doesn’t change that much if you don’t let it; if anything, it puts things into perspective.

 

you worry, but you wonder too. you wonder about living alone in a big city and how it’s a dream come true. you wonder about who you’ll be there, what does she sound and look like. who will she hang out with, who are those people, their names and stories. you wonder about this life you’re in the cusp of having but doesn’t feel like your own. you wonder when that’ll change—you wonder about waking up one morning and going ‘this is home now’. i’m here to tell you that moment will never come, and the more you chase it the more you realise london has been home all along. london is home right where you are, in the top floor of your childhood home, in the town you were born in. yes, london was never not home because from the moment you decided to come, or the moment you got accepted at uni, to the moment you land foot here on september 17th, london is where you’re meant to be and maybe always have been. there are no forevers in a situation like this, be aware. it’s fragile and precarious and most likely temporary, but it doesn’t make it any less precious and utterly right. who cares about how long—you will find the true meaning of ‘all we have is now.’

 

i can’t pinpoint what things specifically make london home. there is no sunset in the kitchen as you make dinner, no attic to spend your nights writing in, no sushi dinners, no walks in the woods, no horses on friday afternoons. but there are trips to supermarket with your favourite podcast on, bedrooms shared with friends having deep conversations until late, pizza nights turned into drunk nights, afternoons lunged in the park with a book or a playlist and eventually, horses too, no matter how sporadically. and of course there are lush products and taylor swift parties at midnight and twilight playing in the background and ‘old’ friends facetiming too. these things add up and soon enough you’ll realise this life you’ve been building is very much your own. even more so than your previous life, because you crafted this little queendom from scratch. you came here with nothing but an open mind and an open heart and a pinch of blind hope, and you turned those things into the life of your dreams, with the help and support of others, of course. even when they aren’t there to see you toss and turn in those dreadful august nights to come, or when the days grow too short mid-november and you struggle to keep your shit together. but fear not—you do.

 

maybe home starts at uni, predictably. you’ll find a system that finally makes sense to you, your learning style and your interests. you’ll love your lectures and lecturers—some more than others, of course, but all of them infinitely better than last year’s. uni is home because for the first time you’re in a place that welcomes your creativity and, furthermore, celebrates it. this is the first of many findings—that your creative self is a bigger part of you than you ever knew, even though it’s been there all along. you’ll get to bring it from the side-lines to the main spotlight and it unleashes a new sea of opportunities and ideas. for the first few weeks you’ll walk around campus with a spring in your step, unable to grasp this new reality in which in class you’re asked to make characters and sets out of magazine cut-outs or handed a camera to go shoot whatever you want for the whole day. you’ll find yourself in a classroom one day, someone will call you a storyteller and then, in that split second, your entire life will fall into place. it’s all you’ve ever been and truly all you (and i) have ever wanted to be. london is home because it brings out this part of yourself that has caged in your entire life, finally setting it free. be that watercolours after dinner, bedroom photoshoots, days spent in the editing suite. the creative you is more you than you can imagine, and it's here to stay.

 

what about she, you ask. about me writing this and the way i look or sound and the people i’ve found. i look like myself—and that’s about all i can tell you after a year of living without a proper mirror. i know my body from looking at it from above in the shower or in hot sunday mornings lying in bed wearing just a tank top. i like it better this way. i sound like a foreigner who spent their life listening to american english, but who’s moved here and adopted british english as their vocabulary. in other words: a mess, especially when you throw a sprinkle of portuguese on top. be as it may, no british accent for you my darling, i’m afraid. blame it on tv, music and the internet. as for my friends i assure you they are beautiful and i’m so grateful for them. that pretty blonde girl you talk to on facebook will turn out to be a weird reflexion on yourself, as well as the complete opposite. you balance each other out in mutual understanding. you never not have deep conversations on the tfl, but you know how to sit together in silence. everyone wants to talk to you on the streets and at clubs. you make a pretty awesome team. you make only one british friend and even she isn’t 100% british. she likes to try out restaurants with you, go shopping, talk about your favourite things. eventually a day will come where you’ll even ride bikes together through central, on a summery sunday afternoon, as though the whole world is yours to conquer. there’s the girl who’ll come over and talk about her experiences and let you ask questions and she’ll dance to random songs with you in the kitchen and you walk five minutes out of your way just to keep the conversation going. then there’s the girl who made for the only two sleepovers you’ve had—in your bedroom and in her house. she’s you but cooler and you’re ok with that. you don’t see much of each other but talk nearly every day, about dreams and plans as though you don’t fear them. she gets you and you know she knows you get her too.

 

and this is the life you’ve dared to dream of and almost came to expect. now let me tell you about the life you wouldn’t in a million years believe in. you wouldn’t believe if i told you i can navigate most of the city by heart, the streets look familiar, and google maps is less and less necessary. you wouldn’t believe me if i told you about the nights spent confiding with these people, and how foreign it felt to be listened to, for a change. you wouldn’t believe me if i told you you found a way to speak from your heart and be open about yourself and your feelings. you wouldn’t believe you if i told you you about dinner and drinks in soho on a friday night after an 8-hour shift. you wouldn’t believe me if i told you you became your best company, the one you go on walks with, have sushi with, go to concerts with, and how that's become second nature. you wouldn’t believe me if i told you about the nights spent writing, again, at last. you wouldn’t believe me if i told you about meeting some of the people you look up the most, almost accidentally. you wouldn’t believe me if i told you about that one film, book, fandom that will change your life forever, again. you wouldn’t believe me if i told you about the friends you’ve made online and how they became your friends in real life. about sitting on the floor of a student bedroom on zone 6, taking dumb quizzes and listening to taylor swift with a girl you started speaking to less than a month before. about crossing the city to go to the last screening of that film with a purple-haired girl that throws ilys like they’re casual. you wouldn’t believe you if i told you about taking an hour and a half trains to a barn in the outskirts, just so you could be around horses for a few hours, for free. you wouldn’t believe me if i told you that maybe this is where we belong too: where the sunsets at 3pm, the polluted air burns in your nose, the sirens and traffic go on 24/7.

 

for a long time i thought these things were mutually exclusive: the person i was and the person i ought to be, coming here. i’ve found out they are very much the opposite, because they are one and the same. if anything, london has brought me closer to me. when i close my eyes and think of the person i want to become, i see myself. this, now, here, is the only place in this whole world, the only stretch of time in the whole timeline i want to be in. you know gratitude and you’re learning to cherish it, but nothing could’ve prepared me to what it feels like to wake up every single day to this life that falls short of perfect by a landslide. a life in which the pros outweigh the cons, and believe me, there are some pretty shitty cons. i don’t want to jinx, god forbid i have this taken away, but at least it’s been already been worth it. if everything goes to shit for some derranged reason, i’ve got to spend nine months living and studying in london, and they were the best nine months of my life. and of course things were left behind and lost too. but you found yourself, and somehow that was everything.

i'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt, sitting with my feet on the desk eating an apple while i listen to a podcast, looking at the moon through the open window. it's not quite my summer, the one that i've grown up with, but it's close. and today i let it be close enough.

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05
Abr18

2018-04-05

by M

Not gonna lie, I was a bit sad about leaving sunny, springy Lisbon yesterday as I walked around the city in a tshirt and a light jacket, with my sunglasses on. But I should've learned by now that London never ceases to surprise me so I woke up today to one of the most beautiful days so far. The room was lit up by the light seeping through the curtains, reflecting rainbows on the walls. I opened the window without turning on the radiator and the birds were chirping outside. So I knew today was gonna be good day.

 

I tidied up the room, put on clean bedsheets, got dressed and went to a meeting at uni. For the first time in months, the garden was green and vibrant and the sky perfectly blue above it. No rain, no wind, no clouds, no snow. I walked to the big supermarket with a Spring playlist on and even though the bags were digging into my shoulders, it wasn't half bad at all. I had lunch, then cleaned the toilet and still had time to finish a watercolour with my room all bright and sunny and the window open.

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I decided to take myself on a date. We (me and myself) were going to an exhibition but when I got there the queue went all around the block and I was too impatient so I didn't wanna stay. I was sad about it, because I'd been looking forward to this for a week. But maybe it was for the better because I realised I'd never been in that part of town and it was so beautiful, the buildings shining in the sunlight so bright, the birds kept singing, the views of the park. So I kept walking, and stumbled on Somerset House which I'd never been there and no one had told me how beautiful the courtyard is, with the massive buildings and the fountains. Then I ended up at Southbank Centre in a photography exhibition by Gursky, it was insane. Forget about the Picasso, I want one of his photos on my wall. Also there was a cute guy walking around and I would be lying if I said that didn't contribute to my crazy good mood because it did. 

 

When I got out it was like 7.20 and it was still super bright outside. So I walked along the river for a while. Southbank Centre isn't the prettiest but I love that promenade so much, you can see all of the beautiful buildings overlooking the other side of the river, the skyscrapers in the city, St. Paul's, Tower Bridge, the London Eye. The last time I went there was in December, when Katya and I went to a Christmas market, and it was cool to see how different it looks now. There were so many people having beers and dinner outside, jogging or just walking around. For some reason I really felt like having a mocha and tried to find a Starbucks but they were all far away, so I got one from the museum cafeteria and it was surprisingly 1. cheap 2. so good!!! It had actual melted chocolate in it yum.

 

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London feels like an entirely different city in the Spring. There's always something mystic about classic grey and rainy weather for sure, but this kind of bright sunlight—the city glows. Today was like London put on a dress.

21
Fev18

2018-02-17

by M

i promised a coherent post and i swear i tried but there's nothing coherent about this whole situation there's nothing coherent about me diving headfirst into a fandom rabbit hole nothing coherent about celebrity crushes at 19 nothing coherent about how much i love this film and this book nothing coherent about how it has consumed my entire life to the point it's the first thing i think of in the morning and the last before sleep nothing coherent about the late night rambles with mags nothing coherent about how much it fulfills me nothing coherent about standing by a hotel entrance during lunch break just to see a kid in a yellow jacket smile and hear him talk and experience is softness™️ live nothing coherent about his perfectly coherent face

 

but mainly there is absolutely nothing coherent about how this is my life now nothing coherent about strolling through green park in a sunny saturday morning with an iced coffee nothing coherent about windowshopping in mayfair hoping i may one day afford it nothing coherent about talking on the phone with rachel for an hour after all these years and this far apart nothing coherent about fandoms in general but definitely nothing coherent about fandoms in london and nothing coherent about the prospect that i might be really a part of that world at some point

 

so nothing is coherent in my life at the moment and i've been trying to make sense of it for ages but every time i think i might be getting it right something batshit crazy happens so dont expect me to be coherent because i have quit coherence at this point i'm just trying to make the most of this chaos breathing it in living off of it and reminding myself how grateful and priviledged i am for these experiences and these opportunities i feel truly non-sarcastically #blessed

15
Fev18

belated valentine's

by M

I might be late to the party but I realised this morning when I woke up with sunbeams tinting my room a pale shade of yellow and casting tiny rainbows on the walls, and when thought about the tube rides yesterday, and wondered whether I should go to Greenwich park to soak up the sun — I realised London is my only valentine 💖

 

I am in love with this city.

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