Memories from 2006

It's not too hard to remember the first weeks or even months in London. I was a very different person back then and I had to escape a very confusing situation and a painful period of my life. So I did what I had to do, let myself be sucked up by the thousands of inputs that London offers who is up for them. I walked for kilometres, I visited museums, expositions, shops, gardens, places, restaurants, streets and neighbourhoods. I remember I used to walk with the Ipod and the earphones to shut myself off the external world. I was very lonely. I didn't speak English well at all and I can remember many evenings at the pub struggling to understand a single conversation and just dreaming to be home on my own. 'Home' was a tiny studio flat, next to Hammersmith Hospital in the good old days pre-Westfield and pre-Du Cane Road renovation. It was scary to go home at night but I loved that tiny teeny flat nevertheless. I had everything under control and for some reason I wasn't afraid. I was lonely, but eager to know, to learn, to find myself again, so many times lost and so many times somehow re-won.
Then came friends, then came John, then came a normal life. We moved to our second home on the riverside and we have been very happy and very desperate there and life got going. Our third home on the docks was really ours, bought spending all our savings. I remember at some point our balance was just 60 quids and we moved in with me expecting Bianca, due in a couple of weeks and just a toilet and a microwave oven. I remembered we were going to take a shower at work and we were eating canned or microwavable food. And just when everything was finally settled down, again we decided to engage in a new dance. So the decision to move here and the rest is life now.

Back then I was younger. Now I'm not alone.