Leaving London

My journey begins in London, with a familiar lover. It takes roughly two days, a few huge rows and my first visit to a therapist to straighten my head out after three months decadent living in the countryside in Yorkshire, being spoiled rotten by my mum, living well...brain becoming spongy with telly and comfort, indolence and stagnation...the cosy quilt a traveler rarely enjoys.

It was such a shit hole though...the free place loosely termed 'guardianship contract' Mike had found to live near Crouch End in North London. An abandoned office empty cold and filthy, full of other people's rubbish and junk...but after hours of a joint effort in cleaning many layers of muck and mice shit from the kitchen floor and surfaces, 6 bin-liners full of other peoples left over stale rotting food, half empty cans, bottles and dead house plants, we had a reasonably homely kitchen and bedroom. Everything we needed we could salvage directly from this strange abandoned work space, rented out to a bunch of artists for years...everything from CD players to amps n speakers, working fridges, pasta, spices, a super nice glass desk, lamps, bed mattress, bed covers (we washed them), cables, candles, mirrors, human plaster castes both full size and bust size and plastic flowers, one framed for decorative effect, a cosy heater that looked like a real fire if you squint late at night, upon which I could keep my also salvaged tea pot warm and drink delicious calming tea, sprinkling rose geranium oil on the top, filling the stagnant decaying cigarette filled air with the pungency of exhilarating flowers.

It had become a lovers' paradise, warm and spacious. After dealing with my somewhat irrational behavioral patterns, I found it wasn't so hard to be a sweet and kind lover, and I got used to the filth, cigarette smoke and acclimatized vaguely to Mike's decadent need for the heater being on all night. I began falling In love again, with the person who has been the only staple in my life all this time, for the umpteenth time my eyes felt glossy and my heart swelled among other things for Mike, I didn't want to leave our love den in the slightest, but I had to didn't I? I am nomadic. My stomach turbulent to the point of needing to vomit, voice shaky, a bit pissed and stoned, dark rain in black sky pummeling down determinedly outside, exaggerating the ambient interior. “You choose to live this lifestyle Claire, you're the one who wants to be free, you have to bear the consequences,” he says, my heart fragmenting. “I think I am quite free.” There is nothing to argue with this statement, so I lay my head down on the salvaged pillow and tried to breath through all the horrendously painful emotions that were bubbling inside me, simultaneously admiring Mike's emotional desert and seeking solace in that statement... we are both free and it is beautiful.

I finally booked my flight to Bombay after months of saving up in relatively arduous casual work whilst squatting, both in South London and at my mum's, . I didn't know why I was going, why I was leaving, yet there was nothing really to keep me in London. How long realistically could I maintain this sweet tasty bubble, without my soul beginning to harden and bitter like an apricot stone? “I love you Mike...”

“I love you too baby.”

The next thing I know I am being picked up by Pranav in the oldest car I have seen on the road in years, the first car anyone in his immediate family has ever owned, the one he's been telling me about for ages as we drive over a vast and bumpy fly over in the dark of Mumbai... I have no idea what we said to each other but it's surreal as fuck and I'm too emotionally exhausted to care, I am simply trying my best to deal with the inner fragmentation, to breath, to trust that things will fall into place. Remembering all too suddenly about the lack of road rules in India, running red lights, driving through junctions with cars coming at you from every direction, wondering how it is possible that there aren't more accidents, once again taking my life in my hands, living on the edge and almost never falling off.

I am still in pain, I am still missing Mike, but I am so grateful to him. I am writing this somehow because of him and I am definitely enjoying & learning Hindi, largely because of him.