Life From Scratch

“Laura!
Where are you?”

“Just
on my way to Mum and Dad’s from the airport. Landed ten minutes ago. What’s new
with you?”

“Not
much. Just packing for my holiday. We go to Portugal on Monday.”

“Do
you need a house-sitter?”

“Why,
do you want to come and stay?”

“Thanks
for asking. Yes.”

So
basically, in less than the time it takes me to shower (an every other day shower, obviously. The one
with the hair washing and armpit shaving. Not the body-rinse shit-I-just-got-my-FUCKING-HAIR-WET shower
of all the other days, which aren’t very long at all) I bought myself some time.

I
cried when the plane landed back on British soil last week, but I don’t know
why. I think the guy next to me was trying to hit on me- he kept staring and
smiling sadly, wistfully, and looking at me sideways when he thought I wasn’t
looking at him. He was too young. Every time I saw him inhale and then open his
mouth I’d suddenly find myself so
incredibly intrigued by my hands. The in-flight magazine. The welcome sign
to East Midlands Airport. I knew he’d ask me why I was crying (maybe he could
rescue me from myself?) and I didn’t know. He was just trying to make
small talk. I had nothing to say that didn’t feel huge.

Ten
days ago I closed the big chapter of my life called Italy, and How She Will Drive You Nuts and Crazy With Contempt and
Desire After An Accidental Sixteen Month Extended Stay, and started the
next one: Life From Scratch.

See
also: you said you were gonna make it as a writer, Laura, so GO MAKE IT.

Except,
starting a life from scratch- a life where bank accounts and mobile phones and
places to live and jobs and income and dreams and, and, ANDANDANDANDAND- was
the absolute last thing I wanted to do after getting off of that plane.

So I
copped out. Pressed pause. Took my ball home and said I’ll play another day.

I’d
psyched myself out.

When I
went to get her house key off of my aunt the next day- a day that was full of
aches and pains after a night on mum and dad’s sofa- and she asked me what my
plan was. I was all, don’t really have
one just urm… sell my book? and she was like so, it’s your parents’ sofa for how long then? And then my brother
rang and said his housemate was moving out suddenly and did I want to come and
stay for a few weeks, just to get settled into London and see if I could fudge
some sort of a plan for myself? And I said YES and then got back to my aunt’s
conversation where miraculously, instantaneously, magically, I was all yup.
Totally have plan. Gonna be around for three weeks then move in with Jack. So
how does the hot water system work again?

A
friend wrote to me in an email this summer, after his own adventure abroad: Now
that I'm home again, I find myself replaying memories from the summer over and
over in my head, unwinding them and finding and synthesising the snapshots,
sensations, and emotions into meaningful memories. Sometimes, it all feels like
a dream.

For a
week now I’ve been locked away in a cottage that isn’t mine on the edge of the
Peak District, safe in the knowledge that in two weeks, I’ll have a new home. I
ate avocado every day, and sometimes read my book, but mostly I just sat on the
back porch in the early autumn sunshine and looked into the distance and
processed my own snapshots, sensations, emotions.  

It
felt good.

Mum
laughs. Aren’t you a loner? she
teases. Maybe. Or maybe I needed seven days to sit in the quiet, have the
September light sketch patterns on my face, and stop putting so much pressure
on myself.

Walking
up and down the cobbled paths of this Derbyshire village, cooking real food for
one in a kitchen where I was Queen; exchanging morning greetings in a language
I am fluent in as I buy milk and the day’s paper, ambling down the road to eat
cheese on toast with my Nanna; it all added up to make me realise something.
This isn’t Life From Scratch like I’d
thought it was.

I don’t
have a home, and my best friends- the ones I’d call at 3 a.m.- are spread far
and wide across the globe. They don’t all conveniently live in one tiny pocket
of the country, a place where I can return to and quietly slip into, like Kayne
West into any given supermodel. My parents don’t live where I grew up, and any
belongings I have are in boxes, stacked high in a garage I don’t have the keys
to.

But,
one week and some days of staring at this view and I realise it now: it isn’t Life From Scratch when I’ve already done
so much. Have so much. Feel so much. I didn’t know that. It took that view and
doing absolutely nothing, alone, just me and my thoughts, to figure it out.

I
guess sometimes you’ve got to stand still for the rest of the world to catch up
to you.

Maybe
sometimes your world has got to stand still so that you can catch up to it.

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