cherry

This is my Feb 14th story of love and loss.

I have hardly listened to music since I landed in Vancouver in June last year. Before this you wouldn't catch me going 12 hours without some kind of music.

As I sit plugged into my iPod I just realised why I stopped. Music is a huge emotional trigger for me and every song I know reminds me of some person, event, emotion or place. Every single one.

And all of them are tied to places, people and memories back in England and Scotland and sometimes even Wales. I am a serial escapist. Wherever I am I want out, and once I'm gone I want back to where I was.

I think back on London and wish I'd been able to make a better go of it. I miss that city despite how difficult I found living there. Now, years later I have really good friends living there that I didn't have when I was there.

I hated Edinburgh when I lived there, but sometimes I loved it, and I have my best friend there.

I miss the English countryside, the beauty of it and the subtlety of it all. But most of all I miss my friends and all the things we do. I feel like I am slowly being forgotten by everyone and even though I know that isn't true I think it's just natural to feel that way when you see everyone else's life moving forward without you and it seems like yours is merely standing still.

I do love Vancouver, but it's still new. I don't really fit in anywhere here and I feel reluctant to do so and become attached while my future residency is so uncertain. The friends I have here (pretty much just Lindsay and Amanda) are both relatively new still and I still feel so awkward and nervous around them it's almost torture (I hate my anxiety and neurosis). It took me so long to get to the point that I did with Catherine and just a year or so later and I leave.

I feel like I'm always rushing off headlong into the future, desperate to escape from one place or another. I just can't keep still.

And then I get there. Oftentimes I just want back.

So, I sit here listening to the music that makes me nostalgic for things I can't have and I dream up all the things I would do with my friends if I were back with them or if they were here. I feel so alone. Or at least like I have lost something or left it behind.

Selected memories of those I have stored online...