It’s lonely. That was one of the first things I noticed.
I spend a lot of time inside my own head. I sit alone, nursing a cappuccino and a poetry collection. I walk between places alone. I’ve gotten good at people-watching; something about commuting is very good for the imagination. It’s like storyboarding, in a way, how I can catch a scrap of conversation and create a narrative in my head. I’ve overheard a breakup in a Starbucks and blushed on her behalf, I’ve seen girls dancing through the streets. I have gotten very in touch with my own boundaries and boiling points and I roll my eyes a lot, at people who walk too slowly and their convoluted coffee orders. Grins, glassy eyes, charged stares and I’ve watched it all, the whole spectrum of human emotionality in front of a coffee and a copy of Crush.
Everything has a number and every leg and pitstop is measured in minutes and steps. It takes me 17 minutes to walk from my house to the train station. There I take a 19-minute train. The Horsham trains run every 15 minutes and I can’t risk missing them. The Piccadilly Line from Finsbury Park to Covent Garden takes 13 minutes. From the tube station, it’s a 9-minute walk to the Virginia Woolf Building (and 8 minutes to the King’s Building on Fridays). My Starbucks order normally takes 6 minutes to make. Allow 8 minutes for the prehistoric elevators and 5 for pre-seminar anxieties.
But there’s also such a sense of autonomy like this. I don’t want to do things the way everybody else does them. And I’m in control like this, this is the university experience that makes me feel safest. I choose where to drink, what train to get, and which readings to prioritise. I can have school friends and study dates, and still, I get to come home to my sleepy town, my childhood bedroom, and my mum’s food. The only inhibition is the weight of my satchel. It’s a head rush. I have these two worlds that can coexist and I don’t have to choose. The city feels like it’s mine. Both cities do.
I know that there are things I can’t ever understand. I don’t understand what it’s like to have a flatmate or to be within walking distance of class. I can’t stay out all night and miss the last trains, drink too much and stumble back to the station. And there’s definitely a loneliness in that, in the unrelatability and limitations of it all. But I don’t think it’s necessarily a friendship deterrent. I actually think the strangeness is attractive. There’s a certain curiosity towards my lifestyle and my choices as a commuter, and that sparks conversation. If I crap on Thameslink or TFL, people will know I’m funny. Something takes shape. A personality, a person with opinions. A person who has travelled an hour to be in this class and sat next to you. They ask lots of questions. About journey time and wake-up times. I can see they’re mildly impressed, mildly horrified. Either way, somebody has acknowledged the sacrifice and cares about what I have to say.
I’ve learned that the city feels smaller than all its statistics and significations, it feels smaller than the force of the line ‘I’m studying in London.’ The world narrows down like this. There’s a certain order to the Underground maps, to the three roads I have to cross and the six floors I have to climb. I have a purpose. I’m here to say ‘yes’ to the register and to make a train. I’m here to say something and make something of myself. I see the same woman on the train home every night. She catches the 19:12 and she’s always on the phone with her daughter. I smile at people, say “have a good day”, and hope the city feels a little more intimate and interconnected that way. And there’s power in that, in the pleasantries and how they slow down the rush hours, in the city’s humanistic core. There’s power in being part of this population of dreamers and catching a train at the end of the day.