A few nights ago over dinner, the Boy and I were talking about cities and their personalities. Places are like people. They have their own quirks, faults, assets, mannerisms. They can be moody and giving, beautiful and bland, intoxicatingly intriguing or tragic. And often times, like the most important people in our lives, we can have love/hate relationships with our favourite cities. The talk reminded me of a time in London that made me so very, very sad.
It was sometime during one of the winters I was there, around 6pm and I was on my way home from work. I often chose to take the bus in the evenings, avoiding the stuffy rush of bodies in the London Underground. Seven million people use the London transit system every single day, a mass migration of chaotic proportions. In the winters, it is mad. Wet, moist and dark. The kind of experience that leaves you feeling sweaty and shivery all at once.
Unsurprisingly, on this particular evening, the bus driver seemed to have forgotten that he was carrying a few dozen passengers in the back. He accelerated and braked like he was in a demolition derby. Stop. Go. Stop. Go. Like being in a bumper car at the carnival. A middle-aged woman got on the bus and as the driver stomped away on the accelerator, the woman fell face first on the floor and broke her glasses on her nose. Blood streamed down her face while the bus charged on. A concerned stranger came over to help her up. The bloody woman screamed in protest, “Leave me alone! Don’t touch me!”. The good samaritan, shocked, backed away. The whole bus was silent. The several dozen of us passengers sat there without words and watched as the woman knelt on the floor of the bus and sobbed. She sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. Embarrassment, self pity and pain on her face. The whir of the bus engine and the woman’s crying was all I heard the entire ride home. I sat there staring at the floor, shivering in the winter cold dark and thought to myself, “This is the most tragic place on earth. What the hell am I doing here?”.
I thought instantly of home, of my parents, of mom’s sweet love. I needed something to balance the unforgiving darkness that stole a piece of my innocence that night. I couldn’t believe that in a bus full of warm blooded human beings, something like that could break my heart so completely. I went home to my cold flat and couldn’t shake the feeling of anonymity that had crept inside me. Why was it so hard to reach out to another human being who was hurting and why was it so hard for her to accept help?
London is a crazy place. Chaos, excitement, beauty, tragedy. It has the power to change you, for the good and the bad. I am still grappling with the crazy beautiful years that I spent there but am so much more aware of the things that had the power to break me. I’m so blessed that I left with a soft enough heart to still be able to believe in the true kindness of people, in the power of love, in the innocent possibility of fairytales. Not enough people believe in fairytales anymore. I’m glad that I still do.
