I look back in time and my bond with London glides into foreground almost magically, blurring my life all around it.
I lived here through perhaps the worst time my mental health has seen. This is where I wanted to end my life. Where I truly hit rock bottom for the first time. Or was it the third? Third it was. However this time other people were affected whereas the first two times it was just me. Or was it?
If I would’ve succeeded in ending my life earlier, along with my parents who still seem to be chugging along and my sister God alone knows WHAT she would’ve done without me, there were many more people who would’ve been affected.
My grandmother. My Nani who raised me from when I was a raisin. I saw her die a death inexplicable when her nephew died of cancer. I can’t even imagine what she would’ve gone through had she witnessed my death.
My then boyfriend. I think he would’ve been upset for a year and then moved on. However I’m SURE he would use the story of his girlfriend killing herself for all eternity to follow. He was into stories. Not a bad thing. He should’ve written something.
My friends would be scarred for life. Most people would need therapy to get over the trauma I would’ve exposed them to.
It would however only break some hearts more than others. The disillusionment of a suicidal attempt is such that you not only feel you’re ending your own misery, you feel like you’re doing a favour to those around you by ridding them of terrible company. You feel (or at least I felt) that you are lifting a burden off the world by doing this. Being the bigger person. Harming yourself as opposed to others. Relieving them of their social and moral responsibilities to bear someone as awful as you around their lives.
And then you fail. Numerous times. And there’s little worse than failing at failure such. You can’t even kill yourself right. What you don’t know is, it’s those prayers, the positive energies of those surrounding you that are making you fail attempts but win at life. Every time you hold your head in your hands and cry at still being alive, there’s rapture and joy somewhere else in the collective that wants you to live, still.
This was my London. My plans on jumping in front of a train or slashing my wrists, or praying I never woke up the next morning kinda London as the world saw a happy, chirpy, painting the town red with her camera and tripod girl.
And then I recovered. Was it my first fling after my divorce, or the first boyfriend I had? Or was it just time and my love affair with work that I threw myself into? It was the latter, methinks. Work has been a mistress that never failed me. I had one theory which worked like a charm.
Love work. It’ll always love you back. You will gain experience that makes you more valuable, you learn, you earn, you have a schedule pushing you out into the world and you don’t have time to psychoanalyse your troubles to the verge of ending your life.
It worked.
Two years later I wanted to come back to London. To visit. The Pandora’s box of sorrows to be opened yet again. I’m sadistic like that. I will dig a scab on a mosquito bite until an almost hole reveals itself on my skin that takes another month to heal and leave a scar but I will scratch a scab endlessly. Until it gives up. Until the slightly deformed piece of skin makes home on me and refuses to become a wound ever again. It’s infertile land. No hair will grow on that patch, usually no feeling left either but it certainly won’t wound again.
That’s why I wanted to go back to London.
To dig this scab until it stops making one there to be picked at. The idea gave me shivers. Seeing the same places where I planned my own death, gave me cold sweats but I survived. I kept telling myself, sometimes staggering physically, that I survived. I had a good life. I was free. I was working. I was valuable. I had reasons to live. And that I WILL find love.
Not the sham of love that is a shrinking violet behind the facade of expectations. Real love that will allow me to grow, to want and for those wants to be met, that will allow me to be me. To listen to my yes and to value my no. To give me my peace.
Okay. Maybe I wasn’t sure I’d find love ever but I finally knew what I wanted and won’t settle for less. I was unapologetically asking for what I need, throwing caution to the wind. At the age of 29, I finally decided to stop apologising for being me. To stop carrying the burden around to be me. To refuse giving in to the guilt of being gaslighted into a corner of life where I was made to believe I was not worth more than I was given like a charity bone to a stray dog.
I survived London. That one trip with its horrors and flashbacks that would drag me near suicidal again. I survived it.
That is when I made a pact.
I will never let my past define a place. I will never let bad times limit my wanderlust. I refused to let go of a city as vibrant and alive as London only because my first go at it was riddled with pain.
I will come here every year. For as long as I can.
And I did.
As I discovered the joys of London and my little quirks started to make way and stamp their existence on to spaces, slowly but surely the nightmares started to fade. The cold sweats turned warm and the shivers turned into chattering teeth at a Christmas festival.
I conquered this city within my own heart.
The first trip when I didn’t get a flashback suicidal bout was when instead I felt my baby move inside me for the first time.
Pregnancy solved a lot of health issues for me. My haemoglobin, my blood pressure. It also made me look forward to living more.
Today I come again. Bringing my child for her second trip here. Second of many as I desperately look for things to do with a toddler in this city that never fails me on any count. We have the zoo and the Bach concerts for kids, parks and bus rides for the mundane lover in me and God knows what not.
My husband calls it my sanity trip every year because I live in Lahore. Enough said.
I ran away from Lahore vowing never to come back yet I did. And out of my own free will too. That doesn’t make me love Lahore. Only bear it. Barely. Sanity trips however are essential.
It is but ironic to see London being my safe space that was once the most hostile and saw difficult times. A place is what you make of it. Sometimes it takes more effort, other times it’s a cinch.
Like pregnancy London has also resolved many issues in my life. She has helped me be unabashedly vulnerable, she has ripped the band aid of facades off of situations and shown me the reality I sometimes was looking away from, she has helped me grow into who I am.
Yet again it tends to touch upon a disillusionment I hold within against my home town. I refuse to embrace Lahore but London compels me to think otherwise. To find my space in the mad that is Lahore. To carve a corner in all that I find ridiculous about the city. It’s a tall order if you ask me. I may or may not fail but I’ll give it a try once I’m back. For now it’s London loving and vulnerability celebration with my toddler for I am my very best version of me in this city and the biggest nothings could change that.
So far.