I've missed you since we met

2.

Somehow, not even having arrived there, I felt as if I belonged in England. As I looked out of the plane window I could only see little through the thick fog covering the entire landscape in an uneven shape. Almost like the furniture standing in our attic, covered in sheets that were once white, stretching over the height differences leaving only some spots uncovered. I knew that living in England could mean this type of weather any day of the year, but I was ready for it, actually, I really liked it. I never liked wind, sleet, but rain and fog seemed to calm me. Either it was the rhythmic yet chaotic drumming of the small bullets of water onto glass, or the charm of walking in fog. Breathing in the fresh and cold air infused with an indescribable. That's also one of the reasons why I couldn't wait to get to London, Cambridge, to walk in the never-ending parks and just feel calm. Aside from the week-long course at Cambridge, we had 2 more weeks together with dad, and then he had to leave back for work. Even though I knew he was sad at the thought of leaving me, we agreed that it was even better if I spent some time alone, close to where I hopefully would spend the next few years.

In all honesty I didn't know what I was most excited for, thousands of ideas were spinning in my head about what I would do the next three months. The first (almost) two weeks were quite structured, and I would have most mornings filled with critical thinking classes and analyzing books. But then again I had so much time left after the two weeks, that I still hadn't planned out. I convinced myself to stop worrying, and it worked profusely letting me occupy myself with new excitements I spotted in the landscape. I was interrupted by the pilot enthusiastically announcing that we were landing in about 15 minutes. "As you can already tell, the weather down there is foggy, but the temperature is quite comfortable – as it is currently about 16 degrees Celsius. I hope you enjoyed our flight with British Airlines, and we hope we will see you again soon" the man said in a sincere and quite warm way. I ignored the stewardess' additional exclamation about putting the seatbelt on. I never really took it off, somehow I felt like nothing bad would happen as long as I wore it. Never had I been scared of planes, I loved travelling, but that didn't mean I wasn't alarmed by the fact that I was stuck in a long metal box 30 000 feet In the air.

Time had passed by abnormally fast even though I hadn't slept for one moment during the flight. My eyes moved from the window and instead landed on dad and the magazine he was reading. He always did this, read whatever magazine the plane offered and pretended to be interested in whatever they wrote about. Once, when we were travelling from Spain and back home, he even took one magazine off the plane only realizing it when we were boarding at our layover in Stockholm. Apparently he had become fascinated with some sort of architectural masterpiece from Denmark. He never once mentioned it afterwards.

About 10 minutes after the landing the plane stopped moving, and chaotically enough all people aboard proceeded to move all at once. Ironically enough nothing went faster, and occasionally, some hand luggage fell out of the overhead boots and onto already angry people's heads. Eventually we got off the plane, even though we had to squeeze past an extremely tall man with a face wrinkled in confusion, that had to stay behind because he seemingly had been drinking a little too much. Dad scoffed "He looks like he had been having fun" while looking back at the faint silhouette. He hadn't been drinking himself for many years now, so he always seemed pitiful towards people who still struggled with it.

After we went through a long hall and several escalators going both up and down, we finally got to a more open space which was filled with people. That was the baggage clam. And let me tell you the baggage claim on Heathrow was something out of this world to me. I had been to places like Madrid, Warsaw and Stockholm, but the crowd that was surrounding me in this moment was so immense I froze for a second. I know that probably sounds very cliché, but I was amazed by the amount of people passing me on all sides. See this, this chaotic, maybe even tiring, constant movement was the reason I wanted to move. Here, to London. Or anywhere to a big city, just anywhere else than the tiny village in Norway. Life there was something I had gotten used to, because we moved there when I was 5, but that doesn't mean it was fun. Personally it was quite the opposite. Whenever I talk about disliking the place I live in I feel a sense of guilt washing over me, uncontrollably. But the older I get, the less guilt I feel. The life in a town consisting of a 1000 people and two shops wasn't something thrilling, and I blamed it for making my youth bland and boring. Even though my personality was very shy and reserved towards strangers, I was convinced that if I somehow got out of the place and moved to somewhere crowded, it would change in a heartbeat. The yearly trips to my home city in Poland had always shown that I was a city girl. All the miraculous sensations of crowds surrounding you, the constant flickering of lights outside your window and strangely enough the comforting smell of exhaust on evening walks around our neighborhood were something I longed for. Of course, London was drastically different from Poland, but the idea of it was calming and exciting all at once. It didn't matter to me. I was head over heels with the idea of living in a city, nobody could talk me out of it. In fact, nobody had even tried. It's not like I made statements like this every day, the opposite actually, but this was one thing I had looked forward to my whole life. And even promised myself, as a thought that carried me through high school back at home.

While I had been standing and admiring my surroundings, dad had already picked up all four of our suitcases and was walking towards me while waving one hand in front of my eyes, as if I had spotted a good- looking guy somewhere and now couldn't stop gazing at him. Actually, I wasn't, but good enough, he caught my attention and exclaimed happily "I think you're going to like this!". It was so funny whenever he got happy. His thin grey hair would partially be standing right up and falling down again as he moved his head in quick motions, not even being aware of it. His glasses would almost fall off his nose, and his dark eyes got that spark of joy I didn't see in anyone else's. He was like a child, he had always been, but I could take that. "I might or might not have seen a bookshop on the other side of the terminal. It's actually quite close to the exit, and I thought you might want to go inside for a minute". He put a very heavy accent on the last two words, knowing I have absolutely no understanding for that phrase when it comes to looking through books. I could never refuse that, even after quite a few interesting bookshop experiences. I still shudder at the thought of that high-school couple that unironically reenacted scenes from Othello in a Blackwell's in Oslo. 

But it's not like I could refuse. My dad seemed excited too, like he knew I would like it no matter what. After all, I came here because of books..