Counter Intuitive

Today marks the second full month of my time here in London. In total, it has been 2 months, three weeks, 31 blog posts, approximately 4 nervous breakdowns, 1 broken washing machine, about 50 calls home to my mom (about 5 of which involved crying), 1 anti-American rant from a psycho, 3 root touchups, 4 foreign countries (excluding England), 5 “blind dates” with second-degree friends, and a handful of trains to the English countryside.

But who’s counting.

Well, I am, actually, in case you didn’t notice. I even have the months marked on my calendar all the way up to a year. Why? I’m not sure. Possibly because I’m a lunatic who has always counted the passage of time like it was some sort of achievement (I used to count weeks of high school using the very popular temporal measurement unit of “New BH 90210 Episodes”), but more likely I think I’m awaiting that Magic Time When I Feel Settled.

People keep telling me about this concept. When I first announced I was moving, my boss (a former London expat himself) told me, “It will take you six months to feel completely comfortable there.” I would have operated under this assumption, anxiously awaiting December 10th (but really, who’s counting) when I would wake up to find that I’d sprouted an affected Madonna-esque British pseudo-accent, a bizarre addiction to Builder’s tea, and an insatiable appetite for mushy peas and meat baked in pies, but then I wouldn’t have taken into account the million other opinions I have heard since.

Everyone seems to have a theory. Six months, three months, a year (God help me). Just last weekend, I was informed that for the first six months, I would be wrapped up in all of the excitement, and for the next three, I would be really annoyed by the frustration and difficulty that is living in London, and then I’d get over it and be fine. According to that formula, I should be hating life in the dead of London winter (and if this “summer” is any indication of what winter has in store, that sounds about right).

Despite all this prophesizing, sometimes I wonder if I will ever feel really truly settled. I’m not sure. I can’t imagine a time when I don’t yearn for my friends—the irreplaceable touchstones who have known me for more than a decade and understand me in the context of our shared histories. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to reconcile certain things, like the distance from my parents, the stiff tank tops, or the rain mygodtherain.

But maybe that’s ok. I have good days and bad days, just like I would if I were anywhere, and the good far outweigh the bad. People keep telling me (usually the same ones who like to guess my settle-by date) that I’m “brave” for having taken this step…but I wasn’t. The moving, the living here…it was never difficult for me (well, the moving was, but mostly just physically and um, rodent-ly).

The difficult part for me, and what's always been difficult for me in every aspect of life, is the waiting patiently…I want everything to fall into place instantly, and when it doesn’t, my instinct is to count months like a bored prisoner until it does.

The truth is: There is no magic date. I know it, you know it, Madonna knows it. Sure, there are moments when I stop and realize I haven’t thought about the fact that I’m in a foreign country for 10 minutes, an hour, a day (well maybe I’m not quite at a day yet, but it’s imminent I can feel it) and those moments come faster and more frequent all of the time. And if I can just hang in there (possibly for the first few months of the NEW 90210 THAT I’M MISSING BECAUSE I’M NOT IN THE U.S.!!) eventually, even if i don't wake up British, I'll at least wake up home.