please close gate

This hilarious photo near Blenheim Palace, from the Daily Telegraph, cracked me up when I first saw it but the more I look at it the more strangely evocative it seems. I think I have been feeling a lot like this over the past few days – like no matter how hard I try to fence myself off, to close the gate, there is a wide open expanse of chinks in my armour, whole gaping areas which can’t be blocked off. Where things just creep through anyway. At 23-going-on-24 there are so many things I feel I ought to be, to have learned by now, but haven’t; I am still so worried about how I am viewed, about being vulnerable, about doing what pleases others. I haven’t learned anything all that much, other than that I still have a long way to go – but maybe that in itself is a worthwhile lesson.

Weekends when good friends come to visit are always the best :) and Saturday mornings have taken on a new shade of happy altogether since picking up Japanese again. I love the language, I love my sensei, and my classmates are made of win. Never have I met a more diverse group of people with differing interests who clicked better. A fortnight ago I was saying to Pak how I feel that sometimes, you know instinctively you can get along with someone even if you haven’t all that much in common – there’s just this click, and you know, even if you’re a floaty-artsy-type and they’re into science or banking or architecture. I had a lot of trouble describing this clicky-feeling and what it was based on, and I don’t think I really succeeded, but I’m sure it’s there. I have felt it so often with the unlikeliest of people. And interestingly enough, hardly hardly ever with people who share my interests – my colleagues in theatre, my lit coursemates from uni.

A while ago, the realisation that by the end of this year, much of my London company will have left – either for greener pastures overseas, or to other parts of England – hit me pretty hard. And I guess maybe the time is long overdue to open the gate, to let others in, to be what i want, and stop being so afraid.