TL;DR True Love Is Real When You’re Not Overstimulated
Recently, I’ve found myself forgetting the walk from the library to campus, unable to recall the faces of those around me on the Northern line that morning. By putting on my noise-cancelling headphones, at just the right level to drown out the screeching between Camden Town and Euston, I could block myself away from the outside world. Muscle memory would guide me from A to B, until it got to a point where I hadn’t mustered a single independent thought in what felt like weeks.
That would make me more stressed, I would quite literally be trapped with my own thoughts about work, about grad schemes, about Student Finance. When is my dissertation draft due? When does Senate House Library close? Do I have my King’s ID? I was overwhelmed by my thoughts, by the sirens that were loud enough to make it past my headphone-barrier, by the noise blasting in my ears. Headphones on, phone out, thinking about something else entirely, focusing on not falling onto an old woman every time we came into a station, when I get home, I’ll do the same thing again: headphones on playing a video essay about some reality show I have never actually watched, the Sims on my laptop, TikTok open.
When was the last time I wrote anything? When was the last time I actually did any of the hobbies I like to tell people that I have? I never know what to do with myself, overwhelmed with noises, screens, my Sims’ dwindling needs, a pressure on both sides of my head.
I left my headphones at home one morning. By the time I had noticed, it was too late for me to turn back, and the already delayed tube would make me even later than I was already going to be. It sounds silly, the epiphany I had when I finally realised that I could survive without them.
So what the headphones were left at home?
There was a kitten on the tube in one of those little carriers. He was covered by a huge plaid scarf and meowed quietly as we pulled into Warren Street. The girl that held him looked as if she hadn’t slept in days, with bags under her eyes and a RedBull in her other hand. He was off to get his final jabs at the vet, I wished him luck.
I’d never noticed how strong the smell of coffee is on the tube in the morning, the ghosts of the rush hour commuters stay on the underground until well after they’ve switched on their monitors in the office. Am I a rush hour commuter? I can never tell if I fit that description, but the £4 oat latte in my hand and laptop in my bag is telling me I might be closer to the corporate grind than I am to the family of tourists getting off at Leicester Square.
Getting off at Goodge Street, a man walked past me with six M&S baguettes. Six. I have no idea what he was going to do with them, but he looked pleased with himself. I would be too.
My knuckles are always dry at this time of year, and I can never see past my own breath. I had a conversation with a man in the queue for another coffee, he said he liked the pins on my bag. He used to go up Yr Wyddfa with his daughter, they invented ‘snickers sandwiches’ by swapping half of his peanut butter sandwich, and half of her chocolate spread one. She is twenty-five now and working in finance. He had a medium cappuccino, and ordered an extra small for his friend, who was over a head shorter. The barista remembered my order, she gave me a student discount without having to ask. Oat Latte. Medium. Raspberry croissant.
There was a meet-cute in the library lift. One of those ones you would see in a Christmas film starring a past-their-prime celebrity, where someone would bump into another and spill their coffee, and strike up a conversation. He asked him what he studied, where he was from, whether he could buy him a coffee to make up for it, and finally for his name.
I was overtaken by a chihuahua in a camouflage backpack, on the back of a Boris Bike.
The streets are full of starlings, jumping from the curb hoping to find something to peck at. Every so often, you can just about hear them over the school trips, the police sirens, and the speed-walking businessmen.
I found myself smiling at the platform announcement at Embankment, disappointed that I had no one to tell about the train announcer’s wife coming to the station every day to listen to her late husband’s voice telling her to Mind The Gap and getting upset when they updated the announcement system in 2012, or about how Embankment is the only Underground Station to have reverted back to the old voice, thanks to her.
I would like to finish this off with something sappy, something sentimental about appreciating the world around you, but there is nothing I have to say that has not been said in a Richard Curtis film or by your nan when she notices that you’ve been on your phone for too long. I’d also like to say that I don’t really believe in the ‘dopamine fasting’ wellness influencers tell you to do; do whatever makes you feel the best in yourself. Being told to detox from technology by someone whose job revolves around social media will never fail to irk me, and I’m sure that being told to take your headphones off every so often by someone who is actively writing this while listening to Medieval versions of pop songs with the noise cancelling setting firmly placed on would probably irk you too. This was just a personal epiphany; I felt like I was able to experience London again for the first time. The sounds, the people, it actually felt new.
TL;DR true love is real when you’re not overstimulated, and I’m not sure why it took me so long to realise.
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