New starts. Same Beginning

I write to you from the doorway of my new flat. No silly. I'm not stood in the doorway, I'm sat on the ledge between flat and roof terrace enjoying the muggy evening. No. I can't jump from this ledge, I'm an inch from hitting the roof terrace and a foot from the floor of my flat. So the best I could hope for if I was in suicidal mode would be that a bullet from Tottenham had flown all the way down the road, hit the fence and ricochet into my head. It's highly unlikely. Or. The pigeons who frequent my terrace gather into a gang and peck at me, Hitchcock style. Or the dog who sometimes cries next door, jumps the fence and pounces on my throat. But the chances are none of that will happen. So I'm safe on this ledge. And. I'm not feeling suicidal.

*Phew. That was a bit hairy for a minute there. I don't know about you but I wasn't sure what was going to happen to our poor depressed heroine. But she's just on a ledge. A safe ledge.*

However, I am listening to Ben Howard, so...this might change my mood from moderately pensive to Sylvia Plath gas oven. Lucky for all of us, my new oven is electric.

This past week my little flat has already seen six visitors. Five of whom were known to me. One of whom came into the flat a virtual stranger and left the flat less of a stranger. Mother. I can ask only that you make that into a story about an engineer who fixed something whilst telling me his life story. Part of that would actually be the truth. I feel like I felt just under seven years ago when I first moved to London. New beginnings. My own space. My own kitchen. My own fridge. But. And here's the rub. I've been here before. Seven years ago. And then again two years after that when I split up with the boyfriend I was with when I moved. And then again nine months later when I met the next boyfriend. I didn't feel it when I moved to Paris. Which should have felt like a very new beginning but due to said boyfriend, I always saw it as a blip of study and nothing more. To be left behind so I could come back and be happy again. And then we broke up. And then I struggled. And then I came home. And then I came back to London, to the same flat, moved in by the same boyfriend who'd moved me the first time but this time in friend capacity (are you keeping up?). And that didn't feel like coming back and it didn't feel like starting again. And so, I moved here. To start again. But to start again in a place you were once happy when you're not happy is hard. Because you can't help but come back to the fact that you were happy here and now you're not. And instead of the distraction of a new scene, new people, a new view you have this in amongst the same people, the same scene, the same view. And I know this is part of my illness but I keep thinking. And?
This is lovely flat. It's my own flat. It should feel like a dream. A new beginning. But it just feels like the same beginning. How many times will I have to keep doing a new, same beginning? Will anything ever change? Or will I be here years from now wondering what the damn point is?

*She gets the bread out of the cupboard and calls the pigeons to her. Hitchcock style.*
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