#215th

207 St from 215th

215th St. station, 207th Street yards

25/04:

I waited for her inside the restaurant, having nothing to do but a book. Though I found it hard to concentrate on reading in public, because I tended to look around and observe people. The restaurant she recommended meetup was rather small and plain, in spite of being located on the main street very close to Warren Street Underground Station. Euston Road was quite busy and crowded with traffic, yet it seemed opposite around the restaurants nearby.

It was a Japanese restaurant. However the owner was actually an Indian man. Apparently I was going to have a buffet today. Japanese buffet. Or more exactly, we picked food from a conveyor belt delivering food constantly in front of us.

It was not my first time eating 'Kaiten' Sushi Bar like this. I had a chance to enjoy this type twice in Yo!Sushi, and on both occasions, I didn't have to pay a single pound, as it was the company I worked for invited us all, the employees, to have lunches. I was quite lucky indeed. It cost at least £3 for each dish running on the belt, I could eat as many as possible without having to spend my money. And in Yo!Sushi, the dessert especially Dorayaki was delicious! A fluffy pancake with custard inside, dipped in raspberry sauce. I loved it so much that I always picked that dish more than once.

It didn't take me long to part from the book "The Comfort of Things" by Daniel Miller to join the meal. So I didn't remember much things I read, I knew it was a collection of individual stories, but I somehow lost interest in it after the first story I read about the man with nothing, 'Empty', I found that story strikingly touched, the life of an ordinary people, of nobody, telling it was also what I desired to do in future. I wanted to be a writer. Then again, wasn't it a wishful thinking for an ordinary girl like me? ...

When she arrived she swept away the presence so quickly that I didn't manage to capture a glimpse of description. She was the same though: skinny, petite, fast in orders and adjusting with the situation. Once she sat down she asked for the idea of food and eating method, she had never eaten like this before. I had a thought that she was really not a good listener, as she always quickly asked me how I was, but without looking at me fully till I finished my answer she already turned around when catching a sight of the waitress coming around. It made you feel like: she was the kind who never wanted to miss a chance, but by not missing one that is approaching, she made herself ignore the one she already grabbed. By doing so, she didn't not yet savor the current chance given to her. I somehow presumed she was like that. As this was not the first time when she talked to me, and while I was still answering her, she already turned another way to ask for some explanation in order to start eating with no time to lose. 

I would not go too far to stereotype her as a typical Accounting/Finance major in one of best ranked Uni - LSE. Still, she was not the first one I met who was always on action, busy busy and busy. That's the kind who usually studied in most economic majored subjects. Business type I guess.

I remembered how I found it challenging to talk in my mother tongue with her. Maybe it was because I talked in English most of the time with my housemates and college friends. I didn't have friends from my own country around and during term-time I was to busy to meet any outside my Uni. 

It felt like I started learning how to speak again, which was quite embarrassing if you think about it in more depth. I, therefore, talked little and commented few, I listened instead. Besides, she herself need talking a lot. It always felt like she held it in to wait for this time of the year when she could finally released all out.

She just broke up with her best friend last year, and around that time she also broke up with her first boyfriend. It was harsh for her and she couldn't cope with it well. I think so. As after one year, meeting her again today, she still talked about it so vividly as if it just happened.

She told me about her boyfriend who was sweet and quite talented. He could play piano as long as he listened to the music on an MP3, he was seriously slow in reading music sheets, yet, as long as he listened to the song, he could play. The type who could play by ear. He sounded fabulous in her way of presenting him, as if I also need that kind of boyfriend, for I am into piano and so admired people who could play by ear a lot.

She said he was passive and wished he could be more romantic and did something more for her. Yet now he already left her, what could she wish for more? He was the one breaking up. It was her first love and therefore she found it difficult to move on. She kept showing me her negativity towards her life so far, and she said she couldn't show to anyone but me, because everyone else was already sick of her talking about him and her problems, they expected her to move on already after nearly one year, so she showed she was moving on with others, although deep inside she constantly missed him.

She said she just dreamed about him recently. And that was why everything about him came back to her, now she went on and on how she couldn't forget him, and also couldn't even move on from the broken friendship with her best friend. In her, I find a stay-still situation, where she was completely trapped in the time of one year ago, when things JUST happened. She said she could not trust anyone, no one was close and be there for her; she felt lonely, complete utter loneliness. Though I find it ironical when she complained so when she was with me, does it mean I was also not close to her enough for her to feel less lonely, even though I was right there listening to all her melodrama? I wonder if she said the same to all her close friends, then no doubt no one could be able to stay with her. As she didn't consider them trusted and close, that's why she talked to them about how lonely she was and that she had no single close friend, without thinking what the others would think when she said that to them. Her friends must feel that they were completely strangers to her then.

She was indeed over-dramatic. Better or worse, she knew that herself. And she herself said that 'No one wants to be friends with over-dramatic person'. And that's how she concluded why she was alone. In my opinion, she was just another 'over-thinking' type. And the more she thinks, the more she twists her emotion and belief, to the extent she trusted no one and in turn assumed that no one trusted her. She lost confidence in herself after the incident with her best friend, who now even turned to despise her and hate her. It was because of this that she felt that she could not be loved. It was obvious. Even your best friend or the one trusting you the most now turned your back on you, it is as if 'there must be something in you that is so bad that even the one closest to you couldn't stand it'. That's how she thinks, and such thinking seriously damaged her self-esteem, self-respect and her ego. She said she couldn't even love herself or believe in herself because no one believes in her. Even her best friend left her, even her great boyfriend. Then what was she but a person not deserving any happiness. That's why she wished she could find someone close to her, be there for her, when she called they would just be willing to come for her, basically she just showed to me that she was wishing to have someone just like her best friend, she was just wishing something that would make her come back to a repeated circle again, something that showed she still didn't learn from what had happened. She felt to lonely to be alone, that was why she said she wished to fall in love again, or be in relationship again. She wanted to have a boyfriend again. 

It was indeed true that our mind converted everything into habit to preserve efforts. And having a boyfriend turned to her habit, without one guy she then need another to fill in the void, to continue her habit. 

I somehow find striking that love could be just habits between one and another. Maybe there is really no love, but just habit of being with someone. Thinking like that, I always felt, love was not some kind of mystery but just something really plain: You fall out of love and so you have a habit of falling in love, you are in relationship and now you have a habit of having someone close to you, if not there is some voids, the voids must be filled in, if not, one was just so free that one touches the meaning of loneliness. One does habit for the sake of erasing loneliness, love is just something like habit or something made to fill in the void. Love is just nothing but a delusion of void-eradication.

That's her way to understand love in my belief. A wrong way to know what love is. And she would keep feeling solitary like that, because she is living herself under delusion of love. She is the type who need people, she need someone who trusts in her so that she could trust herself. She finds her values in others, she needs other to define herself, she could only find the meaning of her existence in the acknowledgement of her own existence by others.