retrospectre

I have this tired preset response for whenever someone asks me what I'm doing in hospital after hours - which is most days. It's something along the lines of, 'I live here now' or 'I've got nowhere else to go!' and it started out as a cute little quip, grinning ruefully and bouyed by a gust of bravado, but lately I've gotten tired of saying it. It's become less of a joke and more a statement of fact delivered in a flippant manner - and after a long day, sometimes even the flippancy falters.

Why does it feel like my life can be summarised as what happens within the hospital.

Has split in two and the world has moved on, and I'm taking a different path that's leading further and further away from everything I've known. A current that leads away from KL and old friends' birthdays.

A day off, outside the hospital, feels strange. Feels like re-entering the atmosphere after having been isolated in space - or coming out of a 10 year coma with a tom hanks castaway beard, trying to remember what the word 'normal' used to mean

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I went into preston last night, the streets were alive, the city's spark had returned. there were returners sauntering through the streets, and a bar filled with freshers, hunched over their drinks, warily scanning the crowd for a friendly face or something familiar. The outdoor terrace decorated with fairy lights, a young man holding a guitar and the group surrounding him, feeling a little unsettled by the new-ness of their surroundings. A few years later they will identify the feeling as homesickness, look back fondly at their initiation into a world bursting with potential and bright futures waiting to be claimed or squandered away.