Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 71

“I didn’t feel anything. It’s not even a holiday here. I woke...

“I didn’t feel anything.  It’s not even a holiday here.  I woke up early, walked through the streets, and listened to prayers on my headphones.  I might have bought myself a cupcake after dinner.  If I was back in Egypt, I’d have gathered with the whole family for dinner.  We’d have a specific type of juice, dried figs, dates, apricots in water.  On the way to the mosque we’d give all the children treats.  Everyone would speak to each other in the streets.  It’s quite beautiful.  You see all the happiness around and think, ‘Yes, it is Eid.’  But here I celebrated all alone.  My plan has always been to go back home eventually.  I knew if I wanted to go further in journalism,  I would need to study in the West.  But the plan was always to go back.  I always imagined having a family, and getting married the traditional way.  But I’m finishing my doctorate in November.  And now that it’s getting close, I’m not so sure.  It feels like maybe I’d be sacrificing myself for tradition.  I’d be like everyone else: becoming a mother, raising my children, and nothing else.  Maybe I could become a lecturer at a nearby university.  But there’s not a research culture.  It’s not about innovation.  You can easily get stuck teaching the same content for years.  I want to keep going to conferences.  I want to travel, not just for tourism, but to do something important.  To develop myself.  To share my ideas.  To have people say: ‘We learned from you.’  I don’t have to be better than everyone else.  I just want to contribute.  But at the same time, my mother is back home.  She’s all alone.   She’s growing old.  And I don’t want to miss this part of her life.  I’m not sure what to do.  But I need to decide soon.”
(London, England)

“I didn’t want to be around it. I didn’t want to hear the...

“I didn’t want to be around it.  I didn’t want to hear the yelling, or the fighting.  So I ran away from the badness.  I spent my childhood at the houses of friends.  I surrounded myself with people.  And I became a social butterfly.  Even when I moved to London ten years ago, I still kept my old friends around me.  There were always so many people coming and going.  But then we all turned thirty, and suddenly everyone was going, and not coming back again.  Things began to fall apart for me.  I lost my support network.  I lost my job.  I found myself in an abusive relationship, just like my mother had been.  I was so angry at myself for going through the same cycle.  But I allowed it to happen, because he was the only thing keeping me from being completely alone.  But one day I did it.  I finally left him.  For a moment I had no friends, no job, no place to live, and no relationship.  I wanted to run back home.  But I stayed in London.  I stayed just to teach myself that I could be ok.  I rented a room in a house full of strangers.  I began doing things on my own.  I went to a music festival by myself, and ended up meeting the best friends of my life.  I stayed single for three good years.  I taught myself what I want and what I deserve.  Now I’ve got a great boyfriend who’s not insecure, who’s not jealous, who’s not controlling, who lets me be myself.  And I’ve learned that I’m independent.  Growing up I always thought of myself as independent.  But it was just a thought.  I never knew.  But now I know.”
(London, England)

“We worked together at McDonalds. I was in a deep depression at...

“We worked together at McDonalds.  I was in a deep depression at the time.  It felt like my mind was dying.  Hours passed.  Days passed.  I just tried to keep to myself and make the fries.  But she was different.  She was friends with everybody.  Always smiling.  Always blushing.  Always talking.  One morning it was snowing outside, and she walked in the front door, covered in snow, and she started dancing and twisting on the floor mat, and the snow was falling off her, and the light was behind her, and she looked like an angel to me.  But we never spoke.  Her friends kept telling me that she had a crush on me, but I was too shy.  Sometimes we’d be at the same post together, and both of us would just stare at the computer screen.  If we accidentally looked at each other, we’d look away really fast.  Then one night we both finished around 10 pm and we sat alone in the break room.  We started talking a little bit.  She couldn’t sit still.  She kept getting up and walking around the room.  I told her that people were saying she liked me.  She didn’t respond.  She just stared at the wall.  Then after a long time she finally looked at me.  I put my arm around her shoulder, and we kissed.”
(London, England)

“It’s a question of point of view. How can consciousness exist...

“It’s a question of point of view.  How can consciousness exist in a material world?  Perhaps consciousness is an illusion.  But if I perceive consciousness to be an illusion, then surely I must exist.  These questions give me so much anxiety.  I can’t stop thinking about them.  I’m not attentive when other people speak to me.  I forget to clean my room.  I don’t do my homework.  I can’t learn my lines in drama class.  It creates so many problems in my life.  My parents tell me: ‘You could win this award.’  Or: ‘You could easily make these grades.  But you don’t care enough.’  They’ve taken me to ten psychologists.  Never a diagnosis.  They just say that I’m a dreamer.  And in this world dreamer is not good.  Dreamer means child.  I need to become an adult and do material things.  So that I’m stable.  So that I can buy a house one day.  So that I’m not just living beneath a bridge, thinking these thoughts.  But it’s so hard to find the energy.  Before I begin I must know if life is absurd.  I can’t live in an illusion.  I want to be lucid.  I need to know that I’m doing things for a reason.  That I’m expending energy for a reason.  If death is the end of all this, and nothing but emptiness after that, then it’s a terrible problem.  It would be better to not exist than to exist in a world without meaning.”
(London, England)

“It took me a long time to get out of the house. My mum was...

“It took me a long time to get out of the house.  My mum was afraid of the outside world.  She used to walk me to primary school even though it was only two minutes down the road.  Same with secondary school.  And when I got my first job, she sat in the parking lot for the entire day.  She’s most comfortable at home: cooking, cleaning, looking after us.  And she never understood why I felt so restless.  I was never allowed to go out with friends.  I wasn’t allowed to go to shopping malls.  So I became a timid person.  At school I was always the student who was ‘just there.’  I’d sit in the back of the class.  I wouldn’t answer questions.  One of my teachers asked me when I’d joined the class and I’d been there for two years.  But I always loved learning.  I wanted to be a teacher.  I just never thought I had the courage.  I didn’t think I could stand in front of a class.  I didn’t think I could control the kids.  So I kept giving up.  I dropped the course two times.  But my friends kept encouraging me, and I finally got my certificate in July.  Since then I’ve been on nine interviews.  I’ve had three placements already.  Two were at Catholic schools, which especially worried me because I’m so visibly Muslim.  But the students were great.  The teachers were great.  And I’ve grown so much.  I can stand my ground.  I still get nervous with every new placement, but I don’t shake anymore.  I’m hoping to get hired soon.  And as soon as I get my first paycheck, I’m taking my mum to the shopping mall.”
(London, England)

“I was shooting a lot of tequila. I’d already thrown up before...

“I was shooting a lot of tequila.  I’d already thrown up before even going out that night.  Then at the bar I saw an ex-girlfriend of mine, and she was with a guy, so I walked up to him and said I’d put a brick through his window if he took advantage of her.  That was really humiliating, so I drank even more.  Everything after that is pretty hazy.  I remember it in vague blips.  I remember walking up to Kylie, and kissing her, then running away.  Then all my mates were leaving.  So I walked back up to her and said: ‘I’m going home.  Are you coming with me?’  She said ‘yes,’ and the rest is history.  But we tell family that we met at a university lecture.”  
(London, England)

“It wasn’t a shotgun wedding. He proposed before Dad got...

“It wasn’t a shotgun wedding.  He proposed before Dad got diagnosed.  We’d already scheduled the ceremony.  We’d rented a large room at the museum.  And Dad promised me that he’d make it.  He said he’d still be healthy enough.  But as the date got closer, he got sicker.  And we didn’t want to risk it.  So we changed our plans.  We moved up the date.  We held a tiny ceremony at the registry office.  Maybe twenty people came.  Dad stayed in bed until it was time to go.  But he made it the entire day.  He drove me to the wedding in the same car that he’d driven my mum, a green MG Midget.  He walked me down the aisle.  He gave a speech at the reception.  There was no focus on being ill.  Or why we moved the wedding.  It was just a nice speech.  I have a film of it, but I haven’t watched it yet.  I think it might be too sad.  Dad passed away five months later.  My husband and I had a vow renewal recently.  It was exactly one year from the planned date of our original wedding.  We held it at the same museum.  It was the original guest list.  There was a lot of soul searching involved.  We weren’t sure if it was the right thing to do.  We weren’t sure if people would understand, especially because it happened to fall on my dad’s birthday.  But it turned out lovely.  Really lovely.  There was so much Dad in the room, his photos were everywhere.  But this day was about us.  About our relationship.  About showing the world how much we loved each other.  About our future.  And about moving forward.”
(London, England)

“I love my mum because she’s the nicest mum and is so kind to...

“I love my mum because she’s the nicest mum and is so kind to me.  And I love my dad even though he has a new girlfriend and he doesn’t live with us anymore.  But mummy says he loves me very much and he cares for me so much, even if he’s very busy and doesn’t have time to talk to us, and he works far away so he can’t come see us.  But mummy says he loves me so much.”      
(London, England)

“It was the shortest day of the year: December 21st, 1987. I’d...

“It was the shortest day of the year:  December 21st, 1987.  I’d stepped out of the office to go on my lunchtime run.  I was jogging along the river, just a few hundred meters from this spot, and I noticed somebody pointing into the water.  There was a man out there.  He’d jumped off the Waterloo bridge.  I could see him in the middle of the river, waving his arms.  Now I’m a total sissy when it comes to the water.  When I go to the beach, I don’t just race into the sea.  I go inch-by-inch.  Like a sissy.  But on this day I took off my shoes and leapt into the river.  It was a very high wall, and the whole way down I’m thinking: ‘Shit this is going to be cold.’  But as soon as I hit the water, I got my mind on the job.  I swam 50 yards until I reached the man.  By that time he was unconscious, but I pulled him toward the shore.  A police boat arrived and hauled us out with ropes.  They took me to the station, filed a report, gave me some old clothes, and sent me on my way.    There were no newspaper articles.  No interviews.  I told nobody except for my boss, because I had to explain why I was late for my 2:45 meeting.  But I did get one little thing.  Hanging in my home, at the top of the staircase, there’s a certificate from the police commissioner.  It says: ‘Gallantry Award: Rescued A Drowning Man From The River Thames.”
(London, England)

“Dad died a month ago. It’s been strange living without him....

“Dad died a month ago.  It’s been strange living without him.  He was a strong Northern Ireland man.  He worked as a busker in Waterloo, near the river.  He only ever played old rock like The Kinks.  He didn’t like authority,  things like police and that lot.  He was smaller than me, but that didn’t matter.  He once fought half a police force by himself when they tried to take my older sister.  He barricaded the house and took them on one by one.  We lived in a nitty-gritty council estate in Southeast London.  It was basically the ghetto.  Lots of fights at my school.  Lots of knife violence.  Down to the point where sometimes the roads would be barricaded.  Dad wanted to toughen us up.  Mum was gone, and he knew nothing about being female, so he just focused on my character.  We’d practice martial arts in the hallway.  He’d slap me around like an older brother.  I became pretty butch.  I’d get in fights with men.  I was quite angry.  Being so poor and all.  And I’m still quite angry, but I don’t show it much.  I repress a lot.  I took care of him until the end.  He died in my arms.  He was my rock.  I’m feeling so lost but I’m keeping it in.  If I fall apart, so many things will fall through. I’m in a lot of debt to the government.  I’m trying to hold on to our apartment. I’ve got to find strength to deal with me own problems: money, government, paperwork.  I can’t lose my patience and lose my job.  But maybe if I’m ever done with everything, then I can have a little breakdown.”
(London, England)