The ghosts

Students (and academics, which are another kind of students) have no home. I know this sounds a bit too melodramatic but it's true. You go back and forth, you live between cities that you have to leave the moment you start getting used to. And more importantly, you cannot go back anywhere without the piercing feeling of emptiness. Because students live in student-towns, whose population changes all the time. You go back to the town you studied and you don't see anyone you know. And when you do, you usually hide. Well, at least I do.

I hide because I am bored to do the superficial chat-where are you now-so nice to see you-do you have a permanent job now etc. And the people I see, the few people that I still know, look like ghosts. All of them have changed, some look thin and sick, some look fat and tired. Some look disturbingly the same. I don't even know what's worse: to change or not to change-that is the question. We all change, but in ourselves we don't notice it as much. Only when our favourite jeans don't close and old pictures look as if they show a distant relative.

And then there are the places. Your favourite café has closed down, clothes shops disappear and new awful ones pop up in their place. New happy pretentious students have taken up your favourite spot in a restaurant and you look at them and think, who are you, what makes you think you have a right to be here?

I know I sound bitter, it must be the rain after 6 days of sun. It seems so out of place. Which is ironic, because this is the place where rain is most at home, England. Anyway, I have to go now, and bump into more ghosts on my way home.