A Man Alone

(Another title that is interesting to no one except me, this time taken from a spoof title given in "Traveling Light," but it's been running through my head and seems fitting)
This post is not especially funny or filled with pretty photos, it's just me, thinking out loud. To the Internet. And you all.
The past few days we've been visiting Stratford-Upon-Avon, birthplace and home of one William Shakespeare. It was beautiful and charming and I look forward to telling you more in the weekly roundup, but for now, forgive me, because I spent a lot of time thinking and feel like sharing a few thoughts.
Even though in this flat of 20 people we do most things together, London lends itself well to solitude. I've journeyed out several times on my own, oddly, with much less fear than I usually have walking around by myself in Salt Lake City. And I really like to be alone.
The thing about being alone though is it removes me from the distraction of other people, forcing me to confront my demons and fears, sometimes to crippling self-consciousness. Not too often, anymore though.  In photos taken of me on this trip, I see something I do not recognize, something of myself I wasn't aware existed. There was one taken a week or so ago, I won't say which, that I truly did not realize was of me. I pointed it out to my new friends and asked, "Don't I look different there? Does that look like me?" They didn't see anything strange. I didn't know any of them before this trip began. They only know and only see this Dani of London. So does every shopkeep I hand coins to, every passerby on the tube, every fellow traveler at a museum. My face passes without a story and I wonder what it conveys because it certainly isn't the same story as two years ago, when I began to learn what it means to be alone, maybe not even the same story as a few months ago.
I've been told my face is an open book, that it's easy to read my expressions and emotions, even without me trying, but I'm not too good at reading my own face, in part because I so rarely look at myself. In this photo though, I think I read joy. I read self-assuredness and health and most astonishing of all, I read ease. I'm wound up so tight most the time that I lie awake at night, high on my own anxiety, but in Stratford, I swear, I laid my head down, commanded sleep, and received it, instantly. I don't remember that ever happening before.
I'm not cured of my anxieties, by any means. Fears about identity, school, belonging, and my ability to function as an independent, self-sufficent person, whole in my relationships and endeavors go round and round my head when I'm alone. This is normal though. There's no massive fear, no overpowering problem at present to consume me, so my agitated mind has to find some smaller things to fixate on. I feel like I'm being healed and also gently taught by the city and I am grateful to have the opportunity to be here. That's all I have to say.

(Bonus! If you thought this post was boring and you feel gipped, feel free to amuse yourself by finding references to Moriarty from Sherlock in other posts (there's at least two) or by taking bets on whether or not I'll actually talk to a British boy.)