I have officially finished my 3 month internship at Jane Carr in London and have moved back to my snuggly, warm, festive home in the countryside, so I thought I would write a short article on how I dealt with loneliness while being in London.
Working in London was a completely different experience to moving to University. Yes, University can be an extremely lonely place but you are surrounded by thousands of people or the time. My time in London was not what I expected and I can’t find the words to explain it. I guess I thought I would be completely content with being alone as soon as I moved but that was not the case. I moved to a completely different city, 3 hours from my home and not really knowing anyone. I have two close friends in London but one is in north London and the other is Stevenage. I stayed in a house near Ealing, so travelling to see these girls would take up a lot of time and getting home at night using the tube had not sat well with me yet, obviously coming from such a small village.
After the first couple weeks it became extremely hard, I was feeling very homesick not being able to see my boyfriend, family or friends I have been spending all my time with through the summer. By this point I had made such incredible work friends, but my best friend Nikki had moved back to Scotland. It would get to the weekend and although I had planned all these things I could do on my own, by the time it got to the evening I would sit in my room and feel extremely lonely. I am not going to lie this feeling never left me the whole time I was in London as I am an extremely sociable person, I love to be around people, but I just learnt to deal with it.
Once I accepted this, I began to become so much more content in my own company. I have never learnt the value of spending time on your own. Everybody thinks you learn this at Uni which yes, you do in some respect but not when your chucked to work in a city on your own. Everyone in London is extremely independent, everybody spends a lot of time on their own, that is the nature of London.
I dealt with my loneliness by setting myself goals for the week. Instead of heading straight home I would do something in London, whether that was to see an art exhibition, meet a friend, or even just walk to Piccadilly, I would make sure I had something to fill up my evenings. I would also try and find myself some small hobbies to do at home, including reading, creating video content or even just searching up jobs for the future and doing a lot of organising. Keeping your head busy becomes easy when you find other projects to concentrate on. When you accept the fact that this is the way you feel and actually want to work towards freeing yourself from this feeling, it becomes easy.
London has taught me a level of independence that I never learnt from Uni, I value my time with people and on my own. I have learnt to value my parents more than ever and believe that this is all due to the lonely feeling I felt at the beginning of this amazing experience.
Nothing good comes from staying in your comfort zone, I would never of met such amazing people or learnt the values of life that I have.
