A is for Adjusting

'The best thing we can do is make where we're lost look as much like home as we can' (Christopher Fry, Playwright)

I have often wondered what it is that inspires people to up sticks and go, to one day, just pack up their lives and move on. Granted, some people are made to be wanderers; never able to settle in any particular place for any particular period of time. But what is it about us as a human race that encourages so much change within our lives.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, I found myself becoming one of those wanderers, squeezing my life into the boot of a car, leaving all that was real and known to me. I was London bound, caving in to the desires of city life. Having always been a country girl, I couldn't ever imagine how I was going to survive such an adjustment. All I knew was that the time had come to swap the calmness of the ever-green, ever-silent countryside for the tumult of the fast-paced, highly-strung urban jungle. Yes there was fear. Of course there was uncertainty. But God, was there excitement. 

Adjusting is one of those nothing terms, one of those ideas that is incapable of helping anyone. You hear it all the time; 'Oh just give yourself some time to adjust', as if you're magically going to wake up one day and find that all those traits, habits, ways of life that previously marked you as an outside, a newcomer, have suddenly...disappeared. So if this isn't the case, if this is just one of those cliches, then where is it we can turn for help?

I found out soon enough. The only feasible way of fitting into such an image-conscious, media-obsessed, self-indulgent climate, is to change yourself. Of course I could spend my time spouting on about how I'm not vain, taking the moral high ground about never allowing anyone or anything to change me. But that's like being thrown in the deep end, without ever learning to swim, and not even trying to save yourself. 9/10 of you would fight, would let their instinct overwhelm them in order to protect their lives, their bubble. Fight or Flight, that animalistic preconception. And so the same applies here - London was the deep end of my new life. I was the one being thrown in. My only option? Adjust.