When I decided to embark on this crazy experiment coming to London for a while, I bought a roundtrip ticket because even though I didn’t know if or when I’d return to New York, it was cheaper than buying a one-way ticket. I picked a return date out of thin air. That date was today, Tuesday, August 2. In recent weeks I knew I wouldn’t be traveling today, so I paid the ridiculous fees and changed the date so I can hop home to New York for Christmas.
Perhaps I should have gone back to NYC today, though. Perhaps London wants me to leave. Because today, when I would have been on that flight, my wallet was stolen, pickpocketed out of my bag while I was working in a pub. I’m not really sure how, since I was in a corner and thought I was protected. But it happened anyway.
Everything is gone. ATM cards. Credit cards. Driver’s license. Passports… both the U.S. and the Irish one.
I feel completely stupid, of course, because I’m very streetwise and should have been more aware of my surroundings.
But the timing couldn’t have been better, if the universe wanted to sucker punch me and tell me to go home at the same time. I was about to start doing things like applying for my U.K. driving license, for which I need my Irish passport to prove I’m entitled to do so. Now that will have to wait until I can get a new passport — at enormous expense — which is going to require, I think, getting all my proof-of-identity paperwork sent to me from New York. We’ll see what the embassy says tomorrow…
Pretty much everything about my life has been pretty bad for a long time. I didn’t think it could get worse. I was wrong. This is a kick in the teeth I don’t need. I was already at the end of all my resources: financial, emotional, everything. I have nothing left to cope with this.
I don’t know what the universe is trying to tell me with all this, but it’s nothing good.
