Being part of a city but not being a part of the city life.

First of all, I won Nanorwimo 2012.  It was hard and emotional and crazy and empowering like it always is,  and by the end of it, I came out with 58, 373 words. What's 50k words to a mother fucker like me could you please remind me?

Today I went to visit my friends who are studying at a college in the heart of town. Now I go to my high school for my post 16 education, (and that is only, like, a ten minute walk from my house?) so having to get the bus into one of the busiest parts of Leeds on a Tuesday afternoon when usually, I'm cooped away in the suburbs felt like a completely foreign task. I even pressed the button to alert the driver to stop too suddenly and when I got off he asked me what I thought I was doing. I wanted to tell him I had no absolutely no idea. I didn't reply back.

That's kind of how I felt throughout the whole day. Don't get me wrong here, it was lovely to see my friends and when I got there they even gave me an exclusive tour around the building, but my gosh, I did not know what I was doing. I felt like a little kid running round in a toy store. The atmosphere felt exciting, similarly to a university campus, you could feel the plethora of life circling around - there were kids doing band practice, a library full of kids studying, students artwork, posters advertising clubs, staff members reminders plastered all over the walls - It was like walking into a young adult novel.

 And although it was exciting, it also made me feel a little nervous too. I literally felt alien among these gangs of teenagers that do everything in their power to admit the post modern look from their over obnoxious styles. I mean they felt like Super Real Teenagers, you know, the types you see in literature or cinema, that attend college and study cool things like film studies, and get like two separate buses home. (TWO BUSES!!!!)

My friend's slices of the city are completely different to mine. They encounter more people, more
 life, more cars, more events, more posters, more streetlights - but we do the same thing, we both study.  How is it that are days are so extraordinarily different?

I am really starting to think about people's physical maps in their hometown and how the smallest of things can really affect them. It takes one thought to leave high school and go to college. And yet that defines your next two years so massively.
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Things only become alive on maps if you discover them. And all these people my age, (no matter how much similar things they  are doing to me) discovering their maps in complete different ways by making very different decisions.

I am a part of the city, I know the city of the back of my hands, but I am not part of the city life. But with one decision I could have been.