“The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane.”- Stephen Fry, poet.

There’s a reason why the city of London is referred to as the Big Smoke. In combination with climatic conditions and the use of coal, London is known for its fog as it hovers over the city. 

But for me, the Big Smoke holds a different meaning.

A magician depends upon smoke and mirrors to perform his tricks; the mirrors help create an illusion, and the smoke is used to divert the audience’s attention. A young Londoner who I met was brilliant at this. He used his tricks to disguise himself, to be something else entirely from what I knew to be true. 

It’s been 10 ½ years since I’ve been back, but sometimes the pain still feels fresh. 

I first arrived by train on the Eurostar with my sister to Home of Big Ben in September 2009. I had just turned 21, and to me, the world was shiny and new. 

We stayed in a hostel that was the size of a big closet with bunk beds and loved it. I fell in love with the hustle and bustle, the community of travelers, all the converters, having to use real paper maps, no phones unless we found Wi-Fi at a restaurant or McDonalds. I felt as if we were floating on a cloud of pure joy, wonder, and adventure. 

London is the capital of the United Kingdom. It’s the U.K.’s largest metropolis along with its economic, transportation, and cultural center. London is also among the oldest of the world’s great cities, with its history spanning nearly two millennia.

I wanted to absorb as much history as I could. Immediately, my sister and I booked our tours for the next four days we would be here. My eyes were hungry. My mind was thirty for a thrill. 

The morning of our first full day, we met in the heart of London for our first tour. Our tour guide was an Oxford University student majoring in history. My eyes swallowed him whole. 

At the end of our tour, we exchanged Skype and became social media inseparable.

London is also known as the Swinging City and I swung into it. I was enthralled by the fascinating dark history of London. The story was about King Henry the VIII and Jack the Ripper.

I stood at the steps where King Henry had his male victims beheaded. I tried to picture what that must have been like, watching a beheading in the 16th century, as if you walked in a bar to catch the latest sports on TV. It was entertainment and for the King to exert his power and to make all the others beware.

Women weren’t beheaded in public; it wasn’t seen as appropriate. They had a private execution in the London Tower Castle where two out of his six wives were beheaded. I thought about what they must’ve felt walking towards their pending doom.

There’s a rhyme English kids learn in school about King Henry’s wives: “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.”

At the end of the night, we went to all five locations where Jack the Ripper slaughtered his victims. No one actually knows who Jack the Ripper really was or if he was a she. At the last location, our tour guide directed us to a bar that had been there since the last murder rampage of 1888. We decided to have a drink inside. When we walked downstairs to the bathroom, there was graffiti everywhere, mostly saying, “Jack the Ripper was here.”

As much as London had its dark side, I’d soon discover with my Londoner.

A month after we met, he visited me while I was still in Paris, and he told me he loved me. It was a scene in a romantic movie, I thought. 

After I returned to the States, we corresponded multiple times a day. My phone was attached to my hip. I was living, breathing, and waiting for that moment, that signature skype sound that brought me back to him.

In April 2010, I visited him for the first time. My second time in the U.K. I stayed with him at his flat in Oxford, and in London as well. 

I was more than head over heels for him. I was turning over completely into a different world: a somersault of infatuation, passion, intensity, attraction, and attachment. A persistent disturbing, and unreasonable need to be with him, no matter how badly he treated me. 

He was arrogant and condescending. He talked down at me, corrected me as I spoke, and implied I wasn’t smart. With my low self-esteem, I believed it. But I tried to win his approval.

Yes, I saw the red flags. The flags turned into banners, and the banners turned into leaderboards, and the leaderboards turned into posters the size of houses. But I set each and every one of them on fire. No one was going to destroy my fantasy. But there’s a reason why fantasies are fake. They are simply unrealistic.

After two weeks, we departed. We continued our relationship via Skype. I then visited him when he was staying in Paris in September 2010. I wrote about that in a previous post. That trip burned down to the ground. I vowed to be done with him, but he asked for another chance. He wanted me to come back. I gave in.

In January 2011, I prepared to stay with him for an entire month. “This would be it,” I thought. “No more hesitations, no more delays, no hiding behind uncertainty.” He proclaimed his love for me. We would unite and finally be exclusive after a year and four months of doubts and dilemmas. 

I touched down in the town where royalty resides. He was an hour late to pick me up from the airport. When he arrived, he was cold. Something was wrong. 

They say, “Love is blind.” Well, I think love is a thief; a thief that holds your brain hostage; it clouds your intuition, blocks your gut, masks your mind, slows down your ability to see those warning signs. When you’re in love, you’re delusionally happy, dangerously happy that you never see what’s coming. I’d discover just how much love distorts all logic.

A week into my trip, I found out he fell in love with someone else a month before my arrival. His five flatmates watched as I drank and cried myself to sleep every night on the couch. A feeling of emptiness, loneliness, and humiliation I’ll never forget or wish upon anyone else.

At the end of my long, draining, and harrowing trip, I felt hollow. I said goodbye to him at Heathrow Airport. It was raining outside, and so was I. Right before I boarded my flight, he couldn’t pass up, bestowing one more lie. “I promise we’ll see each other again.” 

I wept the whole 13 hours on the flight back to SFO. When my mom picked me up from the airport, I fell into her arms, limp, bawling hysterically.

Over a decade later, time has helped heal. But every once in a while, I’ll be reminded somehow, and the heartbreak and humiliation from that time still sting, like an everlasting scar that refuses to fade.

London remains a place of heartache. London was my favorite city, but it’s been tainted. A con artist polluted all my good memories. 

I long for the day when I’ll be able to return again, to reclaim it again as my city of wonder, but for now, it still remains as the city of delusion and deception, my continual Big Smoke and mirrors. 

SSxx