Adrift

As you get older, your world becomes bigger.
I remember when I was younger I felt things with urgency. I never acted out because of this but when I felt something I was adamant in my feeling of it. When I was hurt, I felt it with every fibre of my being.

I am still like this now but I am able to make sense of things in a different way.

Your world is too small when you're young. There are so many lessons to learn and so many things to experience. And one of the hardest lessons is that people leave. People move on. It is inevitable.

If I look back to being in primary, I think that's one of the biggest lessons I learned without realising. That was the first time I was uprooted. I mean sure we moved houses when we young but it was nothing like realising that I wouldn't really see my primary friends again. I loved primary. I had an amazing time there. Whenever I think back to it I always think about how that was where I was happiest.

I'm thinking about this because I've just been scrolling through the twitter feeds of old friends. There are people who I haven't spoken to for 10 years. I haven't physically seen or spoken to them in 10 years. 10 years. These were people who I cared about deeply and now they have all moved on in their lives and I don't know who they are anymore. They are strangers. It makes me sad because I'm sitting here thinking about them and I wonder if they think of me?

Are we all just destined to make our friends only to move on from them?

I'm at a point in my life now where I have my uni friends, school friends and friends from various groups I belong to. But it is hard to keep track of everyone. And I don't have a person. I don't have that one person who is my closest, bestest bestest friend. I think this is what makes it worse. It makes me focus on everyone I'm not in contact with anymore.


So to all my primary friends, you guys were the best. I hope you are all swell and in great places. I send you love and warm wishes.

Love,

T

x

I'm not bitter- but I probably sound it.

Over the last few years, a significant number of my friends from secondary have married. It's confusing for a number of reasons.

Firstly- what on earth ?????????????????????????????????????

I am 22 right now. 22.

22.

I can't even contemplate being a full-time teacher and my classmates are making concrete life choices. One friend got married at around 17/18 and already has a kid. How do you get there?

How does a person get there? 

It becomes more complicated when I think about the people they were when we were 16. There was pain and angst- so much angst. 

We were so young. 

These girls are married now, settled, but just a few years ago they were confused and I was the one who had it together. I'm not saying that I don't have it together right now or that I begrudge them their happiness, but I would never have predicted that they would be married and having families now. Some of them never went to uni. They didn't follow a 'path' or have any direction for their lives and now they are starting one of the biggest journeys that could be embarked upon. 

Everytime that I get a message from someone now about an engagement, I am so pleased and genuinely overjoyed for them, but at the same time it terrifies me. I'm not bitter. I know I sound it, but I am not jealous. 

I am happy with the choices I have made this far. It just makes me think about how much we really cannot predict the future. I have absolutely no idea about how my life is going to pan out. There's this moment in Gilmore Girls where Rory is worrying about getting into college or getting a job (I can't remember which) and Lorelai tells her that she's had it easy so far, everything that she has wanted or gone for, she has gotten. That moment is so real for me. It made me think that I had always done well in school. Alhamdulillah! I know I worked hard but it is a terrifying thought to really come face to face with your own fallibility. It's the truth. And that is hard to internalise. For me, I think there is a part of me which thinks, I have pursued academia, and everything that I could have expected to get, I achieved- is this it now?

I imagine sometimes that I might bump into an old teacher and they'll ask what I'm up to. They'll probably be happy for me, excited but mostly, they will think I always knew that she'd be the one to become a teacher. I can't imagine me surprising anyone. But there will be the inevitable question- what is everyone else up to? And I know that this would be the point where I might say, so and so is married, so and so is engaged, so and so has a kid... Then comes the open mouthed what! wow MashaAllah.

What about you? When are you getting married?


(sigh)


It is hard to grow up when your head isn't moving at the same pace as time and biology.

It is worse when everyone else is growing up and maturing in a way other than getting their grades.

It's not enough anymore to be the 'good kid'.

It's not enough to be the 'one who was prefect and head girl'.

It's another ballpark altogether now-

and I am resisting but I can feel it starting to chafe. I know that a time is going to come when the new version of 'growing up' will be demanded of me and I am not ready. I don't know if I ever will be.

Gosh it sucks.

"That moment"

It's been a tough few days.

Yesterday, I had a conversation with someone and I feel like it has changed everything.

It has changed the way I see myself with respect to others.

It has made me angry, hurt and sad all at once.

It has made me feel like there is no going back.

There are certain things said, things done and conversations had, that you can't return from. That's what I've experienced. I feel like my world has changed.

I don't like it. I don't like not being in control of my life. It's debilitating and painful.

I am in one of those moments which I think I'm going to remember as "that moment". You know, that feeling when you are experiencing something epic, life-changing, heart-wrenching, moving.... anything big, really..... and then you recall this memory that you randomly have of something once insignificant but now so essential. The past few days, the process of me writing this blog post, they will both be something I look back on. I will be thinking one of three things:

You didn't know it then, but things were going to get a lot worse. 

You didn't know it then, but things were just about to get better.

Nothing has changed.


I don't know which one it'll be. I don't know which one I want it to be. All I know, is that right now, I feel like the earth beneath me isn't as steady, and I'm slowly losing my balance.


Here's to not falling over.


T

x=

Pre-Graduation Jitters/Doubts/Worries/Apathy?

Graduating feels so different from leaving secondary school and sixth form. It's so much more lonely. Usually when you leave school, there is a last day, a finale. Uni isn't like that. There's no closure. It's just a long process of being in limbo.

You come to the end of your final semester, the last seminar, but you're still yet to face exams or coursework. Then you embark on a month of horrid exam preparation or coursework all-nighters. Then you have another month of waiting for results. After that, you wait for your final award to be ratified. Then you are bombarded by e-mails about graduation and you're ultimately just confused. Apart from the few friends you have on your course, there's no collective moment where you know everything has come to end.

I remember leaving primary and secondary school. There were hugs and lingering goodbyes. Right now, I haven't experienced any of that. I feel numb. I know there are things I should be feeling- nervous, excited, sad about endings, hopeful etc- but I'm more anxious than anything. I just want it to be over. I don't feel sure about anything.

I know that this is all in my head. I know that if I told people what I am feeling, they would tell me it's normal. Everyone is scared. Everyone is anxious. No one knows what they are doing.

But I'm not sure that it's enough.

It's not enough to know everyone is finding it hard.

I want to stop finding things hard.

And I think that's what makes it all the more difficult. Graduating is another milestone achieved and yet I feel like nothing has changed for me. I can see posts on Facebook where distant acquaintances and friends reminisce and ponder on the most rewarding and life-changing three years of their life. Instead, I look back and I find it hard to see where I've grown. I know that if anyone is reading this (who isn't me), they're thinking that I'm feeling sorry for myself.

"Of course in three years you've achieved something!".....you're probably shouting at me right now. You and the rational side of my brain are in agreement.

I think graduation for me is finding the ability to face the past three years and accept that I have changed.
It means being less hard on myself.
It means realising that there is time to make the progress I wanted to make, but haven't.
It means looking forward and not staying in a slump.

Of course, this is all easier said than done.

T