Year One

Dear friends,

My first year at Keele University is at its end, and it truly has been an extraordinary year. I've fallen in love with this place, and the people I have come to know since September. I've loved my lectures, finally being able to solely focus on the subject I love with like-minded people who actually damn well want to be here. I have been in walking distance of a beautiful Hall and its woodlands, alongside the countless coffee shops, bars, and general hubbub of Uni life. It'll be weird to live off campus next year and be further away from it all. I'll miss the woods, but I can't wait to put some distance between myself and drunken students keeping us all up at 4am!

The people that tell you that you find out who your real friends are when you go to university are right, but I am happy to be left with the people who stayed. I have also gained some brilliant friends that I am privileged to have shared this year with. Hopefully I'll see some of them over the summer, although a few of them are slightly further out of reach.

I can't believe how lucky I've been to meet such brilliant friends. Sam and Rachel, my neighbouring couple, are currently chilling with me in Rachel's bed watching Criminal Minds with ice cream, chocolate, the lot. And we do this alllll the time <3 Besides that they are quite simply wonderful crazy friends. Yas is crazy adorable and understanding. Becky and I are on exactly the same wavelength, all the time, and she writes, and is a feminist and luuurves Rocky Horror as much as I do. Shy also writes and is this super cute, crazy little hip hop freak. Danielle is so cute, loud, funny, and always lovely. Ian is on my wavelength in ways other people rarely are. Nick, Charles and Phil are all totally different but equally talented writers whom I have been privileged to know as my colleagues in classes this year. It is amazing to know that during my first year at University I have been surrounded by people who genuinely get me, are super caring, super fun, and just brilliant in their own little ways. They all bring out the best parts of me, and have all changed me (I believe for the better) in little ways.

So things have changed, and I have changed. Sometimes that has been damn painful, but hopefully always for the better.

My relationship with my father basically disintegrated this year, and after so many years of trying to fix it I think its about time we both gave up. I appreciate that he has tried to be a great dad and always stay in contact with me, and that we have had some great times together, but I also know that we cannot keep pretending. We just don't work. We don't get on and I find it hard to believe that we ever will. I will never accept the way he speaks about and treats my mother or my brothers. I will try to forgive but will never forget the pain and anger I see in their eyes when I mention my dad, or when I tell them that we fought again. The pain a person causes your loved ones is something you never stop seeing when you have seen it once, even if you have all tried to forgive and forget for each other's sake. While my dad has never been truly awful to me, he still had a constant, irrevocable ability to make me feel awful about myself, and that is the kind of damaging relationship that needs walking away from.

My relationship with George has also ended, and I am honestly a little nervous to go home and see what life without him is like. It's easier here because George was rarely at Uni with me, but I know that when I go home there will be memories like ghosts haunting every place I knew with him. It's been a long time since I did home life single, and that scares me bit. I think that's when it will hit me and hurt, but for now I am in limbo. I have banned myself from dating until I get back to Uni in October, because I definitely need time to recuperate and figure out who this woman is that I am becoming.

I've changed in many ways as well. I have learned the enormous benefits of taking risks and finally throwing myself into the things that are important to me. I have performed on a goddamned stage with the rest of the dance society, facing my fears and taking on a challenge that I had always fearfully avoided before now. I would never have done that before university. I am more accepting of myself now: I'm aware that my good parts and my flaws are all just part of me; if other people can love me for who I am with all that included, why shouldn't I? I smile more now, at others and at things. Smiling is good, I've found. As are meditation, yoga and walking, all of which help me keep my balance. The confident, adventurous side of myself (a family trait that I always envied my brother for exuding) has definitely come out, and I am continually excited at the prospect of adventure, of novelties, and of exploration.

If my first year at University has taught me anything at all, it has taught me this: I CAN do anything! If I want it and fight for it enough, I just can! How amazing and magical is that?

After all that I've been through, all the people that I have met and that I have loved, all that has happened and all that I have done, I really believe in magic. I believe in magic that comes from sharing your life with extraordinary people, taking risks and noticing the little things as well as the big ones.

The woman that made my tea on Thursday gave me a genuine smile, I have my books, and life will continue to be beautiful, and that is what got me through sitting at the Thursday table alone for the first time since January.

Of course I still have sad days, but I know that those days always pass because this is the kind of sad that just takes time. My friends and my experiences this year make those days a hell of a lot easier to get through, and even the good days are better now.

I will be home with my mum very soon, and I cannot wait for whatever this summer might bring.