It feels only apt that I write some sort of blog to commemorate the closing of a chapter of my life, i.e. the last three years of my life as an undergraduate English Lit student at the University of East Anglia, and The Australian National University respectively.
It has been an era filled with ups and downs, from the fun and craziness of freshers to the hard buckling down to work of third year dissertation time. From facing my fears of leaving home, to facing further fears of leaving the UK, and of the eventual pride I felt in managing to get by in Australia without those who I hold dearest to me being there physically to hug and support me.
In the last three years I have lived in five different rooms, I have read possibly one hundred books (certainly feels like more..), explored living in two different hemispheres and met many wonderful people. I have also had my fair share of homesickness, disappointment, fear and loneliness. I have spent days laughing, and spent nights crying, I have taken part in scary dance performances, three Holi festivals, and been scuba diving (!); seen the scary side of the rock'n'roll lifestyle of flatmates, and the wild side of drug-takers. I have loved and learned and missed and gained, but I do feel like I am beginning to understand myself a little better. I can stumble, and am slowly learning to pick myself back up. But most importantly, I am learning to find happiness in little things. To find things to smile about! In animals, flowers, the clouds....signs!
Life can be a scary place if you let it take over. There are stresses that mount on a daily basis- hurdles that are thrown at us and times when we feel as if we just need a minute to pause. To sleep. For someone else to pick up our problems and help us, and at these times it is really easy to believe that nobody cares and that we are all alone. But in reality, we aren't. People care. But they too have problems, burdens, pressures that we do not know and cannot possibly empathise with. It is easy to blame others for not understanding, but really they have an awful lot of life to juggle too.
What I am starting to learn is that we can be alone, and not lonely (yes I heard that in a song recently and it made so much sense!) That we can rely on ourselves above all else. That we can be happy and find peace in little things.
Something which really made me think was when a friend from Australia, who has suffered a lot with her self esteem said to me over skype,
"Katherine, you are so lucky. I looked at your facebook photos and you always seem to be having so much fun!"
The reason this really got me was that at that moment in time I felt I had very few friends. I felt lonely and lacked confidence and - in reality- had spent so much time working on my dissertation in my little room, that I had barely had time to spend being nice to the people I loved, and going out with mates was a rarity. It goes to show that Facebook can conceal a lot. There's no need for any of us to compare ourselves to other people.
We're all unique. All loved. And if there's no one to love us...well... we can love ourselves!
It's different for everyone, but I am starting to learn a little more about me. I love to be around other people, I enjoy little challenges, I'm a hard worker, but on long drawn-out tasks I find I can get bored easily. I love being outdoors. I have many fears (still) but - most of them- I manage to face. I love all of my friends and am really grateful that I have managed to keep so many lovely friends from back home as well as at university and abroad.
This blog seems like more of a diary now, so I apologise, but I just wanted people to know that hey, it's normal to have bad days... even what can seem like a bad year, but it's okay. Don't try and self-diagnose, it only makes you panic. Instead, plan ahead. Find comfort in little things, and learn not to care so much about what other people think. That's a hard one. I'm not quite there with that yet, but I'm trying!!
Try and do something kind whenever you can. Do things that make you happy, even if others think it's lame, and people criticise you for doing it alone. If you're happy then that's great!
And before this all gets too a) sentimental or b) sounding like some sort of really amateur self-help guide, I'm going to stop! Peace out :P
