I’m currently on my way back to the south of England after a whirlwind visit home for some days. We’re coming to the end of February which marks the sixth month I’ve lived away from my friends, family, and the town and city I grew up in. People always ask me why I moved so far away and if I get lonely. The answer I tend to give is always muttered through stuttered words because I just can’t quite sum it up during a five minuet passing conversation when it’s really a conversation to be had whilst nursing a bottle of rum and some sweet music in the background. So I’ll attempt to lay it out within these typed words instead. The answer to the latter is yes, I do get lonely. But the thing is, I love it. I love being lonely because it breaks my heart and I’ve learnt to sit with it so well that it has become my best friend. I guess you could say that self inflicted loneliness is a self destructive tendency but has helped develop who I am over the past two years and that’s something another person can’t easily take away. Once you find a way to not let it consume you, and once you stop attempting to replace it with superficial relationships or material things, it becomes a friend who you can laugh with at two in the morning when you realise you’d rather be with no one but yourself.

I’d lived in my parent’s house for twenty two years. That’s a lot of years for the four walls of my childhood bedroom to hold. All that family history, heartbreaks, loss, good and bad memories all mixed together in one tiny, two bedroom council house. Everything stays the same where I grew up. The same people walk down the same street at the same time like clockwork. You will grow and change, look and feel different, your mind will broaden but everything around you is stagnant and to explain it in its most simplest terms, I felt suffocated and I needed to see the world from a different perspective rather than through the distorted view of my hometown.

Travelling the world may be what helps some people to grow, but I felt a need to be back in the classroom. I needed to go broke for a while and learn what it’s like to live pay check to pay check, and sometimes when I’m lay in my bedroom during the middle of winter and I can’t feel my face whilst wearing gloves in bed because the heating barely warms the house, and my alarm is set for six in the morning six days a week out of seven, and I’m feeling the weight of 3 assignment deadlines and my job somewhat destroys my soul, that’s when I think about sacking everything off and going away. But then I remember how hard I worked to get here in the first place and to even be able to save the money I’d have to go back working full time in a mundane, repetitive job where staff are treated as just a number and profits are valued over people. So it’s in those moments that I remember going back into education was the best decision I’ve ever made. It’s in those moments I remember why I came here. Because going into those lectures during the week and sitting and debating around tables with a group of diverse people with different views and fascinating minds is what gets me out of bed in the morning and adds the most value to my life.

I’ve said it fifty times before, but we’re not prepared for our twenties. We experience different types of growing pains than those from back in our teens. Reality and expectations can be miles apart and right now I’m in the midst of a love-hate relationship with life itself and a complicated affair with my not-so-new city. But what I’ve learnt being here so far is who my real friends are and who they’ve always been, a skilful eye where character is concerned and to be unapolagetically proud of where I come from. I can sleep easy at night knowing I will have gotten exactly what I wanted out of my time here as I move onto the next chapter of this lovely but bizarre existence.