Forcing excitement is hard. Trying to remain positive is hard. Willing yourself into actively taking in the good things that people say about a situation is hard. It shouldn't be, I shouldn't be feeling like this, I should be raring to go. But I'm not, and that's making me feel guilty, and that's even harder.
I've never been good with change. I like routine, I like feeling rooted. Goodness, I sound autistic! Not that that's a bad thing, but to be honest I don't think I'm far off though anyway. Moving to university and saying goodbye to friends collectively is the biggest change I've had to go through so far in my life, and the biggest challenge. I keep having to remind myself that yes, everyone else is in the same boat, and yes, God has gone before me and I'm going to be fine. But I still feel broken and unprepared and totally not ready for what's about to happen. What's happening, what's in motion, what I'm most powerless to stop.
It took me such a long time to feel accepted, both in who I am and within the different groups and places in my life that I belonged to. Now its as if I'm going back into the darkness and confusion that I felt stuck in when I was 13; it's not like the way that I'm different is something that I can turn on and off for someone else's liking or preference. To find a church I can settle into, to find a group of friends I can trust, I might have to compromise, put myself in a box, lose who I am. Honestly, I don't know where my sense of identity has gone right now and I haven't even left yet, how am I going to cope when I get there?
I know where some of it has gone. My heart left in Birmingham, my left arm all the way down in Southampton, my right leg soon to be travelling all the way to Florida, and it probably won't be coming back. These people accept me, and love me, somehow, and I feel incredibly fortunate and humble that they do. It's got to be a hard job loving me! I just don't know how I'm going to find other people who will, and I don't know what I'm going to do without the ones who already do.
I'm aware I'm rambling a bit. This post doesn't really have a direction, much like my thoughts and I at the moment. But I need to get this out, as pathetic as it is, and if I say it out loud I'll cry again and that just won't help anything!
I was watching 'The Great Gatsby' today, the new one with Leonardo DiCaprio in it, and it got me thinking back to all the subtext discussed when me and the rest of my A Level English group read the book two years ago. I came to the scene where Gatsby knocks the clock off Nick's mantelpiece, and remembered the metaphorical significance that we'd been so interested to discover as class at the time. Gatsby, having been separated from the love of his life for five years, simply wanted to pick up the pieces from the past and start again where they left off, as if he could reform the past again. Hence, breaking the clock would freeze the time on it; but, no matter what he did to the clock, time would never turn back, and he would never regain the time lost and be able to live as he once had.
I spend forever looking backwards, like Gatsby I guess. These last few years have been wonderful, particularly the last year with my girlfriend and my closest friends, and I'd give anything to be sitting back in an RS class on a Friday afternoon again. But I can't. Looking forward, of course, means change, and its the only way to go. I have no choice, I have to keep going. but things where so good then, how can they ever be any better?
Everything hurts, its like my whole body is struggling against this change too. I don't know how long I can take this for. I don't know how to feel. I want out. I can't do this.
I've never been good with change. I like routine, I like feeling rooted. Goodness, I sound autistic! Not that that's a bad thing, but to be honest I don't think I'm far off though anyway. Moving to university and saying goodbye to friends collectively is the biggest change I've had to go through so far in my life, and the biggest challenge. I keep having to remind myself that yes, everyone else is in the same boat, and yes, God has gone before me and I'm going to be fine. But I still feel broken and unprepared and totally not ready for what's about to happen. What's happening, what's in motion, what I'm most powerless to stop.
It took me such a long time to feel accepted, both in who I am and within the different groups and places in my life that I belonged to. Now its as if I'm going back into the darkness and confusion that I felt stuck in when I was 13; it's not like the way that I'm different is something that I can turn on and off for someone else's liking or preference. To find a church I can settle into, to find a group of friends I can trust, I might have to compromise, put myself in a box, lose who I am. Honestly, I don't know where my sense of identity has gone right now and I haven't even left yet, how am I going to cope when I get there?
I know where some of it has gone. My heart left in Birmingham, my left arm all the way down in Southampton, my right leg soon to be travelling all the way to Florida, and it probably won't be coming back. These people accept me, and love me, somehow, and I feel incredibly fortunate and humble that they do. It's got to be a hard job loving me! I just don't know how I'm going to find other people who will, and I don't know what I'm going to do without the ones who already do.
I'm aware I'm rambling a bit. This post doesn't really have a direction, much like my thoughts and I at the moment. But I need to get this out, as pathetic as it is, and if I say it out loud I'll cry again and that just won't help anything!
I was watching 'The Great Gatsby' today, the new one with Leonardo DiCaprio in it, and it got me thinking back to all the subtext discussed when me and the rest of my A Level English group read the book two years ago. I came to the scene where Gatsby knocks the clock off Nick's mantelpiece, and remembered the metaphorical significance that we'd been so interested to discover as class at the time. Gatsby, having been separated from the love of his life for five years, simply wanted to pick up the pieces from the past and start again where they left off, as if he could reform the past again. Hence, breaking the clock would freeze the time on it; but, no matter what he did to the clock, time would never turn back, and he would never regain the time lost and be able to live as he once had.
I spend forever looking backwards, like Gatsby I guess. These last few years have been wonderful, particularly the last year with my girlfriend and my closest friends, and I'd give anything to be sitting back in an RS class on a Friday afternoon again. But I can't. Looking forward, of course, means change, and its the only way to go. I have no choice, I have to keep going. but things where so good then, how can they ever be any better?
Everything hurts, its like my whole body is struggling against this change too. I don't know how long I can take this for. I don't know how to feel. I want out. I can't do this.
