Unfinished Chapters

In a piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago: I’m Feeling 22 , I noted 22 lessons that I had discovered in my 22 years. I wrote that life is messy, it’s not linear or predictable and it definitely can’t be planned. If I didn’t get that then, I certainly understand it now. I’m sure we all do.

I was looking at this photo of myself the other day – a picture from the day I moved from my home town to university in Dundee four years ago. It’s not an easy picture to look at. Not just because the bangs are pretty bad and I really miss those jeans. ( I broke a pen and spilt ink all over them and that was that. Too young…too young ) It’s looking back at the excitement and the optimism in my face at the prospect of life at university and the adventures that were coming my way. I didn’t know then about the amazing things that were going to happen, the fantastic people that I would meet and all the daft things I would do.

It’s funny looking at how young I was. I recognise that I was 18 so that was already a given but honestly I think it was more than that. Some young people: Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg and so on might be young but the experiences that they have had in life have matured them beyond their years. My life up until that point had been easy and protected. Life had not shaken me yet or made me question anything. In other words, I was yet to live at all.

The 4 years that have followed have been beautiful and heart wrenching in equal measure. Up until I went to university, I was so sure that I wanted to work for the United Nations. I wanted to speak languages and travel and do something momentous with my life. It’s an admirable goal and one I like to think I could have achieved but it remains that it was a goal for an 18 year old version of me and not for the girl that is writing to you now. Honestly, I’m no longer sure about anything.I think that’s how you know that you’re getting older and maturing. I don’t take every single aspect of my life as seriously as I once did; an approach that would launch 18 year old me into a full blown panic attack. For the most part, I’m still the over-ambitious, opinionated and passionate person that I was. I still like learning languages and travelling but university has just pointed me in a different direction.

You’d think that the highs and lows I have seen over the 4 years would mean that I am ready to say goodbye. For the most part I am, Dundee is a great place that is finally getting the recognition it deserves but there just isn’t the opportunities career-wise for me to stay. I am definitely ready to say goodbye to some things more than others with spanish speakings being naturally at the top of the list. However, as many of my friends will tell you, it’s hard to accept that something is done when you can’t actually say goodbye. Without grad balls and ceremonies and drinking your liver into a Dundee gutter, the rights of passage that every student expects is taken away from you. The process of accepting your pending adulthood and saying goodbye to all the people that have formed your university experience is robbed from you. It just ends and you don’t know when or if you will see a lot of those people again. It will always be that unfinished chapter in your life.

So, sure life is unpredictable. I wonder how we could have ever explained this virus to ourselves 4 months ago. We don’t know what challenges are ahead of us either. However, a virus like this has shown me just how abrupt and unfinished life can be sometimes. So many people have lost their loved ones and have lost the chance to say goodbye. In the grand scheme of things, balls and ceremonies seem a very trivial thing to focus on. We are always told to remember that there are people that are worse off than ourselves. This will always be the case but does not invalidate how you are feeling or make it wrong for you to feel that way. Leaving things unfinished is never an easy thing to accept.

I wanted to take a moment for anyone who’s lost something abruptly because of the pandemic. It doesn’t matter what it is, that’s personal to you but just know that unfinished chapters just means there is still more in the story to read.

To my unfinished chapter, thank you for the memories…

1st year

2nd year

3rd year

4th year