After three months of living in the big smoke five hours away from my parents, when I finally completed the dismal journey back up home for Christmas I came to realise something. It wasn't one of those feelings that hits you smack bang in the face, it was more like a slow burn. The kind that makes your skin crawl because something doesn't feel quite right but you just cant put your finger on it. And then after a few days it came to me, home didn't feel like home anymore. This was no longer the place that I spent lazy days off and knew where each and every thing was kept. Things had changed while I was gone.
I guess I just didn't take all that much time to think about the fact that my family and everyone that I once knew would move on with their lives just as I was moving on with mine. Its stupid really, that some part of me expected to go back up home and expect to pick up where I'd left off in September. On Christmas day when we were all in the car going to visit my grandparents, just like we have done so many times before, I felt too big for the car. Like I didn't quite fit anymore. My parents were having conversations with my little brother about things that I had not been there for and sharing inside jokes that I didn't understand. I was becoming an adult. And I didn't like it.
When it came time for me to move back down to university for the second semester it was an all together different experience from the lovely family day that we had in September. This time I was doing it on my own. After weeks of being wrapped up in the comfort blanket of my home and family it came time to put my girl panties on again and make the lonely journey back to dreary, grey Glasgow. To a place that although holds this magical promise of a better future, contains nothing for me just a cold and lonely halls room, pushing myself to the absolute limit and being so busy I have time to just appreciate each day as it comes.
All it does is make me question whether putting myself through the constant tears every time I miss my home and endless lonely nights curled up in bed escaping my current reality watching Netflix or reading, just anything to feel something other than another wave of sadness rolling in. Everyone that I have ever talked to about University never has anything but amazing things to say about it. I cant help but thing that I'm the only person who thinks that it isn't all that it's cracked up to be. I just hope that in the future I look back on my time here with fondness.
I am a person who needs routine in my life which is painstakingly obvious around freespirited first years who are just in awe of their new unsupervised life. Sometimes the idea of having another three and a half years of this is a little too much to handle. I just hope that everyone is right in saying that soon I will no longer grieve my carefree high school days and that I will make a life for myself in the city as opposed to just mourning the passing of time. I thought that going to uni was going to help me find myself, help me break free from the expectations that had once been placed upon me and be true to my nature. So far I'm pretty sure all ive done is crawl further into my shell.
However, I am determined to make this semester different. Being back home changed my perspective slightly. Ive come to realise that I am lucky to be torn between Glasgow and Elgin. I'm lucky to consider two places home and have friends is either so much so that wherever I am I miss the other place. I need to stop moping and change how I feel about being here. I am not stuck here, I chose this. So I have made it my mission to fall back in love with Glasgow. To take a little time each week to do something new. I figure if I'm going to be spending the majority of my time here over the next three years or so, I need to let myself enjoy it.
