TBT: 2015

The year end has sneaked up on me. It’s been a weird one – leaving university, starting my career, leaving my fiancé after a seven year relationship, learning more and more about white privilege and fighting against it – so much has happened.

It’s both dragged on and flown by. I am not the same person that watched 2015 come in. Then again, I’m not the same person that watched December come in so no surprises there. I’ve decided not to have new new years’ resolutions. I will just sit back and ride the roller coaster of life – mostly because I never keep them.

Instead, I reflected back. It is #TBT afterall! Here are the things I am grateful for:

The final step

Me trying to instill passion into the prospective students, perhaps being mistaken for desperation.

I still remember coming home after my final day of primary school, sitting on the floor of my room and crying. I was going to miss my friends and my teachers, I didn’t want to grow up and I had an empty pit in my stomach. And I remember the final days of secondary school. That same pit there every time someone signed my leavers book or uniform, reminding me of how once again I’m leaving behind all that I am accustomed to, all the familiarity.

I moved on to college and then university. At each step I’d make new friends and, bar a few, leave my old ones behind. At each step there would be people who got me better than my previous friends and I was welcomed into a new place that allowed me to be more myself than before. Because at each step I knew more about what ‘being me’ is. 

Graduating from university was such an emotional time. I had done it. This was the final one. The final step I had before I reached the landing of options, full of doors I could enter. Some would be locked, others slightly jammed but accessible with a hard push. But it would be up to me which door I tried to open and which I walked into.