I am about to do something very self-indulgent and use this
blog as if it were my personal diary. This is not because I have any
particularly enlightening or thrilling inner-thoughts, but more because I want
to look back on this after the Year Abroad and *hopefully* see how stupid
I was for being so scared.
I recently got back from a couple of days in Cambridge. It
was surreal but lovely to be back in the ‘bubble’ and even better to see some
fantastic people who have been fairly absent from my life these past few
months. As the train rolled noisily out of Cambridge station, past the ‘Home of
Anglia Ruskin University’ sign which usually amuses me no end, I felt sadder
than I had done in a very long time and had to bury my head in my coat to avoid
the man next to me noticing my oh-so-attractive puffy eyes.
Whilst it was wonderful to be back in college, and despite
the genuine kindness and friendliness with which I was met, there is a certain
painfulness in being a guest in your own home. Although there was no
awkwardness and in some ways it was as if nothing had changed, there is
something intrinsically saddening about having to ask for the ‘gossip’ and for
a re-cap of events in your own group of friends. I was ashamed when I realised
that my first response to any news was not ‘Good for you!’ or ‘Oh I’m so sorry
to hear that’ but ‘Why didn’t anybody tell me?’. As not everybody had arrived
for the beginning of term it wasn’t possible to see all of our close friends,
to which my gut reaction was a fearful ‘What if he forgets me?’. Even worse
than that, when I learned that a fellow Year-Abroader (who is a wonderful
friend and generally gorgeous person) would be spending a couple of weeks in
college, the overriding emotion was (undue) resentment! All I could think about
was that she would get more ‘in’ with the group, probably staying up late
chatting with the girls, taking photos and creating happy memories bla bla bla while
our times together would fade into the distant past....
Cringe. This is of course a hugely selfish way to think, and
perhaps my friends will read this and decide that I am in fact a horrible
person. Coming to terms with my gross self-centredness highlighted to me what I
had tried to pretend did not exist: fear. Not of being kidnapped, not of
falling over on the ice in the Ukrainian winter, not even of loneliness, but of
losing what is so precious. Fear of the people you love gradually slipping from
your sphere of existence, and you from theirs, unnoticed.
Nothing will give me more pleasure than to read this back in
9 months time and to realise my own ridiculousness.
