August 30th: When the past and the future collide

I spent today with two of my oldest friends, Becky and Zoe - one of the last days we'll spend together in the final two or three weeks before we all leave for uni - and it was one of those days where you can really feel yourself teetering somewhere between the future and the past. The three of us have spent the last seven years together (I've known Becky for eighteen years now, but Zoe only joined us when we were eleven) - and so we've all watched each other grow and change and fail and succeed many, many times.

We spent today lost in the past, submerged in memories and moments from our childhood, and yet we managed also to construct our ideal lives for at least the next ten years. We covered everything from our first days at school to having children of our own and the thing that made us able to do so is that, to date, we have gone through everything together. Now, that's starting to change. This is the biggest and most life-altering thing we've faced yet and really, the only one we've ever faced alone. It's easy to say that everyone's in the same boat, and that may be true, but at least before when we've all been in the same boat, we've all been sailing towards the same shoreline. Now my travelling companions and I head towards different islands, different parts of the country, and though we'll eventually reach land and find new people with whom to fill our boats, it won't be the same.

We are all going through this together, but ultimately, it's up to us to make it what we will, on our own. We have to take every opportunity we stumble across; make the most of the days which everyone insists are the best of our lives. Nearly two years ago I founded this blog for that exact purpose - so that I could record everything, good and bad, that came my way... so that I wouldn't let any little grains of sand slip through my fingers. Life has a habit of snatching away things that were once important and I am unwilling to let it. I don't want to forget these days, because if I ever forget how I grew into the person I am today and what was important to me, I can refer back to this. This blog is my own personal time capsule. The creation of myself.

In my opinion there are two types of people in the world: there are speakers, and then there are writers. I am a writer. Everything I think, everything I feel, pretty much everything I need to say but can't bring myself to admit aloud, I write down. I write when I'm sad because if I don't I can't describe why I'm sad; I write when I'm happy because if I try to talk all I can do is squeal; I write when I'm scared, or isolated, or embarrassed, or angry... when I am too weak to express my emotions to another human being I inflict them on my pen or my keyboard instead. Maybe that's why I'm saying all this over and over again on here, because right now I am terrified. I'm excited and happy and impatient and scared and nervous and a little bit lonely all at the same time but I'm riding on a high, and I'm just waiting for the moment on the 18th of September when I watch my parents drive away and I sit down in my new bedroom and look at all the students walking by outside and see my possessions in their alien surroundings and think, 'Now what?'.

What words of comfort can anybody offer when they feel the exact same way? Our boats are adrift at the moment and soon enough we'll run aground, but we're on tenterhooks trying not to crash. It's hard to say what will become of the plans we make and the friends we've always had, but it's impossible to predict the options we'll have and the people we'll meet in the future. It's easy to long for the security of the past but you can't live like that; imagine what you'd miss out on!

Maybe these boats of ours will get lost at sea but I highly doubt it; after all, we're built not to sink.

Molly x