I’m leaving the parental nest soon.

Only a couple exams left. A couple of weeks of High School. A small amount of effort. Should be a breeze.

I won’t be the only one leaving. Thousands of people my age will do the same. The difference is that they’ll go home every weekend, or maybe every other weekend. I won’t.

London, Berlin, Stockholm, Prague, Paris. Cities I’ve visited and romanticised over the past couple of years. In a few weeks I’ll move to one of them and start a new life. After a month or two I’ll pack my two bags and go to the next one. Along the way I need to figure everything out. Find a job. Manage money. Cook. Clean. Iron. Things I’ve tried to avoid doing my whole life. I won’t be able to avoid them now.

I’m not scared though. People ask me this but I am not. I don’t need to be. I’ll always have my parents to fall back on (I’ll try not to) and as a programmer a job is pretty much guaranteed. Not doing this would be a crime against myself more than anything else.

No, I’m excited. I love home and I love the little bubble of safety my parents worked so hard to create, but it’s time to leave. This city doesn’t bore me, but there’s so much more to explore. So many people to meet. I’m not scared because everywhere I’ll go I know there will be good people. People that are like me, but not like me. People I can learn things from.

I will fail a lot.

One day I’ll fuck up the salmon pasta I tried to cook, leaving me with nothing but a bag of crisps to eat. The next day I’ll get so bloody drunk I’ll lose my phone (I don’t have to be drunk to do that). I will forget appointments, burn money too fast, miss planes and spend the occasional night in a bar because I couldn’t find a good place to sleep. I can’t wait.

Such is the reality of moving out. Of starting one’s own life. I will make a lot of mistakes. But I finally get to do what I wanted to do for so long. To find my own way.

And it will all be worth it.