This Is Me
To be honest I don’t know what ‘me’ is. So the phrase ‘This Is Me’ is quite a difficult one for me to understand.
In the past three years I’ve lived in three different cities; Leeds, Leicester and now Canterbury. Moving from Leeds, my hometown, to Leicester in 2015 was what I thought I needed. The weeks prior to the big move were full of apprehension, excitement and anxiety. A new start! After waiting for what seemed like a millennium to move to university it was finally drawing close, I could reinvent myself and become the person I thought I wanted to be. But reality had different plans for me, very different plans actually.
The first term flew by and looking back I question if it ever did happen, things were moving so fast and everything was changing. University was everything I expected it to be for about a month, and then things quickly turned sour. My flatmates started turning on me for the smallest things and that along with the fragility of my mental health impacted my studies massively. Long story short, the year was up and I was stuck at a crossroads. Circumstances with my flatmates took a U-turn and I suddenly found myself without a single friendly face in Leicester, and could I stay living in a city, studying at a university, if I felt as though I was floating around just looking for someone to lean on?
I feel like the last line of that paragraph was very Carrie Bradshaw.
Of course not, and with that I packed up my bags and told the university that I couldn’t stay there anymore. I dropped out and moved back to Leeds, returned back to my old job and resumed the life I had before university. And things were okay for a while — it was nice seeing my friends and recharging. Then I started getting restless, being back at home made me feel like I was stripped of my independence — something I got very acquainted with back in Leicester. With that — I applied for university all over again — but a lot closer. Manchester Met, Leeds Beckett, Leeds Trinity and then, randomly, CCCU.
My mind-set was that if I stayed in Leeds but moved out things would be a lot better. I’d have familiarity, a good support system and more importantly my friends. But I had visited Canterbury a lot and I loved it — it felt like home in a weird way. So what harm would it have done to apply there, just to see if I would get in? I’d still stay in Leeds obviously but it would be nice to know.
And then I got an three unconditional offers to study the course that I wanted to do — the two in Leeds and of course CCCU. You know when cartoon characters come to a realisation and they have the whole light bulb moment? Well seeing that CCCU gave me an unconditional was a very similar feeling to that. Within weeks I was on the train, with all of my things packed into one suitcase and a weekend bag — moving to Canterbury.
Now I’m here, in my second year — writing a piece called This Is Me.
You can probably tell from that bit of writing up there that I like talking about myself. I do, or rather I did. I’m like a historian and my favourite period is Thomas Crawshaw 2015/16. And that’s my problem, I feel like I’m trapped creatively and mentally because I just keep looking back to that period of my life. No matter what I write it seems to stem from then no matter what I do. And I can’t look forwards because of this. My head is constantly checking behind me, making sure I’m still dragging along all of this negativity.
And that’s why I’ve come to a misunderstanding with the word ‘me’. How can I tell you what ‘me’ is now when I’m too focused on what ‘me’ was then to know? I’ve been blinded by regression and narcissism and now I’m fully fuelled by the feelings of my past. I didn’t know that before I started writing this. I wasn’t entirely sure what this was going to be when I started — I just kind of let my fingers flow. Now look — had a full on epiphany I have!
Gonna go tell my diary now.
