On Standby

It has been a while since I last posted a blog: the twin hindrances of exam stress and the fear of offending people with my dreadful moaning prevented me from writing in doses exceeding 140 characters. In truth, my brain is still frazzled from all that effort and writing has been pretty low on my list of priorities. I have what I had yearned for throughout that tough exam schedule, with all the liberty, finances and free time necessary to enjoy a 3 month long holiday. But I am not happy. In fact, I am less happy than when I was taking those exams a month ago, even though I have caught up on both sleep and socialising. I miss seeing my friends every day, and I miss the familiarity of my school and the people that bring it alive. I am fully aware that many of you reading this will tut and scoff that a naive 18 year old feels this way: surely I should be enjoying this last summer of freedom, the no man's land between school and university where absolutely no strings are attached to endless fun, frivolity and laughter beneath a glowing sun. I feel that I should feel this way, and that makes the sickness that exists at the pit of my stomach all the harder to bear; there is nothing worse than the feeling that you ought to be enjoying yourself.

Last Tuesday marked the last thing I will ever do for my school: I played two solos in the Summer Concert as well as in the school woodwind ensemble (yes, bow in reverence of my coolness). During that last chord of the final piece (Prokofiev's 'Kije's Wedding'), I felt something change inside of me: I would no longer be going to Southend every Monday and Friday for my rehearsals, I would no longer be part of that group of like-minded people and I would no longer be a part of the school community I have enjoyed for 7 years. Fortunately, the blow was softened by my best friend: we spent the rest of the week cinema-ing and making a cake for a concert she was playing in (she is a super-brilliant clarinetist). But now that week is over and my brother is on his Duke of Edinburgh expedition, my dad is in Rugby and my mum is still caught up in solicitors' documents almost one year on from my grandmother's death (it was a very complicated will). So I am at home sleeping, vegetating and generally failing to do the things I had resolved to during the periods when I had no time to have a life.

At the end of the blog that precedes this one, @chlorinekid from St. Helens (one of my very first followers no less) advised, "'There will be no going back.' Get that tattooed down both arms and never forget it. Believe me, it's the truth.". Typifying the teenager who thinks they know best, I inwardly laughed it off believing that I'd be too busy enjoying myself to miss my old, boring life of books and silly stresses over whether I'd be getting an A or an A* (HA, as if either will happen now after those godawful exams!). But David was so right: it takes all of my effort to remember that I will never have that life again and that unknown as it is, September 29th will mark a new start in a new city away from all of my friends. I know that many of my friends are beside themselves with the thought of being let off the leash and able to acquire all the unsuitable tattoos, piercings and alcoholic concoctions they could ever wish for, but I am fully aware that although I'll make new friends and enjoy the fact that I'm no longer living in an East Anglian village where the biggest excitement of the year has been the introduction of new range of bread in the Londis convenience store, it will be very difficult to maintain that same closeness to the friends with whom I've grown up. I am, to some extent, rather paranoid about the whole thing: with the exception of Lucy (who is off to Southampton to study Physiotherapy), my friends are all off to Oxbridge while I will either be at UCL or Warwick depending on just how badly my exams went this year. I guess I'm worried that I'll be discounted because I'm not as smart as they are, or that they'll all become terribly prissy and posh and not want anything to do with me. This is all highly irrational, but when you have no idea of where you'll be within 70 days of the present and you're working to set the groundwork to protect the friendships you've expended so much effort to build, the summer that you've spent so long hankering after becomes filled with anxiety and fear.

That's why I'm 'On Standby' in more ways than one. I'm waiting to find out where I'll be getting my degree from (and where I'll be living and studying for the next 3 years of my life), while I fluctuate between my two concurrent lives: one of vegetating (standby) and the other of socialising. Boredom and an empty schedule are strictly incompatible with my personality, and the endless days that I vowed to spend reading are largely filled with equal measures of anxiety and fear.

I'm sorry to have produced something as waffly, unstructured and moany as this, but it's all I can think of at this present time. I'll attempt something more constructive once I begin to get over this and look forward to a future that might be even better than the past I've left behind.

PS I feel better already