So I finished the final hurdle of what has the potential to be one of the biggest milestones in my life the other day. There was a lot of hype from my family and friends surrounding the event and it didn't really hit me that it was happening until I was just about to leave.
Sorry I'm being vague, I'll disclose more details when I can.
But going into it I was a mixture of emotions, happy, excited, nervous, kind of bummed, worried etc.
I was sitting alone at the airport thinking about how supportive my mum and sister have been, but I was kind of bummed that no one was there with me, to be quite honest. I then scrolled through facebook and one of those dumb buzzfeed videos popped up -the ones that show you a mix of letters like a find-a-word and tell you to remember the first word that you spot. You do this three times and you find out at the end that each word represents how you see yourself, how others see you etc.
ANYWAY, the first word I saw, the word that correlated with "how you view yourself" was
lonely. And it kind of affected me. Maybe it was the fact that I was running on 5 h sleep and that amplified these feels, but like, it was kind of a sucky feeling. It was just a dumb buzzfeed quiz, haha. I couldn't shake the feeling for a good 5-10 mins but then I started to realise that if I was genuinely serious about this step in my life, it would mean that I'd have to make a lot of sacrifices and that I would end up being alone. I came to terms with that fact on the plane ride, everyone grows up and moves on, but it was still a confronting thought.
The next two days were complete eye-openers. When I got to my destination I was swamped with calls from mum and Kent and messages from all my uni friends and my group. After the event, Jamie called me, then Sarah, then Jeremy, then mum and henry (lol, my neighbours 1 y.o. son) and carol messaged me and that's when I realised that I was never lonely. Sure I was physically alone, but I had all this support back at home, people who genuinely cared about how I went, people who wanted the best for me. That's when I felt truly blessed to have all these people in my life. I was never lonely and I don't think I ever will be.
I love them.