Baby steps to the future

After nearly two months in Amsterdam at the end of next week I go home – only for a small holiday and graduation – but still I return to my old haunts. And because everything has changed since my last visit it got me thinking (perhaps unwisely) about the future.

Leaving seems so long ago, a mad haze of tantrums and gin (I didn’t take leaving university so well) and so I now look forward to returning fresh faced and rational.

However, I think my trip home might have the opposite of my desired effect.

Since leaving a lot has changed and sometimes it’s a little overwhelming to think about how quickly life can move on. I will return to Southampton for my graduation, the day my parents have been looking forward to since I left the womb, a day that in my mind is so much more about them, and the ones who supported me, than my own achievements. Since none of it would have been possible without them I believe my degree should be shared, but since that’s not possible they will have to suffice with a lot of awkwardly formal photographs.

I am looking forward to returning to Southampton, and I think to see it (hopefully in the sun) will be cathartic. I will be in the car with my mum, nervous but excited, and it will be like I have been transported three years back and I’m rolling up to Monte (my halls in first year) with a car full of extraneous objects. Three years! Yikes! And what I wouldn’t give to go back right now and do it all again because I can honestly say they’ve been the best three years of my life. Now I’ve left university I feel a bit lost – without the regular trips between the local student club, supermarket and Hartley Library to give my life routine.

So I will return, but as a visitor. I will no longer have a house in Southampton and soon after my graduation I will have very few reasons to keep visiting. My graduation will act as closure to the end of a wonderful three year relationship with the best partner ever. Just writing about this I know I will be more emotional about leaving than I was arriving. Tissues will have to be at the ready.

My beautiful room in first year. Oh how I miss floor 3, B-Block. 

After my graduation I return “home”, except since I moved out, my parents have sold our home in England and moved to France. For the week I’m back we’re all staying with friends. It seems remnants of my past have been permanently removed in my absence. Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely no right to complain – I am 22 and living in Amsterdam – my parents are at liberty to do whatever they so like. But that does not stop it from reminding me – along with the fact that most of my friends have got amazing jobs scattered across the country, and the globe – that this is growing up. Growing up; something I have fought against for a while, has crept up on me.

Maybe older, by definitely not wiser.

Now it’s not that I am immature; I accept, indeed revel, in responsibility, I enjoy long debates on climate change and rising food prices and early nights in just sewing suits me fine. But, with maturity comes an expectation regarding your future. I wrote about these similar concerns in a blog about a year ago, when I turned 21, and since this post started with no particular direction it must clearly be a common concern though my life. I can’t shake the thought that now I am 22, (nearly) graduated and with no home in the UK that I must have some sort of plan, some steps to greatness.

I don’t.

But, then again, I arrived at Southampton, so young and wobbly, and built myself a plan, built myself the life I now have. Whilst I hope to cling to reckless immaturity for a while longer – yes I want to travel the world, and no I do not want to pay off my student loans or get a mortgage – I am going to go back to basics, back to how I arrived at Southampton, and take it one step at a time. 

Florence