The summer of 2015 was one of the roughest ones for a long time. I had dumped my first boyfriend for the second time, wasn't able to find a good summer job to try and earn some extra pocket money. And, I fell in love again but didn't go to plan. Turning seventeen was a good step. My parents and I went away to a pretty farm cottage, close to one of our favourite towns in Dorset and loved being on the coast/countryside again. Some of the days weather-wise were nice but on one grey day at a beach, I learnt quickly that things were going to change.
One of my older cousins was dating someone at the time who was a little... strange. She had visited us before and had been nice towards me, but my parents for some reason just weren't keen on her as a person. On my birthday, she messaged me well as by this point, I finally had Facebook and asked if I wanted to go out for the day to celebrate. She mentioned going to a zoo that I had enjoyed as an infant and I smiled. Of course I was up for something new with other family members... except that never happened.
Some family members weren't keen, even though I replied that I was interested. The plans were never fixed and in the autumn of the same year, their relationship was over. I only found out after she had blocked me on Facebook and wouldn't text me back. It was a sad time as I truly wanted to get out and about in the world, before the start of a new year with classes. In the end, I knew a friend from college and chose to spend some time with him.
We went to the cinema, walked around the city and talked about video games (yes I am a gamer!). It was refreshing to be with someone who loved the same interests as me. Sounds picture perfect right? There's always a hidden facade to a love story. We had met through mutual friends and started hanging out more often that summer. We went on a date, I met his family and decided to give things a try. But with my anxiety and his bipolar disorder, things quickly went very wrong and we stopped talking for a few months.
In life, it's always the worst feeling whenever you say something that you didn't mean to and it hurts and upsets someone. I've learnt so much from this relationship, learn what dangerous triggers a person has and don't fall into them.
It also didn't help that some of my first boyfriend's friends started to message me randomly and have a go for ruining his life. Online, you become more open to the dangers of being bullied and trolled. And that for me, was a huge hurdle to try and battle over. All I wanted was to be accepted and move on from the first year away from high school.
Lots of us don't think before they speak, lots of us do a physical action and not realise just upset that they can make another person feel. It's moments like this that test our trusts towards others, whether close loved ones or total strangers. That summer, I learnt to trust no-one. The comments really got to me. My parents were keen for me to leave Facebook altogether but I refused to give in. I had gotten this far to trying to fit in and wasn't going to give up so easily.
I'm stubborn, that's a common trait within my family. Life was different now and I didn't want old habits to suddenly creep back in. This summer was so rough and low, the previous year's memories of being excited felt like a distant century back away in the past.
At one stage that summer, I was very close to calling back up my old high school and asking if they would take me back. I only lived a short distance away and could do the subjects I was passionate about the most. There was a catch. I had to remind myself the reasons about why I left in the first place. It was going back to the old, the old Alice, the old memories that I was trying to avoid remembering. It wouldn't last long for me. The anxiety would come back and seeing the tree I planted, I would be reminded of how much living had become a battlefield for me.
I'm a true academic. Correction, used to be. When I was younger, I would like to lose myself in all of the manuals and textbooks that I could find and read them. Cover to cover, back to back. I knew lots of kids my age would spend hours out in town, trying to get into nightclubs and be underage. I was nothing like that. When the sunny days of summer 2015 came, I would be outside and reading about facts to do with the black death or the Tutor era. It was fun for me to see what life was like for them, the clothes they wore and the meals they ate. I loved the show Time Team and that summer, I would sit down on the living room sofa and binge-watch episodes alone.
I was such a nerd, I still am. But most of the academic passion got robbed from me a short time later. Yes, I still like to watch the shows and YouTube videos about new discoveries made in space for example. But you will never find me reading from a textbook now. It's funny just how quickly that people can change.
I love to learn and find out new facts everyday. We have the internet, I read the news, even though it's depressing a lot of the time. But that summer, I was truly scared of what the second year in college was really going to bring. And I had another secret struggle to deal with too.
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