Journey to Adulthood

September 6th was the three year anniversary of me moving out of home and beginning my first step into adulthood. In 2014, I moved from Livingston to Glasgow. Not too far away from home, but far enough away that I would begin to understand what is was like to live independently. Timehop is an app which lets you know what you were doing in previous years each day, based on your social media updates. Seeing my previous posts on social media is nostalgic for me but also an awakening reminder of the person I was when I first moved to Glasgow and how much my life has changed since.

Timehop serves as a good and a bad reminder of my past. It often reminds me of past events that I have forgotten about, but the memories of those (often petty) tweets or cringey status updates make laugh. Sometimes, however, Timehop reminds me of the hard times in my life and of some of the people who I have met in my life that perhaps didn't treat me right. More often than not, however, Timehop just makes me feel embarrassed at the wannabe sassy tweets and Facebook posts from many years ago!

A single tweet transports me back to the time and place that I wrote it. I feel the emotions I felt at the time. I smell what my student halls smelled like. I hear the noise of excited new students playing music too loud and having a (drunken) fun night. Timehop has the power to make me mentally feel like I am back in that place where I was three years ago - and it's scary. Although I was so excited to be living away from home and to experience new things, a lot of the feelings I am reminded of are those of anxiousness and the fear of the unknown. The nervousness of beginning the next chapter of my life in a city with nobody I really knew and worrying whether I had made the right decision in coming to Glasgow. Even now, whilst I am writing this, my body is overwhelmed with anxiety and panic as I feel the sense of the unknown all over again. I don't remember feeling this bad at the time, but that was probably because excitement took over a bit too.

Looking back at my social media updates at this time of year allows me to reflect on who I have become during my time in Glasgow and what I have made of my University experience. I won't say I have any regrets because I wouldn't be where I am now had I not made certain decisions. However, there are some things that I would have done differently in the past, although they would have significantly changed who I have become now. As a lot of the students in my halls were not in first year, I felt that I had a bit of a hard time socialising like other students did. That being said, my first year was certainly filled with adventure and drama, and sadly, I look back on a lot of it with elements of sadness and loneliness. Although I often had company around me, I still felt quite alone in that the company was usually temporary. I hadn't found that "best friend" in Glasgow that I had hoped to, or even someone in my halls that I would connect with straight away. My best friend from school was meant to study in Glasgow too and we were to be flatmates but, unfortunately, she went to study in Aberdeen due to exam results. I would have people visit me and did have a lot of wild and exciting times, but it all seems to have merged into a big blur. Second year was also a bit of a blur for me, but I wasn't lonely this time. I met my current boyfriend at the end of first year and was introduced to his family during that year. This helped me tremendously as it allowed me to feel a bit more rooted in Glasgow, rather than being a temporary visitor. I saw more of Glasgow and the surrounding areas and I felt more and more like it was becoming my home.

Third year marked the year where I began to branch out and socialise more. I began speaking to more people on my course and even made some friends along the way, and strengthened some of the friendships I had made in second year. I moved into a flat with my boyfriend and felt more and more like an adult as I moved out of a student flat and into an private flat away from campus. Again, the more time I spend in Glasgow, the more it feels like home. There are people I am meeting and getting to know who are becoming like family - people who I don't see my future without. Over the course of third year, my independence probably took another massive leap (after the leap of moving away from home) as I was responsible for so much more now that I wasn't in a student flat.

Now, I am beginning my fourth year and the nervousness of the unknown is beginning to creep back into my life again. I am approaching the end of my studies and will soon be graduating and going into the "real world". Since I arrived in Glasgow, I have been a student with University being the reason I am here. After University, what is my purpose here? Where will the next chapter of my life take me and what decisions will I make that will influence my future?

Things will become clearer in the next year and perhaps this time next year I will be looking back on my Timehop and reread my tweets from now, and maybe even this blog post. In a year from now, I know I will probably be a completely different person from who I am now. I am always changing and have done every year I have been here. My only hope is that I make the right decisions, that I make happy decisions, and that I do what is best for me. If I can look back on my life and be happy with what I have done then that is all I can ask - it is probably all that anyone wants. My previous life choices maybe haven't been ideal, but they have shaped who I am and I am happy for that.

This post is a bit personal, but when I saw my previous status updates on Timehop, I was overwhelmed with the past and felt an urge to write. As I said at the start, the past tweets and updates I see transport me back to the time and place I wrote them, and the emotions this brings back for me can be a good and bad reminder as to how far I have come on my journey to adulthood and how far I still have to go.