Red-eye flights are odd.
In a couple of hours, I’ll be arriving in Manchester. I haven’t been in the UK for five weeks. As soon as I get back, there’s a flurry of stuff I need to do: essays, book production, as well as beginning the hunt for a job that’ll tie everything together. I’m coming home a fiancé. Nothing feels too different - it’s the same relationship - but there’s a weird sense of purpose that comes with a label. I’m going to try and find work so I can live with the person I’m going to marry.
It’s exciting, but it’s also scary. The last six months, taking away those five weeks just gone, I haven’t really been looking out for myself. I’ve had unpleasant altercations with my family, my lifestyle at university degenerated once again, and I was - if you’ll excuse the melodrama - incredibly lonely. Three years of university haven’t given me a strong base of friends - in part because of my changeable classes, but also because I didn’t throw myself into the social side of things three years ago. I don’t stay in contact with the people I lived with in my first year, and I’m rapidly losing contact with my former housemates. People like me would usually find solace in the more alternative groups on campus, but it was always a bit metal for my tastes. I started out at university with one big passion - books - and the sudden discovery that my degree programme precluded me from having fun reading them (or at least reading on my own terms) didn’t exactly give me any social avenues there either. I helped establish a creative writing anthology, but it’s a notoriously antisocial group - we meet once a week, then go our separate ways.
So here I am now, on the precipice of a potential turning point. Looking back at last term, the very thought of looking for jobs terrified me and made me curl up under the covers and cry. But this time it just feels like another puzzle piece. I have this stretch of time ahead of me, and I can feel myself slipping back into the Chris that never stopped doing things in his first year. My university life seen as a social experiment was disastrous with the occasional blip of fun, but it’s just about over. I don’t need to get hung up on it anymore.
It might mean I get a little cool with people. I’m going to miss my fiancée, but I’m also going to try and control it - there are plenty of absences I could focus on (what missing something or someone essentially is), but they don’t get me anywhere other than shaking, in bed, at four o'clock in the morning. I’ll still relish the conversations and everyday interactions we have, but it’s going to be up to me to fill my life with other stuff - to apply myself to the things that matter.
And I’ll keep a lookout for my support network too. I miss my family, but it’s in my power to see them; they’re a short train ride away, and for the first time I actually feel a distinct pull to spend more time with them. I barely saw my best friend over the last term, and that took its toll too. And there are an assortment of people online with whom I used to talk regularly. If they’re willing to welcome me back into their wavy, digital arms, then I want to come back. I might be the sort of person who thrives on Getting Things Done, but I do need people.
There it is. A kind of gameplan for the next ten weeks or so, with distant aspirations for the future. And, for the first time in a long time, optimism. It’s going to be hard - I know it’s going to be hard - but it all feels within reach. I’m going to get married and live with the person I love, despite any difficulties that might lie in our way. It’s not always like this, but the feeling of being terrified of some impossible feat is transforming into relishing the challenge of what lies ahead.
