chasing dreams

It's been a while, I know. I promised to post more, I know. But I do have a good reason: I've just started university in October, which has made the past few months quite stressful. I didn't want to say anything before it actually happened because I didn't want to jinx it, but now that I've succesfully completed six weeks and already made a few friends, I feel safe to tell you: for the next three years, I'll be studying Creative Writing and Cultural Journalism.

Writing has been the Big Dream since day one for me. I've never wanted to be anything but an author. This is a huge huge step towards that dream (and considering only 15 people have been accepted for this BA at my uni this year, it's also quite a big chance) and I am so so excited I get to take it.

Up to now, I love all my courses, I love the atmosphere and I have not been complaining too much. The people are really nice and I get along quite well with everybody (for probably the first time in my life), and once I've gotten used to everything I hope to be far more productive.

This is what I've always wanted to do. This is everything to me. This is my chance to make my dream come true and I'll be damned if I don't seize every little opportunity. So this, kind of, is a promise to myself: I'll make this work.

From the point in time I'm now in, writing this, I'll be moving tomorrow, and then hopefully I'll settle in a bit more and get used to the routine and I really hope I'll have more time and energy (and ideas) to write more on here. Two posts are done and just wait to be published, a winter books post is in the making (if you have any suggestions, then please, tell me!) and a few more are started and are now waiting for more inspiration to strike.

I hope you've been well!

Lots of love from

me, chasing my dream

turning eighteen

Two and a half months ago, I turned eighteen. Not only that, but the day before my birthday I had my graduation and my prom. It was a pretty busy weekend. Most of all, all those important life events were crammed into a span of maybe 36 hours. I was scared of all of them; I'm not too happy with my final grade, I was afraid I'd trip in my heels and fall down the stairs to the stage at my graduation, I was scared of that huge part of my life ending, I was scared of what's coming next. Prom was a similar issue: I'm not too fond of huge crowds and loud music and many people crammed into a small space. I wasn't keen on spending six+ hours in the company of people I didn't necessarily enjoy spending day after day in class with. And then midnight. The greatest horror of them all: my eighteenth birthday. The dreaded number.  The thing I have been most afraid of the past years.

I started crying the second my best friend hugged me and told me how much she loved me. I cried even more when my boyfriend started wiping the tears from my cheeks and kissing my face, and I couldn't stop when my friends lined up to say their lines and wish me a million things for my birthday.

It was all just a bit much, I think. The uncertainties of the months to come, the fear that I wouldn't be able to study something that really interested me and just becoming another empty shell, doing things I didn't enjoy in a place I didn't like, feeling like a waste of space and energy.

Now I know I will be able to study what I want to, but that fear remains: what now? What if the thing I always dreamed of will be just another disappointment, what if that's not what I'm supposed to do, what if I never find that thing?

The thought of now legally being an adult scares  me more than anything else. I'm responsible for myself now. I'm supposed to be able to take care of myself, and I'm afraid I don't know how. 

I'm currently in the progress of finding an apartment in the city I'll move to in autumn, and it's way more difficult than I imagined. I'm afraid I won't be able to find a place in time, I'm afraid I will miss appointments and lectures and deadlines if I'm supposed to remember all of it myself, if I alone am responsible for the work I do and how it turns out. I'm so afraid of failing, is what this is. The old, comfortable monster underneath my bed, mocking me and all my efforts. What will happen when I'm the one who has to make it go away?

falling

I have fallen in love. The longing-filled, bittersweet kind of love. I keep checking my phone, playing and replaying songs, reminding myself of all those smiles and kisses and intertwined fingers, and I just want to cry.

I get that awful, horrible feeling in my gut, that hole in my chest, that hollowed out space that definitely wasn't there before, and I just keep thinking about how close to not-happening the whole thing was. How it all seemed lined out and scripted from day one, how I struggled with fate, how I battled the universe on this, and how everybody saw it, everybody except us. I keep thinking about what we could have had years earlier, how we tried and tried to ignore it. Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe it wasn't.

 

Friends to lovers is one of my favourite tropes in fiction, because it shows that good relationships are not only dating someone, but dating your friend, maybe even your best friend. How much easier it is to skip all that getting to know each other because you already do, you've already had known each other in and out for years, how you don't have to explain anything because they've seen you at your worst and at your best. If you have a base on anything other than that thing called love, if you have something to build on, it just all seems so much more predestined. Maybe that's it, maybe it seems meant to be because we've always gotten along so well, because we've always been able to laugh together, to be there for each other, there's always been so much trust between us that a romantic relationship wasn't actually that big of a step - or an especially big one.
Falling for someone is a difficult thing for me. Or rather, falling for someone and then letting them in. Letting them see my heart and my mind, letting them participate and help. I only have few very good friends for that exact same reason: I have a hard time opening up to people. So maybe it isn't that surprising at all to find the person I'd fall in love with already inside the walls instead of miles away from the medival castle I've built to contain my feelings. He's been there for years, helping me mend the walls when somebody hurt me, trying to keep me from building another one, trying to keep me calm when I thought I'd be failing for sure. He's made me laugh countless times, even though I tried to hide it in the early years, but still he kept trying to cheer me up. He kept trying to get me to maybe switch out my castle for something easier to visit. A nice little cottage in the forest maybe. Thinking about it, I'd actually quite like the look of that.

I'm back!

(No, really.) Okay, I'm not going to promise weekly posts or incredibly creative photos and texts and everything, but I'm back, and I'll try.

Alright-y, first of all, I'll explain why or how I was 'away'. The last post on this blog was sometime around October, if I remember correctly. It's been over half a year, and I am very sorry for that, not only for the people who like to read my stuff, but also for me, because that means I haven't really written since then. Yes, I did NaNoWriMo and wrote like 20 pages, and then I did Camp NaNoWriMo in April and wrote seven, but that hasn't been continuously. Reason for that is that around November last year my first exam period of my last year of school started. Our last two semesters of school here in Germany are shorter than the others, because at the end, we take our final A-Level exams in late April/early May, therefore we had to cram a lot more school work into a lot less time. That's quite stressful, as you can imagine, and I haven't had time to read or write or create, for that matter. But now, I'm done with school, I've taken four out of five of my A-Levels, the last one is an oral exam in early June. Until October, when university starts, I don't really have anything to do, so I'll try and blog a lot more!

In June/July, I'll be travelling for a whole month, near the sea, so I'll have quite a lot of time to photograph again, which I'm very excited for! Until then, I'll try to write a bit more. 

Since I have a lot more time on my hands now, I'll also be reading more, if you'd like some book recommendations, I'll try to get some of those out, too!

(Another not-really-little thing I'd like to mention is that the lovely Nicole from explosive bagel mentioned me in her Reflecting on 2016 post! Thank you so much for that, I was really really excited when I read it!)

Okay, I'm done rambling. Expect to hear from me soon!

Love, 

Liz.