Dear Future Me

Dear Future Lucy,

This is not the first time I've written to you. After my first letter in September 2013 I decided I enjoyed writing to you and have since set up an entire separate corner of the internet to share with you how your life was way back when. Although letters are slightly more frequent these days, I did want to take the annual step back and give you a little life update.

You're 18 at the moment and currently preparing yourself in every possible way for university. You move in on the 19th of this month which is really not that far away. While you have reached the point where you absolutely do need something new to focus on, you're still not feeling great about the whole uni thing, but, for once, you're really hoping you're proved wrong once you get there. I suppose you will already know the answer to that, which makes me wish there were a way for you to write back to me and let me know how the transition went.

You've sort of comprehended that you're not going back to school now. For a long time it didn't quite feel real but with everyone else heading back to school within the last few weeks it has sunk in that you will not be joining them. While this makes you incredibly nostalgic for something that hasn't long been gone, it does mean that all of your memories of sixth form, which will undoubtably be what you think of when the word 'school' is mentioned, were incredibly happy ones. As you've said many times before and will say many times again, the friends you made in sixth form are the most incredible people you've had the opportunity to meet to date and while you are in constant amazement at them and cannot understand why they chose to be friends with you, you could not be happier about it. They have taught you that friendships should make you feel happy and comfortable and at home in a way that you never really realised before. They have taught you that family doesn't only mean the people you are related to, it means the people who you can't remember life without and cannot imagine life without.

A few weeks ago you got your A-Level results back. While they were enough to get you into university, you felt like you'd let yourself down and, if you're being honest, you still feel like that. It's very difficult to hear people saying 'all my hard work paid off', when your hard work didn't. That being said, with every day you're putting results further behind you in your mind and you hope that you will never really have to discuss your A-Levels in the future after university.

Your cousins came back from New Zealand again for 4 weeks this year. Having been back there a good few weeks already, it feels like they weren't here for nearly enough time but the time we did spend with them was as precious as always. You have been upgraded from 'best friend' to 'sister' to one of them and she spent most of her time with you this summer sitting as close as she can physically get to you (by which I mean pretty much sitting on your lap at any possibility but settling for right up next to you when not) and grinning at you. It makes you happy that she clearly loves you almost as much as you love her. Almost, she will never understand how much you love her and you could never expect her to.

You also played a festival this summer. Your first in fact. The Youth Cymru stage at Kaya Festival 2015 was the first time you played to an open field and the exact point you completely fell in love with festivals like that. You honestly wish you could do that all day every day and the way the flower crown and acoustic guitar suit you, it seems like the universe thinks you belong in a field in the sunshine playing music to people too.

Future Lucy, I kind of wish I could just press pause here. Before university, before 'real life' in the sense of actual adulthood and not just a legal status all kicks in. I'd just like to be for a while. I wish I could stay here in the time where I'm not expected to do anything with my time other than see friends before we all scatter across the country within the next few weeks. Knowing that Thursday will mean the last time your year group are all together for the school 'Prize Giving' (similar to a graduation) makes you so sad, and you really do wish you could see all those people again. Not necessarily your friends, you know you will definitely see them again, but the ones that you shared a single lesson with or just saw around school a lot. There's something really sad about leaving those people behind.

While I do wish I could press pause, I know that I can't. While I'm incredibly daunted by the idea of university I am slowly beginning to feel like it is the right time for me to have a little bit more responsibility. Maybe I'll regret saying that in a month when there's no one there to make me a cup of tea to wake me up in the morning or wash my clothes for me, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. And even then, its not forever.

Until next time, Lucy, when I'm sure everything will be even more different than it was 2 years ago when I wrote my first letter to you.

Lucy x