2015

Liebe Lucy,


2015 has been the most intense, wonderful, incredible year of my life so far.


It is the year that I found friends I honestly believe I will have in my life until I die. Friends I found in various different places and from various different parts of the country. Friends who, to quote Wicked, I believe have changed me for the better. It is not lost on me how incredibly lucky I am to have them, whether it be the group from school who showed me what real friendship is or whether it be the group from University who feel like my family after only 3 short months of knowing them, the friends I have made in 2015 are the most incredible people I have ever known.


In addition to these incredible friends, 2015 is also the year I met the most loving, caring, wonderful person I’ve ever met. It is the year that he and I became a couple. He makes everything make sense and has a unique ability to make me feel like everything is okay. I didn't fully understand what people felt when they described someone as their 'better half' until I met him.He has made me feel more comfortable than I ever have before and he brings out all the best parts of me. He has made me feel loved and cared for and at home in ways I never knew possible and I sincerely hope that 2015 is just the beginning for us.


2015 is also the year I moved away from home to University. The intense anxiety I felt surrounding the move was completely forgotten within minutes of getting there and I now feel just as at home there as I do in my own home. 2015 is the year that showed me that sometimes things terrify you, and sometimes you have to just do them anyway.


2015 has taught me several life lessons that I will always remember, and I know without doubt it is a year I will look back on in years to come as one of the best of my life. Despite some definite down moments, it was more full of happiness than any year I have experienced so far. More importantly, 2015 is a year I will always look back on as being full of love. Be it romantic, platonic or familial love, I have been surrounded by it all in 2015 and I will never take for granted how lucky I am that I am able to say that. To everyone who has contributed to making me feel so much love in 2015, thank you. So very much.


Although it will be hard for 2016 to match up to its predecessor, I certainly begin the year with the most incredible people I could imagine by my side, and I could not be more aware and thankful of that.


Thank you 2015, for everything.



All my love,
Lucy x

Fireworks

Liebe Lucy,

In a shocking turn of events the last month has been a complete whirlwind. I realise that is a phrase I use often, but it is not one that I use lightly.

Since getting to university, things have just got better and better, and I realised a few nights ago while watching the fireworks what a predictable but apt metaphor for my life right now they were.

I realise this is the most stereotypical and cringe-worthy metaphor imaginable but just bear with me on this. Fireworks are beautiful but fleeting. Like fireworks, intense moments of happiness feel like they last a split second, but are beautiful enough to be remembered, and bright enough to leave a little mark after they've gone.

To me, fireworks are little pockets of magic that visualise something incredible. They look like they shouldn't be possible, yet they are. Bright lights shooting across the sky just have a habit for reminding me that even when things are at their worst, like when there is total darkness, it only takes something tiny to completely light up everything. And while it may not last long, while it does it is truly incredible.

At the risk of sounding like Katy Perry, I guess my point is that sometimes when people enter your life initially it can be like fireworks. Whether that's because they are so incredible that you can do little more than just wonder at them or whether its because they know how to make you so happy you feel like a firework yourself, they can cause happiness only comparable to bright colours in the sky or little pockets of magic.

Right now my life is full of fireworks.

Lucy x

University: Week 1

Liebe Lucy,

The last week has been a complete whirlwind. On 19th September 2015 I packed up my things and moved to University about 2.5 hours away from home. I can't quite express to you how nervous I was doing so and for weeks before that day I tried to find reasons for me to not go. Obviously, deep down I always knew that no matter how terrified I was, I was always going to give it a shot, but when I arrived at registration on my own while my parents went to park the car I was quite literally shaking with nerves. Today is 29th September and I feel absolutely and completely at home here already and have hardly stopped to think about what things are like at home without me.


I have absolutely no doubt that what made the transition so easy is the fact that the people I am sharing a flat with are absolutely wonderful. Initially, when I heard I would be sharing a flat with 13 other people I thought it was way too many and we would never all get on. I was wrong. While we have one post-graduate in a flat full of under-graduate freshers who, understandably, isn't really bothered about being part of our friendship group, the rest of us all get on incredibly well. I quite literally feel like I've gained 4 sisters and 8 brothers within 10 days of knowing them. We are all different people with different interests but there is enough overlap between the group for us all to feel comfortable and at ease with each other. I would imagine its fairly rare to have known a group of people for a week and have a conversation at 2.30am about the meaning of life, but with these people it wasn't even questioned.

While its highly likely that things won't be quite such smooth sailing for the entire year, I am not even slightly worried about sharing a flat with these people. We are a very social flat (one of the main reasons I've not stopped since I got here!) but we also all appreciate a little bit of time on our own at times
, and recognise that sometimes we just don't want to socialise, which is just perfect for me.

Aside from my wonderful flat, all of the people I have met so far in my building are equally brilliant. From the ones I have met at the freshers clubbing events to the ones I have met at lectures and discovered we're from the same building, they are an incredibly diverse group of people which is always interesting to be involved with.

I have also had 2 days of lectures so far and while the majority have been introductions to the course, those which have been actual lectures have been fantastic. With every lecture I sit through I believe more and more that the course I have chosen is right for me.

Despite all of my anxiety towards coming to university and all of the issues with where I would be going, clearly something in the universe wanted me here. I don't think I could have met better people and everything just seems to finally be slotting into place. I have no idea what the next 4 years will involve, but I'm not even a little bit scared about it anymore.

Lucy x

Being Comfortable

Liebe Lucy,


Over the last few months this blog has sort of become my way or portraying to my future self how fantastic 2015 (so far) has been for me and how incredible my friends are. In a few short days I will be moving 2.5 hours away where I know one person in the whole city. Tonight, after meeting up with the people I love most in the world (minus those who have already left for uni), I'm left trying to convince myself that sometimes things scare us and we just have to do them anyway.

The prospect of university is terrifying to me. I'm not a massive drinker and find the whole 'fresher' culture extremely intimidating, not to mention the moving away where I don't know anyone and living with people I've never met. While I hope more than anything that I look back on this post and think 'I can't believe I didn't even know ____ then', it is still absolutely terrifying and there is absolutely a chance that I will hate it. But that's something I have to find out and the only way to do that is by trying.

I have become extremely comfortable in my school friendship group. I would not hesitate to go to any one of them if I needed them for anything. They are home. And while home is the most comfortable place there is, sooner or later you have to leave but that doesn't mean you don't return home. While talking about a 'family' Christmas meal and what we're going to do for New Year feels incredibly premature (what with it being September and everything) it comforts me to know that those I'm most comfortable with feel the same and have a similar sense of wanting to cling to what we currently have.

It won't be the same when we get home for Christmas. That much I'm sure of. We will all have grown and changed, even if only slightly. It would be naive to think we will never change but just because we change, the group doesn't have to. And while I do worry on the surface that they will all make new, better friends and completely forget about me, I know deep down that even if they do find new friends and even if those friends are better than me, they can never have new school friends, and that is what I will cling to.

To those of you who will forever be my school friends, thank you, for being home.

Lucy x

Goodbyes

Liebe Lucy,

You would've thought with all the goodbyes I have said in my life I would be used to them. I am not.

By the age of 8, 3 of my best friends had moved away. The last being my best friend in the entire world who often passed as my twin back in the day. Since then I have said goodbye to many more friends as they've all moved away.

In addition to that, I have 2 cousins and an Aunt and Uncle who live in New Zealand. Bearing in mind I live in the UK, it's pretty obvious that there are goodbyes every time they visit that are harder than anything else.

Recently I left Sixth Form and said goodbye to everyone there. I thought the last day was saying goodbye, but I realise now that that wasn't even half of it. The time has come for us to all split up and head our separate ways as we go off to university, and this is the real goodbye, even if it is a temporary one.

Today I went to the beach with my friends as a little goodbye thing for the ones heading off this weekend. We didn't make a big deal about the fact they were going, we just utilised the time we have together.

Saying goodbye to them was just as hard as every goodbye I've said so far.

There's something about goodbyes that even when they're temporary they still fill you with an ache that cannot be compared to anything else. Missing someone is such a unique feeling, and goodbyes feel like a preemptive missing.

I know that we are heading off on our own adventures, but I still hope that our adventures together aren't over yet.

Lucy x

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

The Impact of A Teacher

Liebe Lucy,

Earlier this evening I received the incredibly sad news that the man who introduced me to the German language back in those year 7 lessons has passed away. It has come as a shock to the whole community due to him being so young but it has also made me stop and think about the impact he has had on my life.

I distinctly remember being incredibly annoyed that I would be taking German lessons instead of French lessons (we had no choice) until I stepped foot in that classroom. As soon as I met my teacher I knew that it didn't matter what language he was teaching me, we would have fun doing so anyway. Like most people, my misconceptions that German is an 'ugly' language etc etc were strong, until he proved them all wrong. While he only taught me for a year, that year without a doubt had an impact on my perspective of German. He taught me that languages in general are, surprisingly, fun and that it doesn't have to be just sitting down and copying things out over and over again. Rarely a lesson passed by that something wasn't thrown across the classroom in some vocab learning game or another and, to his credit, we all listened because of his unique approach.

His time as a teacher was tragically short, but the number of people who are talking about him and are affected by his death speaks volumes. He impacted so many people, whether academically or through his ability to just understand people, and truly will be missed.

I'm sad that I never got to tell him that I am pursuing German to degree level starting in September, but I will always be thankful for the fantastic head start he gave me.

Lucy x