05/10/2025 Start of October
I feel a bit like I’ve come out the other side, like I’ve survived something, even if that something was just the feeling that my life was falling apart when it truly was not. Not to minimise how much last week sucked, just to say that, the storm having largely passed, I’m realising that I’m fairly unscathed and everything is okay. Which is an odd feeling to have at the end of September and start of October to be honest, but there we go. The new academic year has finally begun and normalcy has returned, as promised.
I was thinking at the start of the week about the inevitability of resolution. How everything falling apart will never last forever, and the nightmare period will always end, the storm will always pass, etc etc. This probably should fit into my everything comes back around philosophy, but the emphasis is different: it’s not that I need something new to begin, more than I need the crisis to end. And hallelujah, it has, mostly. It has in feeling; in practice, apart from lectures restarting, everything is much the same, but I no longer feel like the world is ending and I’m about to kill everyone, so I’m counting it as a win.
The structure of academia has been very much appreciated. I’m remembering how much I like being productive and busy, but it’s difficult to get myself back into the habit of being proactive with how little I’ve been working since May. It’s definitely helping though, to have something that feels so irrelevant to my personal life to sink my teeth into. I’ve been neglecting my music, largely, but in context that feels justified and even necessary, as giving it too much energy just reminds me of what’s not happening right now, and I’m trying to draw my attention away from that.
Autumn is here. I think I’d just about forgotten with all of my personal drama. The leaves are red, the trees are starting to look bare, there are conkers everywhere, and I think the world is just starting to empty out a bit. The warmth of home has been much appreciated, and I’m really getting into my hot drinks, but I have to admit that it’s not been quite so comforting as I was hoping. It’s really been making me feel the lack of the warm spaces I want to be in and the comfort they would bring me - church, trains and buses, my parents’ house. I’ve been finding warmth here - my room here is still lovely, and I’m ever in debt to my friends for their constant welcome, and I went to Quaker meeting earlier and found a good deal of warmth and comfort there, and the various academic libraries I’ve been making my home are fulfilling that role too, as well as the local pubs - but really, I’m incredibly homesick. I miss autumn back home. I miss summer back home, actually, I miss swimming, feeling like a part of nature. But then I experience that a lot more back home regardless, and everything here feels so important somehow that it makes home, where nothing matters except comfort and family and nature, feel so much more important to me. I’m hoping to go home at the start of November, and that should ease my homesickness, but I don’t know if there’s anything I can do long term except accept it.
I’ve also been realising that I really need to start planning for my future more. There are lots of things I intended to do once the autumn got going, and one of the big ones is to actually start making concrete plans for what I’m going to do after I graduate so it stops feeling so scary. I’ve got some ideas and I’ll make an appointment to discuss it eventually - for now it’s just looming over me.
I’m trying to be gentle about everything, to not be too cynical and to forgive myself about my own shortfalls in regard to everything. I know it will all work out. In the meantime my relief for the moment is in dreaming of home. And I love my friends.