From Manchester, With Love

"You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place. Like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.” - Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran

So, that's it, my friends. Three years, one degree and countless hangovers later, my time in Manchester, for now at least, has come to an end. It's a strange sort of feeling. On one hand I am in complete denial about the fact that I am moving back in with my parents after three years of living on my own; but on the other hand, I feel as though, at long last, the world is my oyster.

It's been a pretty special journey. I've experienced more than I thought humanly possible and I am, in no way, shape or form, the same girl that practically sprinted up the M6 on A Level Results Day. It's been hectic and crazy and messy and wonderful and painful and liberating; and I am proud to say that I have not a single regret.

In the past three years I have found that best friends come in all shapes and sizes. They are the people you get drunk with at 6am and spill your heart out to. You meet them whilst working 14 hour shifts, for crappy money and little recognition. They are the people who surprise you by being there when you least expect. They live right under you and they live miles away. They are the people you call with your broken heart, and the people who call you with theirs. They teach you that families are not always related by blood. Sometimes they are there forever and sometimes they are only there for a short while. I got so lucky. I am leaving not having made any friends but having created a family. My own messy, non judgemental, beautiful family.

I spent a lot of 2013 with a group of people who showed me a whole new meaning to the word 'family', and although they are no longer a part of my day to day life, I hope they never stop showing people that meaning, it was pretty special to be part of. I spent nine months working in a bar with the messiest, most ridiculous and sometimes most disgusting group of boys a girl could wish for. But they believed in me in a way that I often struggled to see for myself and I will never be able to tell them how much that meant. I've cleaned up the vomit of drunks with girls I will have in my life forever. Girls who will go off to be, no doubt, leaders of entire empires, putting Queen Bey to shame, and I know I'll be able to pop round with a bottle of wine at 2am and they'll always have room for me. I have spent three years battling a crazy, disorganised department bonding with some of the world's most talented and creative individuals. They've single headedly got me through crappy units, nasty tutors, mental tutors and my SODDING dissertation. They've got me drunk by 3pm on a Friday afternoon and have joined me in celebrating exams they didn't even sit. They are the brightest of the bunch and they're my friends; I'm not even sure how it's possible.

I have lived, for the past three years, with a group of women I would be insulting to merely call 'my friends'. Nah, them bitches is my sisters. They'll be on my hen do and at my wedding. At my 25th and at my 50th. We have battled everything from drunken spats, to broken hearts and even the scariest of diseases, and I admire them in a way I don't think they'll ever understand.

Equally, I don't think I could have been prepared for just how much you learn outside of the lecture hall. I have learnt that be it in a bar or in an office- if you love the people you work with (as I always did) you never really do a days work. I have learnt that you have to know when to cut your losses, life is hard enough without working at friendships that are actually toxic.

I have learnt that it really is ok if you fuck up, you just gotta pick yourself up, learn the lesson and move on.

I have learnt that falling in love is the easiest thing in the world and I have learnt that I can love as easily as breathing. But I have also learnt that I have my limits. I learnt that two people merely loving each other doesn't always put them on the same page. I have learnt that sometimes the love doesn't go but the relationship has to come to an end anyway, simply because it’s no longer working, and that you've just got to be thankful you got out before it got truly sour because there isn't always a bad guy.

 I have learnt that appreciating what you have is so much more important that crying over what you don't. I have learnt, finally after years of education, that if you actually dedicate yourself to your work, your mark will reflect that. I have learnt to be less afraid. I have learnt that sometimes life makes no sense, but I've also learnt that everything happens for a reason. I have learnt that what you have planned for life, life doesn't always have planned for you- you've just got to go with it. And I have learnt that sometimes you've just got to pull an Elsa and 'Let It Go'.

I have grown. I am not the girl I was three years ago, 18 months ago, six months ago or six weeks ago. I have made the most amazing memories, ticked a lot of crazy shit off my bucketlist, met people I never dreamt of meeting and lost people I never dreamed of loosing.

It's been the best three years, with the best people and even though the last six months have been tough in just about every possible way, all they've really done is made me tougher. I wouldn't change a single thing.

Years from now I'm going to look back on the night I dressed up as pumpkin for Halloween and walked home at 6am through the dusky streets of Manchester still in costume and laugh a laugh that starts in my belly and pours out of me.

I'll never be able to say thank you enough to every, single person I've met along the way, but I thank each of them with every inch of me. If the rest of my life chapters are like this one, I am going to live the greatest life I could possibly ask for.

-xo