On Being Frightened

About two weeks ago I started university, for the days leading up to my first day (and most of the first week) my inner-self felt like this: 

In other words, I was really, really scared.

Now I'm feeling a bit more like that scene in a movie where the main character hears a noise upstairs and goes to check it out only to find out it's just some creaky door. So not completely terrified, but definitely on edge, waiting for the actual scary thing to happen.

When you tell people you're going to university for the first time, or back to university, or starting a new job, or moving away, they always want to tell you how excited you must be.

Most of all they want to hear how excited you are.

For me, if it was someone I didn't know that well, I just lied and said I was 'soo excited' and I was sure it was going to be 'soo good'. If they knew me a little better then I was honest and admitted actually, that I was very very scared and starting to wonder what on earth I was doing taking such a massive risk.

As the time drew nearer I only became more scared, and more convinced I wasn't going to be able to cope and that I was going to spend the entire year with no friends and slowly drowning under the weight of my course and part-time job. These might seem like an over-exaggerated description of what everyone feels when they have to start over somewhere new, but for me it felt all too accurate. My final year at university was really tough friends-wise and although I left it with some of the best friends I could ever have wished for, I also left it thoroughly shaken and not nearly as sure as myself as I was at the start of it. I wasn't just worried that people wouldn't like me, or wouldn't find me worthy of friendship, I was really concerned that I just wouldn't put myself out there from fear of realising both of those things.

It was scary because for the first time in my life I wouldn't be thrown together with a group of people, either in my accommodation or work place who would just be my friends by default. Not only that, but I'd also made this decision all on my own. Going to university had seemed so obvious, like I'd never have done anything else, but going on to postgraduate study was just one of a million paths I could have followed after I finished my undergraduate degree. 

So if I had a terrible time, and crashed and burned both socially and academically, I'd only have myself to blame.

I feel incredibly lucky to feel that fear reducing as the weeks go on.

If being so frightened at the start has given me something, it's been that I feel grateful for even the smallest victories in my new situation. I changed my course from part-time to full-time with relative ease, I made friends who I see regularly, and I feel on top of and excited about my work.

Don't get me wrong I'd have loved to not have been frightened, I'd still love to be able to shine with confidence and not let everyone that let me down in the past make me think that everyone else is going to do the same in the future.

But it is okay to be frightened, and okay to let that subside in its own time.

Who knows, maybe if this year goes well I can start my next adventure with the relaxed confidence of someone who isn't internally screaming. Maybe.

À bientôt!

xx