September 3. A year ago today, my friends and I were fucking about in the faculty of law, signing white t-shirts and having a ball. Final exams were done. Well, mostly. If you were like me, you still had papers, but you came to feel among. And it was fun. Being with the people I’d come to call friends over the preceding 6 years in in a warzone. Exactly a year later, most of that same class is writing their last paper in Law School. There’s an almost beautiful symmetry to it. A year-to-year bookend. But I’m not part of this one. This time, I’m looking in from outside, my face pressed against the window as I see my friends celebrate (but are mostly relieved) after 365 days. Another milestone down. LL.B, BL. It’s all complete.
Most days I feel like I’m walking on a treadmill. Expending effort, but not going anywhere. Most of that is because my friends all went to law school and I couldn’t. That feeling is magnified exponentially today. I’m happy for all my people, of course I am. They deserve all their flowers for all they’ve seen and been through over the last 7 years. But this, today, feels like a return to form for me. The kid on the outside. The kid who just can’t catch up, can’t seem to get it together on time. Always a couple steps behind, face pressed on the glass trying to be part of something.
I don’t talk about these things much, and almost never on here. This is where I come to talk about shit I like, and shit that interests me. But as I sit here, empty can of Schweppes to my left and another year burned on the pyre, that primal fear that has chased me since I was 9 comes around again. “What the hell am I doing with my life?” I won’t get any answers today, or tomorrow. Maybe not even in the next week. But for today, in the midst of my boundless joy for my friends, is me. Once again, adrift on a raft in the middle of nowhere.
