unravelling

I have spent my time since school calling myself a student, keeping menial entry-level jobs to 'support myself through Uni'.  enrolling every other semester in subjects of which I would inevitably drop out. Whilst other people not attending University were seeking office jobs, I continued to strive for a life I wasn't ready to lead. Study requires a level of self-determination and discipline I was not willing to give, I just didn't realise this at the time.

The last five years haven't been entirely wasted, but this is one hurdle that has haunted me throughout. I am content with where I am, and yet I crave for that life I had expected to have by this time, for the milestones I had expected to have reached. I had assumed that by this time I'd be donning the cap and gown, not attending orientation week alongside others the age of my baby sister. It is hard at these times not to feel a pang of regret. These years have seen me both the incapacitated victim and the heroic conquerer of my own anxiety. These are my stories, these are my achievements. They are just so very different to the achievements I thought I'd have. I had hurdles that I could never have expected and would never have wished upon myself. I failed to achieve all that I planned, and I've succeeded in areas I hadn't prepared for. Life is like that. Life is unpredictable.

I often find that I think of myself in the past as another person entirely. We may share many of the same memories, but our lives and our motivations are different. The past is another country and she who inhabits it lacks the wisdom that I have garnered by the benefit of her experiences there. I know her well, but she can only dream of me. The future Georgia I will never meet knows me better than she knows herself. The three of us are sisters, estranged by time but intrinsically linked through memories and blood and the words we leave behind as a trail of evidence.

There are times where I become angry with my younger self. Frustrated that her selfish, hedonistic lifestyle did not bestow upon me the life I had expected for this time of my life. I think about those semesters of University that went by marked only with a new set of Withdraw Fails on the academic transcript we share. I lament how her actions then have to affect me so greatly now; she feels like an estranged little sister and yet her actions directly influence the very composition of my days. Her decisions were made with priorities that are not always aligned with my own.

It is harrowing and humbling that one must learn to make decisions for two versions of oneself. I choose to start University next year because I do not wish to feel this anguish at my (now present, then past) self in the future. It feels as though I've had to learn some hard truths that I had always thought were innate. The division between the present and the future are not so distinct. The Georgia of the future is vulnerable to the present, so I must protect her with the decisions that I make. She is older and wiser than me, but her wisdom is defined by my experiences.