A BIT OF A HEART-TO-HEART... KINDA.

I'm not one to sit and write down my feelings, never mind on a blog for everyone and anyone in the world to see. But it's a Thursday night. It's six minutes to ten and I'm sat in my damp, dingy uni room in tears. Over what? I'm not sure there's only one thing. Lately, it's felt a lot like my world is coming crashing down around me. And I know it isn't crashing down entirely. I'm very lucky with where I am in my life. I have a lot to be happy with. A lot to be grateful for. And a lot to be proud of. But it feels like I'm spiralling.

I've never been one to feel 'unstable' - for lack of better wording - yet, that's all I've seemed to feel recently. I didn't get off to the best start for my second year of uni. I found it extremely difficult coming back here and, to top that off, a boy situation really did not help - I suppose we can call it getting dumped? But you know, I picked myself up and, after a few questionable decisions and seemingly a reliance on alcohol and my friends for a few weeks, I got on with my life and things were really on the up.

Then I went home for Christmas. Coming back to uni in January was where it really hit me that I just wasn't happy. It was a Sunday and my mum had driven me back down to London from Derbyshire and, for the first time, it became so incredibly clear that I was really only fooling myself. I remember walking back through the door of my uni house and my heart just dropping - it was the last place in the world that I wanted to be. I'd had that little dread in my stomach for a few days prior to coming back down to uni but had kind of swept it away - I'd managed to sort myself out in September so surely I'd be able to do the same in January, right? Wrong. I ended up having a full on breakdown in Morrisons in Harrow and begging my mum to not make me stay. I cried for hours. And I'm not normally one to cry very often.

Something I'd been considering for months ahead of this incident was moving out of this house. My bedroom is damp, cold, dark and generally depressing. I don't even have a window - it's simply miserable. And that moving-back-in day just solidified that I needed to move out. So I spoke to my parents, and my friends, and we decided that I needed to do what I needed to do. Almost every person in my life has said to me in recent weeks that they don't think I've been myself lately and that they can see the difference between me being at home and me being here. And guess what? The consensus is that I'm just not happy here. And they're not wrong.

My living situation isn't good. It's hard living with certain people. And I don't want to go into the details of it but I'm counting down the days until I move out of this, what I like to call, hell hole. Only 79 more days to go.

University life isn't easy, either. It's not a full-time party - it never has been, and it never will be. And people are not joking when they say second year is a hundred times harder than first year. I'm drowning in work. Literally drowning. I have deadlines flying at me left, right and centre. Yet, at the same time, I've never felt more un-motivated in my entire life. Don't get me wrong, I love my course but I just do not know how to cope with the workload at the moment. I don't have any inspiration, and all I think about is the semester ending.

And money. Oh don't even get me started on money. I've genuinely lost count of the amount of times that I've seriously thought about what life would be like without coming to university, and having a full time job instead. Oh, how much easier - financially - would life be, at this point? I don't know the answer. But I do know that even the thought of checking my bank account gives me genuine heart palpitations. It's kind of a situation of 'what can I afford to pay for this week? Rent or food?' and I'm not enjoying it.

To put it bluntly, my friends are driving me insane. I love them so much but some of them are incredibly selfish people. They're dismissive, competitive (in ways that they really should not be) and generally, at times, horrible people. I don't mean all of my friends, and I don't mean all of the time but, lately, I've had a realisation that not everyone has your best interests in mind. It's quite frankly baffling to me that people of my age continue to act like children in certain situations. We're 20-ish years of age and people are causing unnecessary drama and talking behind people's backs. It's ridiculous, and I don't have the time or energy to be dealing with that. I'm fed up of people thinking that, just because they're 'them', it means that they're better than other people. And I'm fed up of people dismissing other people's problems simply because they think they've had it worse, or they've got bigger issues to deal with. Reality check: it's not all about you.

Quite honestly, it's become increasingly clear to me that some of my friends don't value the friendship as much as I do. I'm the type of person that, if you need me, I'll be there. If you're my friend, I'll probably do anything for you. I have friends that definitely do not feel the same way. They expect me to answer a call at who knows what time of the night if they need me, but can't even reply to a text when I literally say I need them. It's one set of rules for them, and another for me. Double standards, and it's hurtful. I don't expect them to be at my beckon call, of course I don't, but it would be nice for them to at least ask if I'm alright every once in a while. But no, they don't - they know I'm not alright, and they just give me their problems to deal with on behalf of them. And that's alright. I don't mind listening to their problems, but it doesn't mean mine don't exist.

Boys, boys, boys. Boys drive me insane, too. I don't understand them, and I don't think I ever will. I've had a couple of situations within the last year and they've all left me with so many questions. How can you babble on about how much you like someone and bin them off? How can you babble on about how much you like someone and then get with someone else? And now, how can you babble on about how much you like someone and ignore them for hours on end? I don't get it. But, you know, that's life - I guess we'll never really understand.

I'm writing this post, and I'm probably going to regret it. It's seventeen minutes past ten, on a Thursday night. I'm still in tears. I can't seem to get over this slump that I've been in since January. I feel shit constantly. It's draining, and there's only so much I can do about it. I'm happier at home, so I've been home for probably 75% of the weekends of this semester, but it doesn't necessarily make anything easier - I spend the time at uni counting down to go home, and I spend the time at home dreading coming back. It's swings and roundabouts. And it's shit. But we're going to power on through. It'll get better, I'm sure. And I'm so grateful to my parents for being so supportive and genuinely lovely about the situation - I'm not sure they fully get it, but they understand that I feel like I need to be at home. And my friends, ugh my friends; the thing is, I'm not that good at talking about my feelings and so I don't know if they see how bad it really is for me at the moment so maybe that's my fault. I don't know. I don't even know what I'm getting from writing this post - just getting it all out, maybe. I'm not sure. Maybe I'll never know. But I'll get there, I'll be alright - and, until then, I suppose I'll just keep counting down the days until I go home again, no matter how tragic that sounds (who am I these days?!).