By Tenae Ghelfi
I sit, I watch, and I want to cry, but no one will notice. Everyone is too busy laughing, catching up on who slept with who, and what assignments haven’t been started with five hours to go until the due date. The college life is the epitome of feeling isolated in a room full of people.
I try to smile and act as if everything is ok. The romanticisation of my university life, as everyone says. So, I get up each day, do my washing, go to the gym, and then go on spontaneous trips to the city. I stare out the window, trying to peer into the minds of those in the outside world and I search for an inkling of fear, loss, and melancholy. Looking for others just like me, so I don’t feel like the only one, the lonely one.
‘We miss you!’ ‘Can you call?’ ‘Haven’t talked in ages!’ I hate calling home, having to act like everything is ok, like I’m doing everything right, when all I really want is to go back home.
It’s a phase, I’ll adjust, we all will but we have to allow ourselves to and that’s the scary part. I’m not ok about having to leave behind my best friends who made me who I am. I’m not ok with not knowing what’s ahead, and I fear that now it’s up to me, I’ll fuck things up. I’m not ok to feel out of loop of my own family and fear that it’ll never be the same again. I’m not ready to grow up.
The truth is that I’m scared of letting myself grow and branch out because if I let myself take that leap, I’m worried nothing will ever be the same again.
I should be excited, I want to be excited, but I can’t shake the feeling of FOMO, missing out on what was. I think for the first time I’m not looking to wish my life away and look to the future, instead I can’t help but look back.
But if I stay in the past, I’m holding myself back and I won’t be happier. In order for me to be looking back now, I had to have been looking forward then. So, I will keep waking up every day and pushing for at least one smile, one win, and adapting.
Tenae Ghelfi is a first-year university student who is studying a Bachelor of Creative Industries, majoring in Media and Communications. She has moved all the way from Far North Queensland, about an hour and a half drive from Cairns, and lives in a residential college in St Lucia. She has always had a passion for the Arts, doing theatre since she was nine years old, yet has always had a love for English at school, resulting in her considering a career in Journalism.
