Five years ago I was Twenty Years Old. I was in my second year of university, had an amazing group of very close friends around me, including someone who was more like a soul mate than anything else, but more about her later. I had a knack for falling for very poisonous men and I had no real direction BUT 100% believed that I would be living in London once I graduated and I would achieve whatever I wanted to and that I would do it within the next 5 years AND it would definitely be something to do with writing, either film or TV or maybe even a novel.

Now it's 2015. I'm Twenty Five years old with a very small group of friends, most of whom are family members and my soulmate dumped me via a facebook message about growth and some other bullshit that I'm obviously not bitter about and don't think about a lot*. I lost a lot of close friendships because I deleted my facebook account, which I still can't decide whether or not that's on them because it's a website and there are literal thousands of different ways to communicate with people or me because I refuse to reactivate my facebook account and there are literally billions of people who use it now. I tripped over a couple of other bad guys before falling in love with a great one and he is truly wonderful, albeit 5 years younger than me. And I live back home with my parents in East Anglia, working in customer services for a local bus company and listening to elderly women tell me I can shove my bus where the sun doesn't shine. 

There are so many aspects of my personality I've lost over the last 5 years. My sociability, my wonder at any and every thing and i think to some extent my spark. Back in Summer of 2013 I was diagnosed with Anxiety and Depression, which is something I still haven't overcome. I like to think that it's just a chemical imbalance that's caused it but I think it's more likely a result of actual events that have occurred in my life than a mistake on nature's part. It's much easier to blame chemicals than it is to face up to the fact that I've become a far more muted and disappointing version of myself and that a lot of shitty things have happened to me. I take medication for my anxiety and depression every day. It's not too bad, although when I forget to take it I get really sick and end up with a migraine. I feel pretty dependent on my medication now, too, and often like it's not enough anymore. But again, this is all a work in progress. Rome wasn't built in a day and my life's fuck-ups can't be wished away.

I'm quite on board with who I am now, as a person, and the friends I've made in the last two years like me exactly as I am now. The only people who have a problem with who I am now are the people who've known me before.I kinda hate who I was before - sure, I wasn't morbidly overweight and I had a lot more friends, but being me then was exhausting. Everything was so calculated and considered, my life was a TV show for people to watch and I just hoped they'd tune back in for the next series. I made a lot of bad and stupid choices and I think back now at how I used to be and cringe. It still hurts though when people say 'What happened to you? you used to be so happy all the time!'. I don't have the energy to repeat over and over again that actually I wasn't that happy at all and who I am now is more me than I've ever been. I still wonder at stupid things - I just don't feel the need to tell everyone so that they'll think of me as some hyped up manic-pixie dream girl figure that I once aspired to be. I enjoy a lot more things for myself rather than for the attention of other people, like I used to. 

I'm not really sure what this post is about, really. It just feels nice to write some honest things for once. 

*Except I do, because she was my best friend and knew everything single thing about me there was to know and she dropped me so suddenly it hit me like a goddamn fire truck, I mean really, as I was reading the message she sent me explaining why being my friend was bad for her, as I was reading the words of someone I loved and thought would be there with me my entire life explain why being my friend was like a poison to her and exhausting to continue it felt like someone had found one of those really old railway sleepers and swung it into my face.