Being There

Ok, so I guess this is the part where I actually start posting stuff on here, right? Well, I guess I could give that a whirl.

So I've been at university for about a month now, which is enough time to settle in, get to know my way around, and meet some friends. It is also, as it turns out, just enough time to start to realize that life is sometimes hard.

Without totally trivializing everything that has happened to me up until this month, I have to admit that the combination of living away from home, and adjusting to a whole new style of learning, is way more challenging than I thought it would be. Not that I had very clear expectations of university life to begin with, but I guess I never considered how all of the various factors would come together and hit me all at once with a giant dose of real life.

As anyone who follows me on twitter is all too painfully aware, I've had some minor crises in these past few weeks. They included, but were not limited to: dropping my day-old iPhone in an unnamed vessel of water, nearly losing three years of photos, having to buy a new computer, and injuring myself multiple times in kitchen-related incidents.

Throw in some impossibly complicated projects, oodles and oodles of reading, and trying to navigate a completely new social scene (something I haven't really done since Grade 1) and what you get is a me that doesn't feel like she is actually capable of anything besides pressing alt and reblog all day.

Not to brag or anything, but I've always been a pretty happy person. Maybe happy isn't the right word - that makes it sound like I'm always bubbly, which is certainly not the case - but it usually takes a lot to really get me down. And so I'm not super experienced in the art of getting over things. But what I have gleaned from my recent freshman struggles is the importance of people that care.

I hesitated about writing that instead of saying friends, but I feel like friends is too broad a definition. As someone who recently said goodbye to the majority of my friends from the past four years, I'm having a hard time with what the word actually means. All I know is that the people who care about you - whether you've know them your entire life, or just a few weeks - are the only ones that count. That doesn't mean they have to drop everything and come rushing to your side at the slightest sign of trouble. It just means that they are there for you - in person, in spirit, in skype, whatever. And often times just having someone who is on your side makes the biggest difference. 

For the record, things that also help: hot chocolate, the Harry Potter soundtrack, taking walks in the woods, and doing things you are good at, even if that means pressing alt and reblog over and over.

Oh, and in case you were ever wondering what Hufflepuffs are good at, besides finding - they are pretty great at being there.