Ch...Ch...Changes

Recently I have been through a lot of changes in my life and there are still a fair few that I need to make in 2017 too. So today I thought I would discuss how changes affect me, now and when I was younger. Because, ironically enough, how I deal with change has drastically changed in the last few years - and sadly not in a good way.

When I was a child, I would just go with the flow. Things would change in plans but I was just a child so it was never really up to me anyway. I may have had a few tantrums but nothing that I can really remember. Essentially I was well aware that change was a big part of life and that I just had to deal with it.

As a teenager, this was even more noticeable to me. After Primary school, I transferred to a secondary school on my own. It was the biggest kind of change I'd ever faced but I was ready, excited and happy to accept the change. It was tough at first but I soon fell into a friendship group and we got along well for two years. But then two of the four of us left for a different school and my last friend decided she no longer wanted to be my friend. Thus began my jumping from one group of friends to the next for the next three years.

Change was a constant in my life. But it was getting harder to embrace. It felt like I needed a constant in my life. And that was where the internet came in. I formed friendships. Found my writing and wrote every single night. It was, essentially, what kept me sane. It helped me to deal with all the changes going on in my life.

After secondary school, I moved to a sixth form college, again I did this alone. I had to make friends again and was very fortunate to meet some on my very first day, friends who I still see and consider my closest friends, ten years on. But it was a change that I could deal with - I had already done it before. After college, I went abroad for six months to Canada. While this time I did go with my step brother, when we got there, he was in one job and accommodation, and I was in another, once again alone.

But the past few years had taught me how to deal with that. And I made some friends and I got stuck in and I really enjoyed my time there. A few ups and downs occurred but that was to be expected on a gap year so far from home. Then when I came home, I went off to university alone too and found some more friends easily enough. I knew what I was doing. It was good.

So now we come to the present. And change was something I used to embrace. I loved changing things up, meeting new people, steering my life a new way. But now? Now change scares me. I'm not entirely sure when this happened but whenever I think about something changing in my life, I freeze up, feel my stomach turn and want to just stop it all from happening.

I need change. I'm not currently happy in myself so I need to do things to make me feel better again but I also feel panicked at the thought of change. For example, I hate many aspects of my library job but I also love my colleagues and a lot of the work that I do do so the idea of getting a new job, of changing it, fills me with dread. I want to leave, I need to leave but at the same time, I am just too scared to do it. I know this job and these people.

I think the problem is that I'm settling. For the first time in my life, I'm not sure where my future will be or go. I haven't got school to look forward to or move on to. It is just an open space in front of me and the amount of possibilities of things that could change or could happen, makes me want to stay where I am. Because it's not the worst job in the world but if I get a new one, well, that could be worse, couldn't it?

So I need to just push past my fears and my lack of control, and just put myself out there and embrace change again. But it's probably going to be more difficult than before. But I know that 2017 is going to be my year. Last year was awful but this year is going to be the year that I finally work out where my life is actually going.