Coffee, curry and candles don't make goodbyes any easier

Nothing quite prepares you for what comes after the opening of 'that envelope' in August. Your life shifts completely and everything becomes focussed upon the place in which you're going to be living in a few weeks: you find yourself looking at accommodation floor plans, googling dates at the city gig venues and trying to find out how much of your overdraft will be needed to buy an extortionately priced train ticket home. It's almost as if, as of results day, your head leaves home.  

Your head may have left, but your body is still well and truly in your home town, and has a hell of a lot of goodbyes to get through, as I have recently discovered. 
I honestly had no idea how many friends I had made in the last 18 years, 
If you're ever having a day when you feel really shit about yourself just stop for 5 minutes and count how many people you've spoken to in the past week, anything from a chat in the corridor to a quick 6 message natter on Twitter. You will be amazed at the number of contacts and relationships that you've built. I had this realisation on the evening of results day, sat in a bar 3 miles from the house in which I'd grown up with the people I'd spent two wonderful years of sixth form with; 5 years of high school, 2 years of sixth form, 15 years of dancing and trips to India and Africa have resulted in quite a few pals.



I've since made it my mission to spend time with as many people as I possibly can before I leave home. The last few weeks have been wonderful: 5 days in a muddy field at V Festival, spontaneous trips to Costa Coffee with hours of chit-chat, drunken nights out, a reminiscent curry with the people I travelled across the planet with, candle lit dinners with my better (debatable use of the adjective better) half.I have had the most brilliant (and rather expensive) summer spending lots of quality time with the people that I love. 

Of course, since results day it has always been in the back of my head that these aren't just meetings anymore, instead they're goodbyes. For a long time I kept thinking to myself how remarkably easy it was all proving to be, I was having a great time, although I will admit that could have been the alcohol thinking. 
But now people have started leaving. Really. For real, and I've started doing things for 'the last time': I've had my last shift at work, my last guitar lesson after 11 years, my last dance class after 15 years! For the first time I'm really getting a sense of the fact that people are moving on, there are now people who used to live across the road living in some far flung corner of the country. That's weird, it's really strange and kind of horrible to think about. The people that I've spoken to on a daily basis for years and years aren't just down the road anymore.   Despite all of the shiny, exciting and new bits about leaving home, leaving your friends sucks. I mean, it really sucks. At the minute it feels almost as if it's the big, fat, horrible spot on the otherwise beautiful face of going to university. The coffee, curry and the candles aren't making the goodbyes any easier. They still suck.  
But I feel like I'm ready, I'm ready to do the whole moving on thing and have friends in two different parts of the country. I'm excited for there to be new people I'll go and get coffee with, watch films with and ask 'do my boobs look too slutty in this dress?'. I'm excited to have 2 lives, a Norwich life, and a nice, comfortable, known Midlands life.