It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been back in my home town, it’s always weird. Despite people saying it’s a big town I really beg to differ. Every time I go into my town centre I see so many people I know, people I went to school with, old work colleagues, old bosses, exs, family friends, old enemies. It’s something you don’t realise about going to uni. For those of us who maybe didn’t have the happiest time at school or college uni is an escape. I can be who I like at uni and experience being who I am for the first time. No one in Kingston knows the awkwardness of my teenage years, the theatre kid from school or the time I told everyone I was a witch (ok well now they do). The point is you can be as open as you like about your past, or not and that is something I like.
Today just walking to meet up with a friend I remembered all this. A lot of my year group work in town or are back home from the holidays, not many have moved out of town yet if they didn’t go to uni. So walking through I saw way more people than I wanted to, apart from they were the awkward ones who looked away, not me. Some people never grow up.
I wasn’t perfect as a kid or a teenager but my annoying habits I’ve mostly grown out of with time. I’m working on actually being a kind of cool person you know, band, blog and keeping the super talented boyfriend. Meeting up with Katie reminded me of this, we went from best friends to hating each other to friends again. We were both kinda nerdy, very opinionated but also very different. Her Dad likes to call me the poison dwarf from my days as a 12 year old, well that rift never healed haha! I get on well with Katie now and her younger sister. I was nice to talk to someone from school who isn’t still acting like we’re 14.
In a way it made me glad to be home, in another it really made me miss Kingston and the life I’ve created there. It’s a strange thing this growing up malarkey, you’re not quite sure how to play it. Anyway, it was an odd day today but also a very lovely one seeing Katie and hearing how she was getting on.
Chloe Metzger 