not freaking working.

Now Playing: Warrior by Kimbra (my hands are tied but my eyes are open, this modern denial has me broken)

I have to admit...this whole 'begin again' shit is not quite going to plan.

I love uni life. I love shoving my bag into a you-must-return-this-key-in-six-hours-or-you-will-die-and-the-earth-will-explode locker and going for long walks around campus. I love my morning coffee run and I still get a kick out of leaving campus or meeting up and just chilling with friends or catching a bus during school hours just for the lols. I love having Fridays off. For the most part I really enjoy what I'm studying and I'm doing pretty well.

But I'm starting to think it was something of a mistake to be completely AWOL for literally the entire summer between high school and uni - it's the longest school break ever if you don't take a gap year, and I was out of the country for all but about three days of it. I don't regret going to Korea or studying at Yonsei University at all - I have so many wonderful memories and had so many wonderful experiences and met so many wonderful people. But it's really...it's really hard to fit people into your life at uni, and I'm just finding that a little tough.

I've always been a big believer in the idea that you can't 'find' time, if you want time to do something you have to make that time. And so I've been making time for people but a lot of that time I come up empty because, surprise surprise, everyone has a million other people to consider before they think of me. I know I shouldn't be complaining, because I know we're all trying our best. But...I don't know.

It's really hard to explain to people why I dislike being single at uni without sounding like a...oh, forget it, I know I already have a bit of a reputation. But it's not about I MUST HAVE A BOYFRIEND TO COMPLETE ME MY LIFE IS NOT COMPLETE WITHOUT A MAN ALL OF MY ACHIEVEMENTS ARE NOTHING WITHOUT A WEDDING RING AND LOTS OF COMPLICATED FORMS TO CHANGE MY NAME. It's not like that, at all. First of all, I'm kind of out as bi (which is something you can do at uni where people generally don't waste time conspiring to beat you up in the lockerooms after gym like they do in high school) so I really couldn't give a shit about gender anymore and...I'm still boy crazy, but I'm more or less people crazy now; I like people, and I still need my space, but for the first time in a little while loneliness is genuinely getting to me. I don't even really care about labels - it's all just semantics. I could be genuinely happy with just a best mate, just become one of the boys again like I did when I was little. But most of my friends at uni are randomly coupled up now and they all have their priorities. If they want to hang out on campus or grab a coffee or go to the theatre they always have that one person they turn to first, and then they think about everyone else and...I can't help but feel a little left out. I just want one person to think of me as their priority; one person who thinks of me first whenever they need a partner in crime. I just feel like I'm borrowing people from their partners for a few hours every now and again, and all this wandering around by myself and trying to remind my friends that I exist and once upon a time we had fun together is just...reinforcing a lot of insecurities that I've dragged around for a lot of my life. It's just really hard when every day reminds you that you're the girl come second, the eternally single one, the one who meets guys who turn out to be total psychopaths.

It's really hard to connect with people at uni. And I'm not even talking about new people - I'm talking about the people you've known for years. School is really cut and dry - twice a day every day you're thrown out of class and forced to socialise and, whether you like it or not, you see people. Every day. And you talk to them. Every day. And every day you talk and fight and fall in love and become best friends forever and whenever you start feeling lonely or insecure all you have to do is wait until the next day and hope there's someone to smile at you and there usually was at least one person, even at the worst times when it really felt like there was no-one. And because it was high school and nobody actually took that shit seriously every night there would be the witching hour, where all the social networks would suddenly come alive and...you get used to playing email tag whilst chatting to five people on facebook whilst texting three other people whilst writing an essay. That was the best part of high school, to be honest - I still had lots of time to myself, but not so much time that you find yourself falling head first into a pit of self pity and all that other pathetic stuff every time you find yourself in a place where you don't recognise anybody (i.e. campus libraries). Meeting up with people takes time and effort and planning and blah blah blah blah blah - which I don't necessarily mind, if my still-in-high-school brain didn't always grumble at what feels like a collosal amount of effort to do something that was arranged every day by the recess bell last year - not to mention it's really bizarre for me to only see people who I used to spend all day every day with maybe once a fortnight, once a week if I'm lucky. But it's when people are all 'what the fuck am I doing, I have a boyfriend/girlfriend/fifth wife who spends time with me on demand I don't have to waste time with this friends shit'...that sucks.

Meeting people at uni is really, really, really, really hard. I hoped to meet new people and I have, and I hoped to make new friends and I have, but it takes a much longer time to establish anything, so I'm starting to forget about the idea of meeting more than friends at uni. First, it's really awkward bumping into people you know at uni - well, it is if you're me and have the social skills of a shoelace. But it's mostly because you don't see people all the time - at most you'll have one tutorial with them, or they'll go to a club meeting every now and again, or maybe you'll bump into them as a total coincidence, but that's not really enough to go from 'stranger' to 'something'. And because spending time with people and pursuing relationships with people you meet at uni is so hard and so time consuming and so unbelievably fucking awkward nobody actually does that unless they're properly obsessed with you. Which sounds all romantic and all but...it's really not.

I had hoped, somewhere in between wearing my own clothes and doing what I like and meeting people who don't give a fuck in a place where it's no longer cool to give a fuck, that I could shed some of my insecurities, but somehow I feel like this year they're getting even worse. I spend a lot of my time feeling hopelessly inadequate, trying to connect with people but failing miserably, never knowing whether my friends are happy with me or not, always afraid people are going to walk out on me. And always, always, always wanting to spend more time with the people I love, and never getting to because they have their priorities, and I...I'm not one of them.