The Next Chapter

I never thought I’d be sitting here today: in a room full of anxious hands tapping steel pens against desks that are a quarter of the size they used to be.

It’s not a class room, its a lecture hall. It’s packed to the brim with eager young minds waiting to fill their blank canvas’ that are their lives, just waiting, waiting, to do the things they’ve dreamed. It was never disputed that I wouldn’t make it to University. I had the grades, the drive, the passion all of it. But behind all of it was the seed of doubt I never expressed to anyone.

For years I didn’t dwell on University: I didn’t bother to get fussy about which school I wanted to go to, or get tied up in knots over what program I wanted to do. It wasn’t because I didn’t care either, it was because I didn’t think I would survive long enough to make it to University. Even in my youth I had believed that I would die in some tragic way; the flame of my youth extinguished by some toxic cancerous disease or smothered by a freak accident of a head on collision.

But here I am.

I’m making my way in this world just as good as anyone else. And I feel fine.