Santa Cruz

I love this year here. It's been an immense year of growth for me. I've come to truly love this place I live in, and I think it took some pretty immense disorientation to do so. I think I had to come to experience the city in my own right, doing things by myself before embracing its eccentricities. My mum asked me if it is a strange thought that I won't come back after I graduate in June. At first I said yes, absolutely- that it would be weird to never be in this town after living here almost four years. But I think, after some reflection, it won't be altogether odd. I'll miss elements of it (such as the sunsets pictured above on a random walk), but I feel I came to know this city and to grow in it exponentially. I will definitely take a lot away from it, including lifelong friends, but I realize it is not so very different from my life in Lancaster, U.K. which I left for good as well. It feels most like a chapter concluding. The time was just enough. It's okay with me to have these chapters, I think. To fragment my life into places I inhabited where I met certain people. I realize I wouldn't change a thing about the path I had here... and it was a time I'll have grown probably the most in my life, but now I am extremely confident in me, and the path of life I lead.