Throughout the average month, I repeat the same cycle a good four or five times. The cycle begins with Stage One; my bad days. Days in which I wish to do no more than curl up in a ball and hide under my duvet – an act my housemate affectionately refers to as “rotting in her pit” – and one, do nothing, and two, see no one. Stage Two is the accumulation of such days manifesting into a consuming guilt that washes over me as I stare at my neglected, albeit growing and seemingly endless, to-do list of lectures I’ve missed, books I haven’t read, and emails I haven’t sent.
Stage Three is my epiphany. A lightning strike of motivation surges through me and I roll out of bed and decide to get my life together. I picture myself being in Act Three of a chick-flick, in which the heroine dyes her hair or gets her nails done and rights her wrongs all in preparation for Stage Four, the happy ending. The ending where I am now an academic “weapon” who frequents the gym and the happy-go-lucky friend who never misspeaks and wears her untouchable heart on her sleeve. But inevitably, like clockwork, Stage One rocks around once more.
I’ve always imagined that, one day, this cycle is going to break. One day, I will live in Stage Four of eternal bliss for the rest of my years. Growing up, this was going to be at university, where I imagined that adulthood would free me from the shackles of being a kid and I’d become a carefree “it-girl” flushed with confidence and independence. When this didn’t become a reality, my imagination turned to the self I envisaged being in twenty years time, where I am happily married, with perfect children, a job I love and a roof over my head that I call my own. I’m at peace; I’ve achieved my happy ending.
For me, I feel that the constant pursuit for a happy ending, this incessant strife for a perfect form, is actually holding me back. It’s caused me to conceptualise happiness as a destination in which I will be permanently impenetrable from sadness or regret or anger upon arrival, a destination which, of course, does not exist. And while I am stuck on this idealised future, and remain harsh on the missteps I’ve taken in my past, I float through the present forgetting to stop and take notice of all the good that actually surrounds me.
As university students, with our whole lives ahead of us, I think it’s common for us to plan everything out in stepping stones. We hop from stone to stone, secondary school to university, first bad grade to first good grade, first love to first heartbreak, in hope that one day we’ll reach the other side and everything that comes after will be smooth sailing. Except, the reality is, it won’t, and it never will be – but that’s okay!
Now I’m in my final term of university ever – a fact that makes my heart drop every time I think of it (!) – I feel I don’t have the time to dwell on what was or what will be, and I’m trying my hardest to just keep putting one foot in front of the other without the pressure of perfection pinning my arms behind my back. An accidental lie-in or a skipped lecture, or perhaps, a bucketful of Saturday morning ‘hangxiety’ caused by accidentally annoying all of my housemates the night before, can be made better by a laugh with a friend, a sincere apology, or the promise of a fresh start the next day.
While our favourite movies cut at the happy ending, our lives continue long after the credits have rolled. We will be forever in the process of making mistakes and learning from them, then making new ones. I may never be the wholly confident, irrevocably faultless “it-girl” of my chick-flick dreams, but I’m trying to relish in my new-found freedom in the fact that I don’t have to be. In letting my idealised happy ending go, I can finally let myself breathe.