Looking at the side of the Edan Dolly homepage, it suddenly dawned on me that Ed and I have been posting on this blog for three years. When we started we were 18, and by the end of this month we will both be 21. Though it doesn’t seem like 3 years when I look back it seems like an eternity. I know I’m wrong, because I study psychology, but it feels as if the last three years have been the most eventful of my life. In February 2009 I knew I was going to Cambridge, but I was still at school, wondering what the point of life was and in love with a girl who didn’t love me back (worst thing ever….!). Though excited about the future I didn’t really see the point: if everything ends and life has no meaning then why bother. Better never to have been born, huh? Now, in February 2012, I am in my final year of university, have a job for September, and am in love with a girl who loves me back. And though I’m still as unsure of the real point of life, and whether I am doing the right thing, I can safely say that I am the happiest I have ever been.
The happiness isn’t because everything is OK, though. I miss Jonny and my grandparents every day. People I loved have left, and at the time it was really difficult to deal with. But, I guess, what the past three years has taught me is that life isn’t about what happens to you, but how you feel about what happens to you. Being able to study the Negativity Bias for my dissertation has confirmed this: people aren’t happy because good things happen to them, they are happy because they have a positive mindset and believe in getting the most out of life. Every day I try to remember how lucky I am, to be studying with great people, to have so many amazing friends and to have a brilliant family. And though life and the future is scary, really really scary, I know that because of them I will do the right thing. The memories I have of Jonny and my Grandparents mean that they’re not gone. They’re as alive in my mind as they could be. I know exactly what Jonny would say about everything I do: mostly ‘dude…’, and I can imagine sitting endlessly with my Grandfather in front of the fire talking about the meaning of things, and making meringues with my Granny.
What else has changed? I still don’t know what I want to do, though I think now I know the sort of thing I want to do. It’s stupid, really, because I knew it all along but just never realised it. Though Compelling Illusions, looking back, was devastatingly pretentious, the aim was to make people realise how similar they are to everyone else. You are not alone. In Cambridge I just keep doing this again and again. I love anonymity because it means you don’t have to be afraid being who you are; it means you can be honest without being judged. And when people are totally honest they show that we all are scared of the same things. We all have the same hopes and dreams, and we all want the best out of life.
Most importantly, though, these three years have proved to me that being alive is absolutely incredible. It can be incredibly depressing and awful, but it gets better. Things change and things get better. Three years ago, when I started this blog with Ed, I could never have imagined that things would be like this now. And now they are, I couldn’t be more grateful to everything and everyone who made it so, and continue to make it so.