So Bella and I made it to Brighton! Luckily, the deluge started after we'd already walked along the water (English Channel) and down the pier and were having lunch (well, "all-day breakies") in a diner/cafe along the boardwalk.
It's been such English weather this week. It's either England's way of making sure I don't miss it as much, or it's England's way of seeing me off properly. It's been about 50, grey and windy for the past few days, and it downpoured for a solid few hours this afternoon. So what did we do? Wandered around the mall and then hung out at Wetherspoons, ha.
Brighton was very nice, though, and I'm very pleased I got to have a look around. We spent about 5 hours there and it was about an hour long train trip (~20 mins to Clapham Junction, where Bella and I met up, and then about 40 to Brighton) and it was a very pleasant day, even with the drenching.
As a result, I arrived home earlier than I had thought, so I made some dinner and set about watching the film Third Star.
This is not a film you want to watch if you want to be happy. But it is an amazing film and one that is very important for me to watch right now, I think. Lately, I've been feeling sorry for myself. My charmed life is coming to a slower point, I'm leaving a place I feel happy and at home in, and I am worrying about the future. Will I ever come back? Will I ever get the chance? There is still so much I want to do. I've checked so much off my bucket list this semester, but the list just keeps going and going.
I want to do everything. I want to be everything. I want to be special. I want the world.
I have the chance.
I'm not going to spoil it for you, but the story is basically a buddy camping trip, with three friends supporting the fourth (Benedict Cumberbatch), who is terminally ill. Cancer. I'm going to warn you, it hurts. It hurts so bad, and there were some places where I had to pause the film because the hysterical crying went so deep I couldn't hear, couldn't focus on the screen, couldn't pay attention. It hurts. But it's so good. Not just because of how it's written, or how it's filmed, or how it's acted. But because it puts my life in perspective.
I have an amazing life. Utterly incredible. I have seen things and done things this semester I believed I never would. And I'm feeling sorry for myself because these amazing things are ending and I have to go back to real life? I'm small and my "problems," such as they are, are small and I have my whole life, the entire world, stretched out in front of me and I feel small in the face of the big, wide world and the possibilities therein.
If I want to come back, I will. I will make it happen, I will find a way. For now, the very fact that I was allowed this opportunity is unbelievable. I am so bloody lucky. And one day, I hope to be this lucky again. It will take hard work and it will probably be harder than I think, but I can do it. And more than that, I will do it. Because my life stretches before me, and it will be a long and happy and fulfilled one. I will make sure of that.
And if, god forbid and knock on wood and spin around widdershins three times while throwing pepper over your left shoulder, it isn't long, it isn't happy, then by god, it will still be mine. I can and will decide what my life is like.
And all of this is because I've grown up while I've been here. What a wonderful four-and-a-half months.
* A quote from Peter Pan and, as far as I can tell, inspiration for the title of the film. James, the main character, makes a barely-heard comment about how he thought it was third star on the right...
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