Ticking By...

Time seems to escape me.

I have no grip on it, no fix, no hold, no ability to slow it down or speed it up.
It feels like just weeks ago that I was sitting in a stinky, crusty green school hall waiting to hear my secondary school tutor group read out to me like I was in Harry Potter, gripped with nerves and waiting to see if I would be in sporty Ravenclaw or shoddy Hufflepuff (sadly, my tutor was the equal to the latter), hoping I would be paired with my friends and could escape social retardation for at least the next 5 years.
And now I'm here.
Limbo. Waiting, watching as the seconds tick by.
Summer came and went. The first girls holiday, the solo work experience, the last family holiday, the exam results, the car breaking down, the room being filled with new things, old things, ready-to-pack things.
It's all come, and its all gone, quicker than my eyes and brain could wrap around it to digest and take it in.
It feels like only yesterday that I was sat in that hall, aged 12. Now, I'm 18, and about to move out. Childhood is officially over. And it feels weird.

I can't decided if I'm unbearably terrified at the prospect of surviving this world alone, or if I'm excited.
Really though... will I ever be excited to cook my own meals. I'm hardly a domestic goddess, and know that on several occasions, the bad stomach wasn't alcohol related, it was a serious case of God-save-me-from-this-hellhole-of-a-kitchen-I-cannot-cook-beans-on-toast-to-save-my-life-I-have-actually-poisened-myself-AGAIN syndrome!
If I'm excited time will drag, I'll watch every second, feel every minute as if it passed like an hour, waste time thinking about how slowly time is moving. But I know if I'm terrified, it will come faster than anything I've ever known, and time will have flown by like a race horse on speed, and before I know it, I'll be there, without a cheese grater - much to the disgust of a million girl-guides who'll all tut at me under their breath 'be prepared'. ha!
I think I'm a happy (?) medium - excited about being terrified. Which, is actually a little messed up.

Fleeing the nest is actually a daunting task... it's time to either soar, or dramatically sink to the ground. And I think it's the fear of not knowing what it is I'm fearing that's causing me to fear fleeing. (You think that's a tounge twister... try unscrambling my thought process at the moment!). It is the fear of the unknown, plainly and simply, that's causing me to feel so confused.

So mix this fear of the unknown, the anticipation of finding out and getting there, with the next week of saying my goodbyes and farewells all together, and you receive a brain in a blender with a lid on it, ready to be packed into the boot of your car and unscrambled on arrival at destination Uni.

The time doesn't tick by so quickly when I sit here, like right now, thinking about how long is left of life as I know it. The seconds stretch and the minutes widen. But this last week, when I'm catching my last precious moments with my friends and family, it will soar into the distance blurring past me in the blink of an eye and a whirl of excitable terrified chatter, and before I know what's happened, I'll be alone for the first time, a butterfly escaping the cocoon, breathing the world in for the first time... completely alone, but starting the next chapter.

Back soon for more tickings of my oh so teenage mind <3