When it’s time to leave, I grab my boots and pack and find the others waiting for me. There’s nothing for it. We’re walking together.
The path ahead is rutted and uneven: broken with stones and roots, the canopy hanging low over our heads. Every step is a minefield, to avoid slipping on the damp moss, plunging a boot into a deeper than expected puddle, or to find a solid piece of surface among the broken rocks littering the floor. Ewan scowls as he limps along. We find him another stick, so he can use themboth as crutches, and Lila and I are quick with an arm or a hand when he is forced to scramble over or under something, but it’s hard going, even without what is probably a sprained ankle.
To his credit, he doesn’t complain, but the pain and effort are clear on his face.
“What are you studying, Ewan?” Lila ducks under a particularly spiky branch.
“What?” He shakes sweat from his eyes.
“You’re at university, right? So what are you studying?”
I shoot Lila a look, knowing exactly what she is doing: distracting him with conversation so he can’t think so much about the pain.
“Yeah. I am. Second year doing sports psychology at Bristol.” He pauses, using both sticks to step over a knee-high rock.
“And? Do you like it?”
“Hate it.” He says it tonelessly, as if hating the entire experience you’re going through is a fact of the world: like cheese sandwiches, or walking, or the sun rising tomorrow. “Yeah, like, I don’t see the point, you know? I like going out and that, and I’ve got some friends, but… I’m not sure what the use of all this shit I’m learning is? I don’t even know why I picked sports psych. I guess I like football, and I didn’t know what else to pick. I didn’t even want to go, but Mum really wanted me to apply, and once I got in, it felt like there wasn’t another option. Like, I didn’t even have a choice?”
“Oh, you mustn’t give up!” I find myself saying. “Degrees are important. And you’re already so far through. Why not push on?”
Why not push on indeed? As soon as I say the words, I want to take them back. There it is. My shame. The demon at my door. The thing that lurks behind everything else, my weakness.
I didn’t push on, did I? No, one emotional breakdown and I was out the door.
Weak. Useless. Pathetic.
The thoughts knock at my walls, scrabbling to get in. And here I am, making it so easy for them. Exposing myself like this. I need to get back into my comfort zone. Need to pull the duvet up, to shut the door.
“Because it’s making me miserable, yeah? So why should I do something that I hate?”
I don’t have an answer to that.
“Did you go to uni then? Miss Degrees Are So Important?”
“I— Yeah, I did.”
“And did you finish?”
My shoulders slump, defeated. My own fault, for the quickfire response. I should have left well enough alone, let Ewan and Lila chat without sticking my gob in it. Should have let them walk off and not tried to be friendly.
“No.”
I pretend to be absorbed in the passing foliage, tilting my face away, so that I won’t have to see their expressions.
“Well, there you go.” Ewan sounds satisfied. His sticks clop across another piece of rocky ground. “And you seem alright. Bit uptight, but I guess you can’t have everything.”
Thankfully, Lila intervenes when the silence grows too long. I want to reply, but I’m scared that if I do, it will come out choked and raw.
“I think degrees are important,” she says carefully, looking at Priya, “but they’re not the only path. There’s no right path, really. I suppose the question is: what you would do instead?”
That is the question, isn’t it.
What would you do instead?
I arrived at university with a head full of big ideas: the friends I’d make, the experiences I’d have. Fall in love. Graduate top of my class. Start the clothing business I’d been dreaming about since I was five. Use it as the springboard to start myreallife.
What had I done instead? Slide into a black hole where there was no light, no air, where my body was an anchor, where even waking up in the morning felt like too much.
