When I first got the email from the head of my major’s department encouraging students to apply for this program, I was mildly interested at best. The semester was going well, and I felt that despite the less-than-ideal state of my mental health, I was thriving. I believed that Boston was where I needed to be in the new year. Still, I applied for the program - I knew my application wasn’t binding and it wouldn’t hurt to leave the opportunity open.
I’m grateful I did, because it only took one poor, impulsive decision to turn the semester on its head and cost me a very important friend.
The guilt and the turmoil that followed were wholly warranted but formidable nonetheless. There was of course the conflict that came from knowing what I’d done - without a question that I was entirely at fault for the outcome - that was impossible to reconcile when I couldn’t even decipher why I’d done it in the first place. Having irreparably wronged someone so close to me that I hadn’t thought twice about her presence in my future, stuck with all the ways I could’ve acted differently …
It suddenly became very easy to want to get out — out of the familiar, out of my own head. By some coincidence or cosmic fate, Dundee came at a time when I felt the need to leave, but I was afraid I might also be using it as an excuse to run.
Perhaps I was.
When home never felt like home to begin with and Boston no longer felt like home without her, there was a sense of loss, of being lost, to which I was entirely new. I spent the first two weeks after the incident in denial, the next two months trying to pick myself apart, bit by bit, to find some semblance of an explanation for my actions, trying and failing to come to terms with the concept that one bad action doesn’t necessarily make me a bad person.
But the more time I spent retreating into my head, replaying the moment again and again … I realized that I was trying too hard to force it. That emotions process at their own pace, whether we like it or not. After looking back on pages upon pages of journaling I’d done up to the end of 2019, I realized perhaps the best thing I could do was give myself the mental and physical space to let myself go through that process.
In Dundee, I hope to find that space, or at the very least the start of it. I may have run from Boston, from the situation and the turbulence and the reminders, but in doing so I might have given myself the best chance at truly stepping back and gaining something from the experience. After all, I’ve found Dundee has drawn us all for one reason or another, most importantly as an opportunity for growth.
Forgiveness is a concept with which we’re all familiar. We’re told the importance of forgiving friends and enemies alike, that to forgive is to allow yourself the chance to move on. We’re taught to ask for forgiveness when we’ve done wrong. As important as the both of those are, I believe one crucial element we’re often left to discover on our own is how to forgive ourselves. How to come away from a situation in which we are in the wrong and really, truly learn from it.
I came out of 2019 sure I’d be halted on regret for the indeterminate future. I wronged someone close to me and in doing so robbed us both of what should’ve been a lifelong friendship, something that went far beyond the familiarity of a good freshman roommate. She saw me at my best, my worst, every ridiculous moment in between. That level of intimacy doesn’t come lightly, nor does it leave without a lasting remark.
However, the initial hurt, the conflict, the self-loathing, eventually began to dilute bit by bit with realizations. Acknowledgements, more like.
First and foremost that forgiveness is not linear from any position, nor is the process of really getting to know yourself. Second, but by no means less important, that even being aware of this won’t change the reality that it will take time to listen to and accept this fact.
Allowing myself to commit to Dundee was the start of that acceptance. I did something of which I’m not proud, and I don’t expect to find peace for it anytime soon. Our relationship may be beyond mending, but the least I can do is work on mending my relationship with myself and grow from the experience into someone both of us can forgive. Someone who runs not just away from but towards things.
I know Dundee doesn’t have answers, but I’m not searching for answers anymore. I’m running towards every picturesque sunrise over the Tay; towards every cobblestone street bustling in both rain and shine; towards the insanely cheap Tesco prices; and towards the smiling faces that greet you in every establishment here in Scotland.
I’m looking towards a semester in which I can learn, learn to grow, and learn to forgive.
