Re-Adjusting - CUB MUSE

Re-adjusting

A Self-Reflection piece by Emily Clements

To possess dreams is a natural part of every human life. Most of us will remember as children being asked: ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ or maybe as we entered our early teenage years, ‘what is your dream job?’. Dreams are an integral part of the language we use in discussing our future plans. But they are also inexorably linked to our own personal wants and desires. Do we dream of love? Of financial stability? Of travelling the world?

Dreams had a huge impact upon my formative years, shaping my own personal identity and defining the person I thought I was going to become. Of course, like any other self-respecting five-year-old, I dreamed of being a princess. By the age of twelve I was dreaming of becoming a singer. All harmless, fanciful dreams for a life as yet unwritten. But by my fifteenth birthday my dreams had become vessels of self-sabotage; things I truly believed I wanted from life. It really seemed that the heteronormative dream of being a childhood sweetheart, graduating from university and settling down into a job and domesticity was going to be it for me. Compared to my friends these were very mature dreams - and I sat back and watched as their dreams revolved around who they would get off with at next week’s party, or which festival they would go to that summer. At seventeen, I took solace in the maturity of my dreams, thinking they would stand me in good stead as I prepared to cross the threshold into adulthood.

No one ever truly knows how great an impact having your dreams intertwined with another’s can have on your life, until you remove yourself from that situation. For me at least, university was the first step in beginning to formulate my own dreams for the first time as a young adult. Moving out of a suffocatingly small hometown into one of the most vibrant, diverse cities in Europe exposes you to the cold hard truth that, actually, there is a great deal more to life than the sheltered existence of childhood. As someone who was thriving in my new life at university, having my dreams still intertwined with another who struggled to adapt to a life outside our hometown began to hold me back. Was it then I realised my dreams hadn’t changed or developed in years? Probably - but I made my excuses for it. The onset of the pandemic, and being forced to move back home, made it all the more easier to sit comfortably on my decision to pursue the same dreams I’d been clutching onto for four years.

It wasn’t until the restrictions and second lockdown of Autumn 2020, when living away from home, the stubborn desperation to cling onto the dreams of my fifteenyear-old self began to destroy me. I was lying to myself about where I wanted my life to go, my sexuality, even what music I liked. I was too afraid to let go of the dreams I’d held for so long. I was too afraid of change, of the future and abandonment by friends, both old and new, if I embraced these new dreams.

By New Year 2021, the country was plunged into its third lockdown yet I had never felt more free. For the first time as a young woman, I was free to explore my sexuality, explore new dreams for life after university, even to realise the rather trivial dream of having a fringe (an EXCELLENT decision).

Yet this is not to say that, although lockdown had motivated this re-evaluation of my dreams, I was prepared for the ramifications of such personal changes. The lifting of restrictions and return to normality as we entered our third year triggered a massive breakdown. I became someone who I’d never dreamed of being and my self-sabotaging behaviour hurt the very people who had helped build me up.

With the help of therapy, and some amazing people who I consider my family and who supported me through both the good and the bad, I learned to healthily embrace my new dreams. I learned to accept that both dreams, and people, change. I lost touch with those who couldn’t accept these changes. I learned to love without intertwining my dreams with another’s. I’m still learning to love the woman I have become and I’m hoping that, as I grow and my dreams change again, I will still love her. Maybe one day I’ll be able to look back on that headstrong fifteen-year-old and love her too, for her determination and tenacity in following her dreams. But for now, I am so glad she is gone.