Growing up faster than expected
I remember vividly the day I arrived in Amsterdam to start my life as a student – alone, completely lost, terrified and completely all over the place, classic Freya-in-a-stressy-situation style. The day was stifling hot; I had arrived mid-August during a heatwave and the height of tourist season, the hordes of people crowding around each other like ants eating a piece of food off the ground. I remember getting swindled by a taxi driver as he took me to my shitty, dismal apartment miles from the centre, I remember how I found half a gram of stale weed in my cupboard, how completely out of my depth I felt as this naïve 18-year-old in this new city. But I do know that I had this kitsch, flashing neon light in my head screaming at me, “THIS IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!”.
I don’t know exactly what I expected to occur as I started my life here. I realised that I was like a bird who had been caged for the last 15 or so years, abiding rules and regulations and deadlines and strictness that governed every step I took, and suddenly I was thrust into this world of doing whatever the hell I felt like. Instead of sneaking a cigarette down to the cricket pitches at school or out of your bedroom window; terrified of being caught by a teacher or your parents, you could now just sit on a terrace and enjoy a smoke and a beer. At 1pm in the afternoon, if you so wished! You could cycle around all night and have absolutely nobody question why, you could go dancing at shitty bars like de Kleine Cooldown and drink watered-down Jager shots until they threw you out, you could eat whatever food you fancied, all at your own leisure. So you can imagine how ecstatic I felt when I realised this; maybe too ecstatic. I threw myself into uni life in a manner of pure excitement and motivation, studying half-arsed during the days and drinking myself into oblivion in the evenings; going to every ‘borrel’ the student committees and societies threw, staying up until the wee hours of the morning and dragging myself to compulsory lectures only hours later. I was in my element, and I saw myself doing this for the rest of my degree without a shadow of a doubt. I wanted to be involved in everything, to make my mark in every friendship or relationship I undertook. I was exhausting myself and I didn’t even feel it; the energy I was radiating was so intense and overwhelming that I didn’t even think to stop and think about the future or my current state at the time.
It was only a matter of time before the temptations of drinking, drugs, flirty Dutch boys and rowdy friends came to a slow but inevitable halt. The reality of exams set in, the pressure of passing every course or being thrown out of uni, the realisation that it didn’t make you super cool if you drank every night and missed classes because of your debilitating hangover. I was like a match that had burned itself to its tip. I didn’t know what a burnout was until I googled the symptoms in a fit of intense stress and exhaustion, but I see now that it was pretty obvious I was going through it. My anxiety was through the roof at the time; this newly-diagnosed illness that I had begun to accept was now my arch nemesis, the thing I hated most about myself and the blocker for every social event I attempted to involve myself in. I couldn’t find the energy, emotionally and physically, to drag myself out of bed in the mornings, to go to a party, to meet for a coffee date. I had burned out my passion, my energy. I didn’t enjoy my classes anymore; I was experiencing intense anxiety and paranoia each night. I felt ashamed of explaining myself to everybody, making up excuses as to why I wasn’t there last night, why I left early. I was showing the same signs as I used to as a child of retreating into myself, shutting people out temporarily as a method of self-defence. It was all pretty confusing and I battled with myself for a while as to why I was behaving in such a way, but I realised after some intense chats with friends and a lot of thinking to myself, that this was really just the way I was and I still am today; I guess it just took a year of heavy parting and social burnout to realise that.
I was lucky enough to find out pretty soon after that I was definitely not alone in this feeling of ‘social burnout’. So many students nowadays feel this way due to the overbearing pressure of being fun and outgoing and sociable, often neglecting our own inner needs and sanity to pursue a goal or attempt of being this person that is a pretty exhausting role to play. We are forced to grow up so quickly after years of being told what to do; it’s often that we are led astray by harmful influences. You lose sight of who you really are at such a young age, I genuinely felt like I was a baby at the age of 18, lost and figuring my life out in this strange city.
While this first year was a time of intense emotions and a rollercoaster ride of finding out who I was, I learned a lot that has carried me through to today. I learned that the only person you can be, truly, is yourself. You cannot force an alternate personality forever; it’s exhausting and unreal and will make you feel like a fraud. People will notice, which will make you feel even worse. This process also doesn’t come overnight, either - you are not in a rush to find out who you are, and one has to go through all the weird and wild times to get that realisation or conformation head-on. You are at an age where you don’t have to be friends with anybody you don’t get on with or see eye-to-eye with, you don’t have to fit in with the ‘cooler’ crowd in your course or who you see getting wasted at parties, sleeping with the most people or doing the most drugs. It doesn’t matter if there’s a really cool party on one night but all you’d rather do is lie in bed and watch Arrested Development and eat questionably rubbery takeaway sushi you’ve ordered through your overdraft. There will be more parties, there will be better sushi. Once you realise that the right people in your life will appear when you begin to accept who you are, quirks and all, I can promise you that the weight off your shoulders will be immense. People will be drawn to you as you stroll around, radiating happiness within yourself and feeling at ease with your flaws, your anxieties or quirks. And honestly, everybody has their own shit going on – you’re not that special.