Little Shy Ariel (ft. Harry Styles)

Epilogue - Happy Endings

Epilogue - Happy Endings

There's something people don't tell you when you start to integrate, and that is that by starting to make friends and interacting with people you might get to love people, but also hurt them deeply. Sometimes you can fix that, an apology is enough, but sometimes the harm is so deep you can't do anything about it. That's something I've learnt from all this experience. It's not just having the courage to talk to people, is learning to deal with them. Knowing that sometimes you'll make them happy, other times you'll make them suffer. That doesn't mean you're a bad person, it just means you didn't know how to handle things.

I hurt a friend and I hurt her so deeply that our relationship was impossible to repair. She walked away and I headed to another place, too. I apologised, but that wasn't enough. I received a letter a few months ago, a reply, from Mare, saying she forgave me, but that didn't mean we could be friends again. And I understood her. It wasn't the same anymore for us.

Maybe some people will think it's silly what happened between us, that she overreacted and I just made a mistake, that she should just leave that behind because our friendship was stronger. But how can she leave that behind if what I did was what would hurt her the most? I did exactly that thing she hated the most. And yes, maybe it's not a big deal for other people, but it is a big deal for Mare and if I had been more thoughtful, if I had been more careful, I wouldn't have hurt her like that. I did what so many others did without a second thought and that broke our relationship to the no repair point.

I lost a friend, yes, and that will always hurt, but I also gained an important lesson. I know I won't make that mistake again. Friendships are something you have to take care of, be careful and think of the other person. You can't rush to conclusions without listening the full story. You can't pretend you know what happened when you weren't there. You always have to listen.

Being part of someone's world is hard, the hardest thing because there are so many things that can go wrong. So many ways to hurt the people you care about and it takes a lot of courage to say I'm sorry and to make amends. Trust is the most fragile thing and it can't always be put back together once it's broken.

Those are things no one told me, those are things I had to learn on my own. Those are the kinds of things that make me grow up. I know I'll make more mistakes, I'll hurt other people, but I hope that I'll also make loads of people happy. I hope I'll be able to fix whichever wrong I make.

Now I'm someone who is part of the world. I don't hide in a lake and behind my disorder. I fight it, every day. Sometimes it's harder, sometimes it's easier, but it's always there. But I learnt that I'm the only one who can give the disorder the power to stop me and that's what I fight every day. With the help of some medication to control my anxiety and the physical effects. It's worked pretty well the last couple of months since I came to London.

I reckon things have been pretty easy for me. Harry has helped a lot, teaching me how to handle things, supporting me all the time. I've been introduced to the right people and they have liked my work. I've made new friends and I'm doing my best to keep them.

As Mare got her deal and she's been doing quite well, I also got a deal. The same label that produced One Direction offered me a deal I couldn't refuse. And that's how I started to work on my own album, with my music and my voice, and overall, my name. Mare and I used to be a team, now we are independent and separate artists, which follow different styles. She's a pop artist who now will start shooting a movie, according to what I've heard, and I'm more into an indie style, which has strangely proved to be quite popular lately.

Life has many twists that you never see coming, but at the end everything works out. Not always in the way you wanted to, but always in the way you needed them to happen.