Love Me: The Manoir

Saying Goodbye

A Level Results marked the start of the end. The start of my end in that small city which I loved and hated at the same time. I had gotten results that I was proud of, and was off to York University to study English despite some of my teachers telling me to reapply to Oxbridge (I prided myself on being different and biting the bullet going up to a Northern University that no one knew much about – 'it's got a nice Cathedral right?').

What followed was a month of saying goodbye. Goodbyes are a weird concept, especially when saying goodbye to everything you have ever known. It just didn't feel real. I had such a hard time trying to actualise what was happening that I must have looked like a heartless person when saying goodbye to my closest friends who were all sobbing.

I watched everyone go off to uni as my term started the week after the other universities, and I couldn't fathom that I was beginning this new life. That I would no longer walk down cobbled streets, eat at my favourite restaurants, live a bus ride from everyone I treasured in the world.

The hardest goodbye was to Andrew. The other goodbyes I gave were not really goodbyes in the truest sense, they were just goodbyes until I saw them again. But I knew deep down my goodbye to Andrew was a goodbye for life. No matter how many times we spoke about maybe resuming our relationship in a month or so, I knew deep down that he was made for that time in my life, and that time alone.

He was the best part of my summer, one of the best parts of my teenage life. But I was moving on, and he was staying at home for a gap year. It sounds silly, but our lives were moving so far apart that I always knew it would never be the same again. And so I wasn't just saying goodbye to him, but also to one of the most influential experiences of my life.

He changed the way I looked at myself. He gave me more confidence than I thought I would ever have in my life. He loved me when I thought no one could. He loved every part of me; from the inner depths of my soul to my silly escapades. And I was being forced to say goodbye.

I think I loved him. I can never be sure that I really know what it feels like to love someone. But I think if anyone deserved to be loved, it was him.

I cried for the whole evening after he left. It came out of me like a purging of everything that had been good for me. I wanted to crawl back to him and have him hold me forever. I didn't want to leave.

I didn't want to leave home. As I lay in my bed for the last time in a few months, I felt numb. I couldn't comprehend what was around the corner. Just as everything was dreamy – the way I had always imagined they would be – it was being pulled away from me.