2014 review

I wanted to write something about the year (I have writing itching in my fingers), so I have taken a list from a favourite blog of mine and edited/translated it.

Describe the year with three words.
Leeds, lit-studies and depression.

How did the studies (and job) go this year?
My studies were great. Both terms were fantastic, educating, uplifting, inspiring and absolutely wonderful. At the same time it has been incredibly difficult (at one point I even considered dropping out). The spring was mostly wonderful and my grades were fine--I got the UK grade 2:1, which is something like C/B I think. The autumn has been more anxiety-filled and exhausting, but I have gotten great grades, so far all A's on essays, and A in the only course I have finished so far.
The job has gone on. It has been both meditative and boring. Lately, mostly boring. I am in charge of social media which is at times fun but mostly anxiety-inducing and horrifying. I am thinking of quitting it.

The people in my life this year.
I have attempted to withdraw, which I have succeeded with I would say. I don't have to see people as much what with living alone. But friendships are more or less the same, although I am less close with one of my best friend. Gets along better with certain people at work. Met lovely people at Oxfam in Leeds. Did not really befriend anyone this year, except possibly someone at work.
Social life has, overall, been very difficult this year.

The best trip this year.
Naturally Leeds, but if I had to specify more (what with being there for six months...), it woul be the short trip to Haworth I did when I wandered on the moors, the longer trip to Cardiff, Bristol and Bath and maybe my first few days in London before I went to Leeds--with the flavour of freedom in my mouth.

Best memories or moments of the year.
The evening I went to the poetry reading at uni, in Leeds, where I had wine and fell in love with poetry and talked to and saw people I liked.
When I got use to being in Leeds and realised my freedom of being there. Those freeing walks and bus rides and coming home to my flat.
The Head and the Heart concert in Manchester.
Any one of the good seminars/meetings I have had with my two favourite teachers this year.
Travelling alone. Some of the other concerts. Coming home to my flat, even this one in Stockholm.

Worst memories or moments of the year.
I would rather not think of them, but some of them are: the first few days in Leeds, when I was leaving Leeds, the first week home in Sweden, this entire autumn. When I was too drunk at two points, but my mainly last New Year's Eve. Some of the concerts I went to this year, when the mass of people have me panic.

What was the best thing you bought?
Maybe my black skirt on sale in Leeds, or books such as Glass, Irony and God, The World's Wife, Division Street, and The Waves. Can't think of anything else in particular. I bought a lot of skirts and dressed in England that I love.

What was the best gift you received?
Virginia Woolf's and Sylvia Plath's diaries. An analogue camera I got from Lina. Gift certificate to get a tattoo (which I haven't used yet). *The gift of knowledge.*

What was the biggest musical discovery?
BY FAR Kent. They made my months in Leeds. God I adore them, especially the latter albums. They are my favourite Swedish musicians.
Here is a playlist with the music I listened to this year.

What was the biggest literary discovery?
TOO MANY. Whole genres! The English 18th century literature, Boswell, Maria Edgeworth, Ann Carson, Helen Mort, and the re-discovery of Virginiaa Woolf.

What did I watch?
Few movies--the only one I remember liking is The Hours. But on TV: Orange is the New Black, Downton Abbey, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parks & recreation, Broad City, Historieäterna, Hannibal, Buffy (still stuck on the sixth season), Friday Night Dinner, Girls, Game of Thrones, Orphan Black, Pushing Daisies, and Veep.

This I should have done more of.
Always reading. Maybe talked to someone. Said yes. I did dare to do a lot, but I could have dared more. Believed in myself. Oh, and writing, definitely more writing. And more taking photos and blogging. Ugh. I will try to be better this year...

This I should have done less of.
Drinking wine... Doubted and hated and been ashamed of myself so much. I have been wrong to doubt myself so much this year. I should have done less of the things I did not want to do.

Biggest insight of 2014.
That I am unwell, maybe. That I realised I am actually depressed and anxious--that this is what depression and anxiety is.
And the insight, that Leeds is where I want to live, and English literature is what I want to work with, study and think about.

This I bring with me into 2015.
Very little. 2014 has not been good at all--and I don't believe 2015 will be any better. I will remember that I like running and that I can get good grades in literature courses. But a whole lot of memories from my home on this planet.

Leeds Elaborated

There are two moments - a day, a night - I will cherish from my time in Leeds (I cherish and miss and barely believe in it any more). For their magic and their promise and their beauty.

The first, the easiest, was only my second to last weekend in Leeds. Perhaps I remember it so clearly because it was recent. But more than that, I think it was the height of one particular aspect of my life in Leeds that I adored. It was the nature of Yorkshire; the moors; the lay of land, so to speak.
I wanted to say goodbye to the moors and views so I took the train and the bus to Haworth - with the usual anxiety and worry - and visited the Brontë Museum again and then I went west, out on the moors. I followed a trail, the Brontë Way, and at first it was populated by tourists and walkers like myself. But after I passed the Brontë Waterfall the number of hikers thinned out. The path was thin and less well-trodden. It travelled up and down the moors, along the little brook that led to the waterfall. The view showed Haworth and Keighley in the distance, and green-and-brown hills in every other direction.
And. It. Was. Breathless.
The extraordinary feeling, the one I will cherish, was walking straight away from civilisation (Haworth in my back, nothing in front of me). Even though I knew I wasn't alone (ridiculous bikers left by the previous wall, a few meetings in the form of fellow hikers), it felt a if I was leaving the populated world behind. It felt as if I could walk until I dropped without seeing another human being. And all the time in that gorgeous environment.
It was the feeling of freedom. A feeling I so strive for, adore and yearn for. Am addicted of.


The second was the night in March when I went to my second poetry reading and was blown away by Helen Mort and made casual conversation with a girl also in my module 'Fictions of Fallen Women' and saw someone I was almost-interested in and he noticed me and I realised (that very night) that I was being ridiculous and also was having a crush. Stupid of me, naturally. All of this was important and I can't tell what mattered the most which is why I love that night so much. I spent the ride on the bus home SO HAPPY, my heart beating unevenly and I could taste hope and beauty and life and it was unbelievable.
The wonderful part is that reading Helen Mort's poems brings me back. Not it back to me; me back to then. I'm there. I hear the cadence and warmth and melancholy in her voice when she says

So forgive me if I looked up
past your face, to see those nearly-silver drops
make rivers in the dark, and, for a moment,
almost thought there might be stars named after us.

and like hearing a song once sung at a concert, I'm there, alive and feeling everything at once; the hope and the disappointment and the acceptance of the ways of life.

(That horrible hope.)

It was what I brought with me from Leeds. A land where I want to be buried. Where I feel at home. And the fragile, flickering hope that there might be somewhere I could feel content and alive; a room with kindred souls and poetry and red wine.