Once

Last night I watched Once (the film) on netflix for the second time. I loved it when I watched it before but this time I really loved it. That afternoon I hadn't been feeling too great and after watching it I lay in my bed and cried. For no particular reason. I didn't feel particularly sad about anything. I just cried. Then I looked up everything I possibly could about it. Then I slept.

Today I looked up the documentary about the two musicians in once. I watched it instead of doing some extra uni work. It wasn't what I was expecting. I thought it would tell me all about the process of making Once and how the two of them came to be. I thought it would be about Once more than anything. It wasn't. It was about them on tour and their relationship in that particular time span. It was a snapshot of their lives really. Now I'm writing.

I think what was special to me about both of these movies was the lack of a happy ending. Neither of them end especially sadly. They just don't really have a resolution where things end up in this place and you feel that its going to stay that way. They just show a relationship and a life at one point. Its hard to describe what exactly I think and feel about that.

I know that I fell a little bit in love with Once last night. I also know that its not the kind of love where you immerse yourself in the thing wholly for an extended period of time. I watched it last night after watching in months before and in a few months I might find myself watching it again. I tried to find out about the people behind it. I did what I could and found what I wanted. I'm not now going to go and follow and support everything they do because I don't think its that kind of love.

This is somewhat new to me. I'm so used to liking something and following it. Finding things to make it new every day and letting it become a huge part of my life. I love that kind of love for something, its a special way of loving something that you get to share. This new way of loving something I've found is also very special. I have opened myself up to something new and I will carry it in my heart. I just don't feel the need to carry on my love for it constantly, I don't want to obsess over it or even really think about it every day. I just let it be a part of me for a while.

I think because these films don't have any resolution, they don't wrap themselves up nicely for you, I don't feel the need to carry them on because I know that they are being carried on in their universes. The films mirror life in a way that not much media does: they continue after you leave them. Its like having a friendship for a while, having great times and then just drifting apart. You know that the person is still out there, living their life, you're just not living it together any more but thats okay. These films have helped me be okay with not having closure in my life.

Change

When I think of change I have a tendency to think about one big moment or thing that completely changes you. I tend to think that doing one particular thing will make me a whole new person with different interests and different values almost overnight. Recently I realised that that is just not true at all and I think that might be one of the reasons I found it so hard coming to university. The thing that made me realise this was having my first 'night out' last week with my friends here at uni. Before I went out, I thought about it like I would go out and wake up the next morning a completely different person who somehow thought differently. Then I went out and woke up feeling exactly the same as I have done for as long as I can remember. Things didn't change like I thought they should.

It was then that I realised that change doesn't actually happen all at once, it sneaks up on you. I realised that I'd had a similar view on going to university: I'd gone into it expecting to change so much that I didn't know how to think about the Christmas holidays because I didn't know who I'd be then. When I got here I found that nothing actually changed as I wanted or expected it to, I was still me. I was just in a different place surrounded by different people. I still feel like the same person I was in the summer which I didn't expect at all. I definitely expected to come to university and have a brilliant time and make new friends and change into this new, confident and better person as quickly as over a few months.

I think this might be a result of many things.I think, in the past, I had defined myself very much in terms of the people who I love and I thought that being away from them would change me a lot. It hasn't really. I still speak to the most important people in my life on a daily basis. I also think that I was told so many times that university would be 'the best experience of my life' etc. that I had unrealistically high expectations of what I was coming to. It was scary but I was always more or less optimistic about coming and then it didn't meet my expectations at all. Thats a hard thing to deal with.

Although I haven't had a massive change here at uni so far, I think there have been small changes. I still feel like the person I had become and started to like in recent years but with extra. I'm used to doing things for myself more and I know I can send time alone and not only survive but enjoy myself. Change has happened, just not in the way I thought it would and I am grateful for that because I am becoming stronger at least.