Yesterday I posted, by hand, my application to University. I am fifty-two years old - clearly a late developer or a truly great procrastinator. Probably both.
I am quaking in my boots at the thought of what the next four to seven years will bring. Would I have felt the same making this step in my late teens? Of course not. I'm not sure I had the common sense or life experience to be as scared as I am today.
And I really am scared in case they don't want me. I don't know how I'd handle that - it seemed so unthinkable when I first hatched this plan. In my head the problem was about my readiness for them, not vice verse.
But honestly, until I have a piece of paper in my hand confirming my place in September, there is a small corner of my stomach that will never digest food properly again, its sole function now being to churn continually.
At eighteen I would have had that extraordinary brash confidence of youth, and assumed that nothing was as bad as living at home with my parents. I'm sure I thought that one day I would go to Uni, then another day I would leave, educated and ready to take on the world - I doubt I even considered what occurred in between. I think a hazy notion of freedom is the most that intruded on my consciousness.
Now, of course, I'm only too aware from doing my Foundation Course, how much it could take to get from fresher's forms to flinging a mortar board in the air.
So I'm really, really, REALLY scared in case they DO want me.
Because then I will have several years of total honesty, vulnerability, and putting myself completely on the line. If I am to have any integrity in my work it has to be a product of turning myself inside out. There is no room for cowardice or, frankly, what is the point of going?
I don't need a degree to set me on a career path. I need all those moments in the classroom, and the hours strung out over homework, all the input from tutors, and the examples of my classmates. I need the disasters even more than the breakthroughs, for one seldom comes without the other.
I'm aware it may not be fun.
I don't think it's supposed to be fun.
But I will feel more alive in every second of it than I have for most of the last fifty years. Even now, just typing this, I feel a vibration deep in my chest cavity, as if some long forgotten thing is suddenly singing.
In today's society, there is much talk of reaching one's full potential, while at the same time acknowledging that the brain is so underused that it is impossible to do so. But there is a space - between living a 'good enough' life and becoming that sci-fi super being - where one can genuinely find oneself.
It can be a place of peace and contentment and joy, but, as any athlete knows, it is also a place of stretching to the limit, pushing and reaching and achieving something previously unknown to you. A place of such focus, that it calls forth everything within you and brings it to bear, leaving you exhausted but complete.
That is where writing takes me.
That is where painting takes me.
I meet myself coming the other way and am strengthened and renewed by the process.
And, frequently, exhausted.
And so I am utterly scared of embarking on such a journey and, at the same time, terrified of being denied the opportunity to do so.
In four to seven years, I hope at least to make more sense.
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