Leaving Southampton

Edited version of the rest of 'Tidying Up'

I graduated in July 2008 with a 2:1. I registered with the General Social Care Council and I got myself a job. I was a real, proper social worker and for the first 6 months I walked around at work thinking this over and over, because I couldn't quite believe it.

I left Southampton when I finished university. I didn't really want to, but I did it to preserve my relationship with my then-boyfriend (which had been long-distance). It certainly paid off because I'm now married to him!

It was really hard to leave for several reasons. Firstly, because nearly all my friends stayed behind. The one person who moved away moved back again about 2 years later, so for a little while everyone was in Southampton again except me, until some more people moved away.

Secondly, I loved Southampton. It was a nice place to live and it has nice places nearby (like the New Forest). It also felt like it was my place, the place I chose to be. I grew up in High Wycombe, but that was my parents' choice. Southampton was just far away enough to be somewhere completely different, and it really became home to me.

Finally, I'd lost my Mum about 6 months before, and the stability that my friends provided really helped me. But then I had to leave it, and that brought feelings of loss back again.

The week I left was both manic and emotional. I had the most awful cold and no time to rest because I wanted to see people before I left, learn to knit so I could make a square for the Chaplaincy blanket and I had to pack 3 years of crap into not enough boxes. To make life harder for myself, I had personalised my room quite a lot, so I had to undo all that before I could leave.

I cried for pretty much the whole week, and almost all the way to my Dad's where I stayed for 2 weeks before moving in with my boyfriend.

My friends left behind carried on living together in a kind of grown-up-but-still-studenty way. I joined in when I could escape from the scary responsibilities of my new job and my life that had started to feel terribly grown-up.

There has been a gradual letting-go of university life, as well as a time when we have all grown and changed again. We are all different now from how we were at university, yet still the same. My teachers in 6th Form said that we'd make friends for life at university, and they were right.

Most people have moved away from Southampton, and a fair few of us are married or nearly married. Life goes on, and although at the time it was very hard to leave Southampton and all my friends, it was the right choice and everything has worked out well in the end.