Thunder In Your Ears Until You Can’t Hear This At All

Why am I writing so much at the moment? Because I have a lot to process and understand. Indeed, it is only when I stop that I really begin to process it all. “The end and the beginning are the same. It’s all the same.” I would be lying to you if I didn’t feel a bit triggered right now though.

It’s been 10 years since I dropped out of university. And being asked to take a break by someone who is helping me out is exactly what happened back then. 

Of course it was much worse then. 

I was out for about 16 months. I had been hanging on for so long. I did everything to save my uni degree. Pulled everything out of the bag. Did things I thought I would never do. But I still couldn’t make it work. Now, was dropping out of university just before my 21st birthday a disaster? No it was an amazing epic success.

I came back and got three degrees in the end. I got diagnosed with ADHD which was a lifesaver. I got so much help with so much that I had been dealing with. Now it wasn’t all bad. I worked. I had a boyfriend in London and we had some great times together. I watched a lot of motivational videos in the night. It always makes me smile. A lot of people don’t understand. How did I become Susanna, the person who got two masters degrees in two years. Who changed careers three times in two years as well. Who got hired as a software engineer after seven months of coding? Well so much of me was made late in the nights of that horrible year out of uni, watching motivational YouTube. There was no TikTok, there were no shorts but there was good all gym bro YouTube. I watched so many ted talks. 

Going back to uni wasn’t easy. It was hell on earth. It was so so hard to get my work done.

I racked up a €300 phone bill calling helplines because I hadn’t set up a new UK phone yet. Knowing I had ADHD wasn’t enough. 

I had to spend years learning how to learn for myself. There were some glorious moments like when I got a 78 on my vampires module. 

That module revived all of my confidence and brought me back to life.

But getting that first degree was hell - my seizures exploded, I had to keep on getting help for so much stuff I had been dealing with on my year out - and every assignment was so hard won.

But, healing happened. I discovered the Shell Grotto in Margate. 

I would go back there 6 years later, right before I got laid off, feeling so utterly and totally healed. I had a secret that I couldn’t tell someone for so many years. And the night after I told the one person I couldn’t tell I ended up back at the Shell Grotto the next day. So healing. So magical. And I found geography and spatial planning too. And then I found marine planning and urban regeneration and resources management and renewable energy. A lot of people seem jealous of me for having such a strong passion in life. Not realising the journey that I had to go on to get there. Most of which I have held back on here anyway. That day 6 years later when I went back I wished to stay in renewable energy and I knew that it would happen. Because the very first wind farms I fell in love with were in Margate. 

And they were the ones I looked back out on when I made that wish.