Sweet Dreams

A week or so ago I dreamt about being at university and I was getting ready for a night out along Salford Crescent. Elisabeth and I met up with a guy we knew in one of the bars (even though in my dream he had long blonde hair which he really didn't in real life!)

That was about it for the dream but it got me thinking about how strange it is that people you haven't seen or thought about in over 20 years can suddenly pop-up in your sleeping brain and appear in your dreams. The guy in my dream was never a close friend and I lost touch with him after my second year. So where did he come from out of the blue?

Isn't it strange when you have dreams where random people from work, or from the shop down the road or from your past just appear and walk into your dreams?

It's made me think an awful lot about university over the last couple of weeks and I've dug out the old diaries from that time and read them. They are some lovely memories in them. Some of the entries are truly cringe-worthy but they have made me think so much about my life and how much I've learnt and developed since being a shy and self-conscious teenager. I can laugh at my so-serious and earnest younger-self in a way that I never could before. And I can only give thanks that I've grown into the more confident and relaxed person that I am today.

I spent the first couple of years at uni just wanting to be liked and to be popular and desperately wanting to have a boyfriend like many of my friends. Reading the diaries back I realise how many lovely friends I had and how many opportunities I actually had to have that badly-wanted boyfriend at the time but I was too scared and shy to actually let it happen. Ironically I was chasing the very thing that I was too unconfident to let myself have. How silly.

I'm so glad I kept a diary back then. They cover me leaving school, university and beginning work in London and so of course (after a few other relationships) meeting Rob. Shortly after that they finish. I guess I finally found that boyfriend which meant Dear Diary was no longer needed.