over the pond.

 


These photos are from Easter day last year. I was in Philadelphia, staying in a room with a creaky box frame bed and three locks on the door. Connor and I had finally reached a truce. We were letting go.

I found a church in a neighbourhood close by with black lives matter and rainbow flags outside. Somewhere I felt comfortable attending.

It was warm, I wore a skirt. I walked to church on my own, took my cardigan off in the heat of the sun.

It was a more conservative service than I had been expecting, old hymns and liturgy, but the church body had life, the pastor was a joyful embodiment of queer energy, they took the time to share heavy things with each other in prayer, they reached out for each other. I wasn't brave enough to come forward, I was still so hurt, everything was still so raw. I didn't trust myself not to cry in front of strangers.

Breaking up isn't the right word. We were already so broken. Peeling away might be better, wrenching apart, promising not to turn around when we walk away, forcing ourselves to let go.

There was a lot of love there. There was a lot of hurt there. There was a lot of lost expectation and fear. And there was so much care, so much tenderness, so much discomfort.

Earlier in the trip, I went to New York to stay with my friend Amelia whilst Connor worked for a weekend. It was a space to breathe in the fog of a difficult three weeks. We laughed, drank red wine and smoked on the roof of a flat block in Manhattan, ordered food in, vented all our frustrations, hid in coffee shops to discuss dating women and making art and juggling being adults, hung out in her gallery, posing so she could paint me. She took me in.

She had a ticket for a concert she had booked months before I crashed back into her life and begged her for refuge, so I had an evening to myself in her apartment.

I wanted to use it to write. To think. To make a decision. And to pray.

Everyone kept asking me what I wanted. Did I want to still be with Connor? Did I still want that relationship? Did I still want to move to America?

And I didn't know. I wanted someone else to make that decision.

So I set about writing. Frustrations and feelings and speculations. And then, once I'd reached my answer, I got on my knees, like I had done when I was a teenager and still went to God for comfort. And I was honest.

"I'm not ready to give it up," I prayed, "I'm just not ready. Is that okay, God? Is that going to stop me from doing all that I'm called to do? Am I being selfish? If you ask me to, I'll give it up."

I don't know what response I wanted. Maybe I wanted to know that yes, I should leave. A definite answer. Or maybe I wanted to feel that I was right to keep going, to keep fighting, to work to make this thing better.

But the response I got was unexpected: you don't have to be miserable.

That's all I heard. Clear and firm.

I was so wrapped up in what this life with Connor looked like, would look like, could look like. I was so concerned that I might miss my calling or not get to where I needed to be. I thought about the bigger picture, the support I provided, what Connor needed and wanted. The status and worth I gained by helping him. I had missed what all the others had been saying to me. What about you, Sarah? And, honestly, I was so miserable. I was so anxious, and stressed, and self-punishing. I was so agitated and uncomfortable. I was wrestling with suicidal thoughts. I was so worried that I was hurting Connor, so scared that I couldn't protect him, so on edge. I thought the drama, the depths of emotions, the rush of love and hurt, somehow proved how important this relationship was to us both. This pain was valid, this pain was necessary.

You don't have to be miserable.

It wasn't a command. It wasn't a clear direction. It wasn't a request.

You don't have to be miserable.

You can stay if you want, you can leave if you want. You can work on this relationship or you can let it go. You can move to the US or you can stay in the UK.

But, you don't have to be miserable.

In that moment, I still wasn't quite ready to put myself first. I came away from that night of writing, reflection, and prayer still believing that I was going to try and make this relationship work.

But as I left Amelia and met Connor in Philadelphia, and as things got worse and I got more and more wretched and unhappy, the pain became unbearable. And I let myself start to think that I didn't have to do this.

So when the decision was finally made, the tears had been shed, the anger and the hurt had been painfully and explosively released, there was relief. I don't have to be miserable anymore.

I know it is more complicated than that, that some wounds are still sore twelve months later, that I didn't quite let go, that there is still love and care and discomfort there. But when I looked at the photos from that trip this week, when I played the songs I had listened to last April, when I let myself go back into that space, the person I cried for was myself. I'm sorry, I cried. I should have known you didn't deserve to feel that bad. I'm sorry I didn't stand up for you more. I'm sorry that I let you be that wretchedly unhappy, that I justified and accepted and rationalised you being that miserable. You were worth protecting, you were worth more than that trip and that boy and that relationship.

And I am proud that I am not there anymore, that I am not agitated or on edge these days. That I smile and laugh and I'm content with who and where I am. That I know I deserve happiness and joy and silliness and wonder and amusement. I don't get extra points or gold stars for holding on to suffering and discomfort. I don't have to be miserable. And I am grateful for a God who values my joy and reminds me of my worth, even when I am uncertain.

It had been a long time since we last lived together.

Nine days between houses in a whirlwind of reaquaintance and nostalgia didn't properly prepare us for the magnitude of returning to Bethlehem and sharing our lives once more.

Fuelled by high expectations and months of anticipation, the first few days were a shock. A shock as we learnt how to accommodate another person again, learnt how to communicate and work together, relearnt the quirks we had managed to play down in our last spontaneous meeting.

And we clashed. Stubborn and swollen with our own ideas and agendas. Wrote angry poetry and thought about whether it was right that I had travelled back to the town we had once loved in.

But we quickly uncurled our fists, let go of the whimsical fantasy of a romantic holiday and embraced instead the beautiful tired mess of us.

Three and a half weeks when Connor was within arms reach, when I could throw my thoughts out into the room and he was there to hear them, when we could cook the vegetables we had planted and picked together, when we woke up to each other.

We were not unfailingly happy, things were not always simple and straight forward, but we were together. We could talk through any problems we had in the same time zone, we could hold each other if we were hurting. And oh how we loved each other.

I spent three and a half weeks with my best friend and built a little life together, as we always seem to do.

I think the hardest thing about the times we spend together is that it actually works. If it felt forced, if it meant nothing, if it was just okay, it would be easy to walk away. It is hard to know what we could have, if it weren't for visas and immigration and the cost of US education.

We are now back on different planets, orbiting around different suns, colliding when we can, and it is so hard.

We do not know when we will see each other again or where we will end up or what this journey will look like for us, but I trust that we will walk this road together for as long as we can.

Until next time, Connor.

It's coming to the end of my year abroad, and as I spend my time researching the cheapest ways to send all the things I've accumulated back home and trying to plan a trip from San Francisco to New Orleans, it seems only right to start to arrange my thoughts and feelings on my time in the states.

It's funny now, but before I left I had a very clear vision of who I thought I'd be in America. This girl would be tanned and confident, long beautiful hair curling down her toned back, twirling between football games and frat parties, loved and adored because of her "cute british accent", but somehow seamlessly fitting into American life. She was an amalgamation of Emma Watson and Naomi Clark, a bubbly and beautiful Sarah 2.0. Well, you can guess how that turned out.

America is, at the end of the day, just a country. And American college is just university with a different name. And Sarah in America is, well, the same girl she always has been.

Knowing what I know now of the social structures of American college and the obsessive need for college students to be in a strict group, be it a sports team or a frat, it seems ludicrous that I ever thought that I would be someone who would suit greek life.

And I know several British exchange students who have spent this past year in the US, girls who have become pseudo-American, exclaiming their love for the states endlessly on social media, assimilating the sorority girl poses and smiling at the ground in candidly posed instagram photos. And there is nothing wrong with that at all, for some people, that has been the perfect way to experience America, in short because that is how a lot of American kids experience America. But it was never going to be my experience.  It was never something that would suit me.

For all the red cup party perfection of American high school movies, I don't really see America as exceptional. Not that it is bad, it is has its flaws as all countries do, some more blatant than others, but rather it is not, as a girl once said in my American studies class back at Kent, "just so much bigger and better than England". It is different. And it has been interesting to start to understand that difference rather than hold it up to such inflated standards.

For me, coming to America was about immersing myself in another culture and seeing what life was really like beyond grinning photos at the top of the Empire State Building and meandering through a sunlit Central Park. I moved to Pennsylvania, a small, once prosperous, industrial town split down the middle and divided between students and locals. There are many things I have learnt and observed and experienced since moving to Bethlehem, and most of them lie beneath the sheen of glamorous college parties and sun kissed road trips.

For some reason, when I first pictured my time at Lehigh, things like writing and politics didn't really come into it. But these things, so important to me back in the UK, are also important to me here.

America is a country in flux. There is a restlessness and an itch for something different. The stale family politics, the oppressive systems that dictate the way people communicate and understand each other, that dictate the paths that people must take, the gap between those with and those without, seen clearly in my little town, the dissonance between the idea of America- freedom and unity- and its reality. There are conversations being had that I feel privileged to be a part of surrounding the plausibility of fixing the system or looking outside the capitalist structures currently in place. Following the campaigning and the primaries this year, seeing the comparisons and differences between candidates here and back in the UK who are promising real change, has been fascinating. The world is stirring, things are being stretched and challenged and examined.

In my classes, I have been a part of discussions on the stigmatisation of mental health and the dire implications of the private health care service available here, I am currently taking a class that looks at the history of the #blacklivesmatter movement and the hidden injustice facing people of colour in the US and back home in England, structural oppression mislabeled as a cultural issue.

Whilst I have enjoyed travelling to new cities and places, indulging in the privilege that has brought me to America for a year without financial implications, I feel like I have learnt so much more about the world than just how to navigate Philadelphia.

As I prepare to leave, I do not worry about sentimentally missing America. I know it is somewhere that I have enjoyed living, somewhere that I have made great friends and had great adventures exploring. But if I miss anything, it will be the conversations with classmates and cafe staff and my pastor at church, conversations that have taught me so much. But I won't leave them here in Bethlehem, I hope to continue them over the pond, watching and hopefully participating in the changes coming.

I did not become the girl I hoped I would when I came to America, I am not any more tanned or any taller, I do not have a plethora of frat boys' numbers in my phone or the perfect selfie in front of an American flag. And I am more than happy about it.

And I think its pretty apt that I still haven't been to a party with red cups.

Autumn has slowly crept into Bethlehem over the last month and it is everything I dreamt about last year when I made the decision to put Lehigh at the top of my list and commit to a year in Pennsylvania. California may have an endless summer, but Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, has Autumn. And, after an extended summer in the States, I am even more confident now than I was when I first chose Lehigh that I could not live without seasons. I love the cold, crisp blue sky and the crunch of leaves, I love the changing landscape and sprawling fiery trees.

I have been waiting so, so patiently for the perfect time to capture my beautiful campus, but today I just could not resist.

I didn't want to shut myself in my room or the library and work on my presentation in such perfect weather, so straight after class I went and dropped off my books, picked up my big camera and set off on a photo mission. Normally I get pretty self conscious when I take out my Canon, particularly in the domestic setting of a university, but today I decided that I would fully commit to taking photos, even if people looked at me strangely. I am not naturally a landscape photographer, but I want to be better, so I took time working with the harsh lighting to try and capture the colours as I saw them. I should have been patient and waited until the lighting was softer, but I was strangely energised at that particular moment, so I wanted to make the most of it.

After wandering from one side of the campus to the other seeking out the most vibrant and perfect trees, I set off back home, skipping down the sprawling steps and grinning from ear to ear. As I walked through Campus Square, I saw the view down the valley and over the river and made a quick decision not to return home, but to continue on into Bethlehem and take some more photos there.

Normally, I would not take my camera into the little city, acutely aware that my Canon is worth more than many South Bethlehem's residents' monthly income. The wealth divide between Lehigh and the surrounding area is incredibly embarrassing and uncomfortable, and I do not want to exploit the true residents by playing middle class tourist. But I just had to capture the beautiful natural landscape of the Lehigh Valley, so I decided that today I would take pictures.

I have been feeling a little more up and down recently, I have a great group of friends whom I love, but I struggle sometimes with the amount of time and energy I put into socialising. Yesterday I was worn out, tired of work and people, and missing Adam a lot, so I wanted to spend some time on my own today in the sunshine to find myself again.

It felt so good to just explore on my own, sorting out my thoughts, marveling at the array of colours before me. The path I took meandered along the canal, but I really wanted to be by the river, so I found a clearing in the trees and scaled down a small cliff to the water and sat on some rocks in the late afternoon sun. It was everything I needed, and I returned back to my apartment and my presentation content once more. Sometimes you just need to come away from buildings and people and work and all those little things that sit in the back of your mind that you know you need to do but just don't want to face and just be. It sounds cliche and pretentious, but its true.

I am so grateful to live here in this little valley. Many people dismiss Bethlehem because it is just an ordinary town in Pennyslvania, but there is so much beauty here. It feels like home. And even though these images can never fully encapsulate the stunning scenery and season, I am happy that I took the time to capture this time of year and this time of my life.

As I had only met some of Sara's friends briefly when they pop into our apartment, I was worried about feeling left out but it turns out that that was entirely unnecessary as well because they were all lovely. We were the most international group in the restaurant! Between us we spoke Chinese, Greek, Armenian, Korean, English and (sort of!) German! We sang happy birthday to Sara in our various languages at the same time which was a disaster but awesome at the same time.

This is my current view, the remnants of my lunch, an empty pack of twirl bites that I was generously sent by my mother, the books I am struggling through for my classes next week, a tick list of work I have to do over the weekend.

This is the sofa that I spend every minute in the apartment sat/sprawled/laying on. I don't have a desk, so I work from here, read on here, waste time on the internet here.


And if I'm not on the sofa, I'm generally in bed.


All around my apartment there are stacks of books that I'm reading or have read or will read, normally bought at an extortionate price from the university book store.


This is the view out of the main window, looking out onto a school and a car park.


And wedged under the coffee table are shoes, bags and other junk that I pretend doesn't exist.


It's not the beautiful, exciting city life that people might expect when I say that I'm living in America for the year, just two hours away from New York City.

I think I put a lot of pressure on myself and Lehigh for this experience to be wild, crazy and glamorous. For my pictures to be instagramable, each day story-worthy, crashing a million frat parties with insanely attractive girls and boys dancing around with red cups. But this isn't American Pie, it isn't a film, it isn't a sales pitch; this is my life. And I am happy.

This year, I do my work. All of it. And it feels so good. I feel like my degree has a purpose, I feel like I am actually learning. For the first time since forever I actually want to be studying English. My timetable is busy and fulfilling, I am working towards sustainable and manageable goals. I want to be in class, I want to discuss these novels and texts, which is so different to my bare minimum attitude that I had in Kent.

I am writing prose fiction again, something that I have neglected for poetry these past few years, and I am starting to remember why I loved it so much. I am given deadlines for my creative writing class and I actually like the pieces that I turn in! I am challenging myself, critiquing my work and investing in it instead of forgetting about it after the assignment is over. I find myself wanting to write more, finding time time to write more. Maybe this is the year that I write my novel.

I wake up at 6.30 before my classes and go running with the running club, normally between 2 and 4 miles depending on the heat and whether I have an 8.45 class. And it feels amazing. I feel energised and motivated in the mornings. There are only a few morning runners and they are all so lovely and encouraging, slowing down to run at my pace, encouraging me in the longer runs to just. keep. going. I can feel myself getting stronger and I love it.

I have great friends that I can spend my evenings with laughing over ice cream or playing uno in a coffee shop, they are lovely and mature and don't put pressure on me to do everything with them, giving me the space and independence I needed this year. But yet I know that they are there for me and it is so good to be doing life with them.

I was terrified that the issues I faced last year and the subsequent relapses would dominate my time abroad, that being alone would drag me back down to the pit I was in last October. I was terrified that the exertion required to make friends would rekindle the anxiety that crippled me. But even in the midst of the first weeks here when I felt so lonely, my mental health has stayed stable.

I am content.

And that sounds lame and unenthusiastic but it is everything I could ever hope and wish for. I feel settled and happy and myself. I feel like I'm doing enough. I'm going out enough, I'm eating well enough, exercising enough, laughing enough. I feel like I am enough. And it feels so, SO good to be comfortable in my skin again.

This is my year, my messy, unglamorous, nerdy, healthy, adventurous year. And if that doesn't impress you, then I couldn't care less, because the only person who has to live it is me. And I am happy.

There were a couple of moments since arriving in the states when I genuinely thought that I would spend the whole year alone and that I would never make friends. Now, that seems incredibly overdramatic, but at the time it felt like a very real possibility. But I am happy to announce that that is not the case! And I apologise for the quality of these photos of photos, my camera died so I had to take them quickly on my samsung instead!

I went on my very first night out on Friday with my lovely German friend, Delia. We "pregamed" at hers, before meeting up with some American contacts and going to a ridiculously hot and busy frat party. It was like nothing I have ever seen in the UK, so many people crammed into one house, a full set of club speakers and a (completely free!) bar where you could order various awful cocktails or shots. After about ten minutes there, the police showed up, which was completely unsurprising! The frat guys who owned the house made everyone get into the house, turned off the lights and tried to keep everyone quiet until they left, which wasn't that successful! In the end they let everyone out the back and called it a night, so that was that! My very first frat party! It wasn't the end of the night for us, though, as I ran into one of the sorority girls from my creative writing class who invited us out to a couple of bars. First we went to MacGrady's, a worn down but homely bar where we could sit down and talk and drink $3 cocktails. And then later we moved to Leon's, which felt very similar to the cheap bars you find in Britain, it definitely reminded me of Popworld in Aldershot! We were with a lovely group of people and it was really fun to drink a bit and talk a lot and just go with the flow.


I have been much more social in the past week, meeting up with all sorts of people for coffee, ice cream or lunch. One of the highlights was meeting Gill in person for the first time. Gill was the Kent exchange student at Lehigh last year and we have emailed and facebooked about America and visas and Lehigh for the past six months. She came back to visit this week and it was great to meet up and chat about a million things from America to Kent to religion to relationships! We met up at 11am for coffee and I didn't leave her apartment until gone 4pm! It was just so nice to talk to someone who knew exactly what it was like to be suddenly thrust into college life. She gave me lots of tips and stories about her time in Lehigh and we went to an open mic night on campus and someone read poetry so I might even try to finish my most recent poem before next month so I could read it!



We even baked! In Kent I always wanted to bake, but never got around to it, so it was pretty fun to make muffins, even if they didn't exactly turn out great!

I feel like I'm slowly getting there with people, slowly making proper friends that I can talk to without thinking about, slowly making in jokes and social groups and plans for the year that actually involve people! I like being independent and doing things on my own, but spending every minute of every day on my own was incredibly lonely. I missed sharing my life with people. It's so nice to be able to hang out with people and laugh again.

Bethlehem already felt like home, but now I have a little international family as well, and I can't wait to see what this year holds.

When I was planning this year, I didn't really think that much about living and studying and day-to-day life, I thought about all the places I want to travel. Lehigh is situated in this lovely, but very small, town with great connections to the rest of the East coast and after two weeks here, I'm ready to do some exploring. This semester is going to have to be pretty cheap as my scholarship money doesn't come through until December, but I hope to go to at least one big city each month. I have been lucky enough to wrangle my timetable so that I have every Friday off which should make weekend trips a lot easier!

In the summer of 2013, I decided to take up running. I decided to run to the train station nearest my house and back again in a 5k loop, and somehow I just did it. After that I started to find other trails and routes, and got to the stage where I was running between 3 and 7 kilometers five days a week. It wasn't a massive distance, but I really loved it. I could feel myself getting stronger and faster, running 7k no longer felt like I was pushing myself.

However, as the summer went on and life got in the way, I found myself running less and less until I barely ran at all. I decided that when I got to Kent, that I would start once more.

So I brought all my running kit to university and picked up a flyer for the athletics club at freshers fair and eagerly went along to the first session. I optimistically set out with the intermediate runners and started flagging about half way round. I was tired, probably hungover, and just couldn't be bothered. I ended up walking back home and never going again.

After Christmas I decided that I really did want to run, bought some expensive running shoes that corrected my flat feet and some new sports clothes as an encouragement to get back into it. The first months were cold, so I found myself going to classes instead, pilates and yoga, and put my running shoes to one side.

I stayed a low-level gym member for the rest of the year and all of last year, going through phases of attending lots of classes and phases of never going, even occasionally using the gym itself and running on the treadmill. The only time I ran outside was when I got really angry or upset.

Because of the hills this year, I never expected to do any running. I didn't bring my running shoes or socks or my arm strap. But when I was trying to find clubs to join, I immediately thought about running. Adam had an amazing time running the Berlin half with the athletics society last year, and was incredibly encouraging when I mentioned it to him. I went to walmart and bought a pair of $10 trainers, as pictured above, that look like something a ten year old would wear and a pair of bright purple running shorts and signed up. I was only looking for a place to meet people and socialise, I wasn't originally interested in racing, but when I went to the information session and saw that the women's races were only 6k, I figured that this was actually something that I could do.

I ran with them for the first time today, the first time I have properly ran in years, and it was hard. I only ran just over 3 miles, but it was exhausting. I ended up running behind everyone else because I kept getting stuck at traffic crossings, but it was actually nice because I could run at my own pace without trying to copy others. I did stop and walk on about three occasions, but never very long, just to recharge.

It's going to be difficult to bring myself up to the level of the rest of the club and to get to the stage where I don't need to stop and start anymore. But I've done it before, and I'll do it again.

The club seems so nice, everyone is friendly and they participate in both fun runs and more serious competitions, they even volunteer at the Runner's World festival which takes place in Bethlehem. I'm looking forward to getting back in shape with the support of a community. I'm used to running on my own, I'm used to plugging in my music and ignoring everyone around me. But today I noticed how friendly other runners are, not just the people who came running with the club, but the locals who were using the same paths. There was a grin-and-bare-it camaraderie between people with sweat dripping down their faces as they pounded the pavement. An instant connection between the crazy people running out in the heat. I want to be a part of the running community, I want to run alongside people and enjoy it as a group.

And I want to feel fit again, to feel healthier. I am not someone who easily loses weight so there really isn't any point being focused on my size, I would give up pretty easily if I ran to try and look skinnier because it's not going to happen. I am never going to be skinny, my legs are naturally stocky and my face is naturally round, no matter if I run once or five times a week, this is not going to change. Through running I hope to learn to love my body more, not because I feel more attractive but because I love seeing what my body can achieve. I want to feel strong.

It's early days yet and my track record of sticking with exercise routines for a prolonged period is pretty awful. But I want to be an active member of the club, I want to compete in races and see my personal best getting faster and faster, I want to run again. Hopefully this year I will, hills and all. Now lets just see how I feel 6.30am Monday morning.