Estonia - 60 quid on the Euroline

My unhappiness throughout last year-my first year of University- can be traced back to the first inklings of the thought of Estonia. I had decided that that was where I wanted to go and that I needed to go. As soon as possible. I didn't know anything about it, I wouldn't know what to do or where to go, but for some reason in my mind it would be the making of me. If I could just leave everything and everyone I knew and run off on my own, completely alone if only for a week then life would be different for me. I would suddenly have the life experience I've always craved, plus the people skills I've always lacked, and most importantly I could sort every thought in my mind into clean, white, square boxes and find the answers to all of the questions we all have that take a life time to answer (if it's even possible). I just needed the time to think, to really think.

Now that I look back on it, the Estonia Plan was formed pretty early on in the term - certainly earlier than I'd have guessed. On appearances I was doing pretty well; I had thrown myself into the University social life as was deemed an absolute neccesity by my friends who'd had the University cherry popped the year before me. I met people on my course and made friends quickly, in fact by the fourth week I had in all but essentials moved into another flat down my corridor where two course mates were living and I was enjoying being extroverted and fun and altogether a bit weird with them. Plus we had the deep, philosophical relationships we all dream of having when going to University accompanied by a shisha pipe and candle-light. I'd launched myself into the societies and campaigning groups as promised to myself (and my mother). I even missed my first day of lectures to protest in Scotland and substituted the lecture hall for a police cell. On paper I had done all of the things I said I would do and for a time it worked; I was plodding along ok.
I started dreaming of Estonia soon before I got into a relationship with one of the people I spent most of my time with. We started to live even further in each others pockets and it was here I guess I started to become aware that I still wasn't happy. In being in a relationship I had sacrificed my alone time, which I hadn't realised how important it was to me until I had to give it up and I saw that I could barely function more than a couple of days without some escape from people. Essentially my room had become my Estonia for the first and last hours of each day. That time was when I was safe from people. I didn't have to care about what people were thinking or what I should be saying or doing and trying to distract my mind for the daylight hours. In my head my life was those hours I spent alone and everything else was obligation, it was what I needed to keep going so I didn't become totally adrift from the real world. But I haven't been living in the real world for a long time. I've been living so far inside my own head that during this last year I had become emotionally disconnected. I haven't enjoyed anything whole-heartedly in so long. I was governing my life and my new relationship through reason and thought alone. Nothing I did was out of emotional need other than the desire to please and make more of myself in some way.
Needless to say, the relationship didn't last. He didn't understand why I wanted to be alone and I didn't understand why I didn't feel that release at the end of the day I would have on my own if he was there. I didn't understand why I still wanted to go to Estonia -without him. I guess Estonia was the early warning sign that I missed.I began to realise that I had never let the front I put on for freshers week down. I was living my life as a different person and the only time I could let myself out was on my own in the privacy of my room and if my real self didn't get that R&R time I would get exhausted, like I was performing the matinee and evening performance at every show for a long run.
It's only in the past few days I've realised what Estonia really meant. It was me trying to run away again. Placing all my hopes on some future event that would sort out all of my problems just like I had done a million times throughout the past four miserable years of my life with all fruitless results. I shouldn't be aiming for Estonia I should be escaping it. If I'm going to begin to feel anything close to happiness any time soon I'm going to have to face the fact that it begins here, not in Estonia. Among the loneliness, the fear and the failings.

A shame when it's only 60 quid on the Euroline.