You’ve always been a high achiever, a perfectionist; your work is your pride. You go to Uni. You want a first class degree.

You have 3 tumultuous years. Suddenly you’ve graduated with a 2:1, but you’ve survived. You actually made it through, you never gave up. You beat yourself up for a while, knowing you should’ve got higher marks, you let yourself down. But Evie you spent half of first year in a hospital, you spent half of your degree trying to drag yourself out of bed. You spent the other half hating yourself because you can’t function like everyone else can.

You move back home. The best friends you’ve ever had used to be within a 5 minute walk at all times. Now you are all dispersed around various cities. And you now work in hospitality Evie, so there’s no point dreaming of a weekend off to go and visit.

You’re back where you grew up, the same people walk the same dogs past the house at the same time every day. You want to be growing, learning, succeeding but for now you have to come to peace with treading water.

You outgrew this place years ago, that’s why you left as soon as you could. But here you are, trying to prove to yourself that you’ve not failed. Trying to prove to yourself that you are on track, that you will get there.