Halfway

I have always believed that life can be divided into chapters.

Not because the calendar says so, but because there are moments that quietly split your life into a before and an after. Moments that don’t announce themselves until you’re standing at the end of them, looking back, realizing you will never be that version of yourself again.

This year became one of those moments.

When I entered my second year of university, I was excited. It felt like the beginning of everything. I was finally going to study my departmental courses. I imagined new friendships, new routines, a deeper relationship with my department, and a clearer picture of the future I wanted.

Life, as it often does, had other plans.

I entered the year carrying the loss of someone I loved deeply. January and February became months of grief. Looking back, I’m proud that grief didn’t steal my ambition. If anything, it made me cling to it even tighter. I’ve always hated looking like what I’m going through. I didn’t want my grades or my dreams to become evidence of my pain. So I kept going. I studied. I showed up. I persevered.

Then March arrived.

It felt like someone had opened the windows after a long, difficult season.

I found myself falling in love with my course in a completely different way. I became closer to my roommates and coursemates. I discovered the beauty of sisterhood in ways I hadn’t before. I admired my lecturers more. I started seeing my future with clearer eyes.

For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t just surviving university.

I was building a life within it.

I was enjoying it.

I also found myself revisiting a chapter of my life I thought had already ended. I let myself hope again. I let myself have difficult conversations instead of running away from them. I learned that avoiding pain doesn’t prevent it; it only postpones it.

And eventually, I found myself grieving again.

Not because I failed.

Not because love wasn’t real.

But because sometimes two people can love each other and still arrive at different places.

Strangely, I don’t regret it.

This year taught me something I don’t think I could have learned any other way.

I learned that I feel everything deeply.

I don’t know how to love halfway.

I don’t know how to laugh halfway.

I don’t know how to grieve halfway.

For a long time, I thought that was something I needed to fix.

Now, I think it’s simply part of who I am.

The tears were real.

The laughter was real.

The friendships were real.

The disappointment was real.

And so was the joy.

As this session comes to an end, another kind of grief has quietly found me.

The session also closed with an unexpected goodbye I wasn’t prepared for. It reminded me, once again, that life rarely follows the script we write for it. Some endings arrive gently. Others arrive all at once. This one hurt.

I had grown comfortable with the quiet assurance that someone I could always lean on was only a few minutes away. Now that chapter has ended too. Life has a way of reminding us that not every ending is ours to write. I am learning that hope isn’t pretending everything is okay; it’s believing that, somehow, it will be.

The people who have made this university feel like home are leaving.

They’re graduating.

Of course, we’ll still talk. We’ll still meet again. That’s what everyone says.

But there’s something irreplaceable about knowing the people who shaped your ordinary days are no longer just a few minutes away.

There is grief in losing ordinary access to extraordinary people.

I’ll miss the random conversations.

The unplanned hugs.

The comfort of knowing they were somewhere on this campus if I needed them.

I couldn’t be prouder of them.

Their futures are bright, and I genuinely pray that wherever life takes them, they are protected, guided, and blessed beyond anything they can imagine.

But I also allow myself to admit that saying goodbye hurts.

It hurts because this version of life is ending.

Maybe that’s what this year has really been teaching me.

Not how to avoid endings.

But how to honour them.

How to thank people without trying to hold onto them forever.

How to love deeply without allowing loss to make me bitter.

How to let go without pretending it doesn’t hurt.

In many ways, this feels like the halfway point of my university life.

The first half taught me who I was.

I hope the second half teaches me who I am becoming.

If this year has taught me anything, it is that becoming rarely feels comfortable while it’s happening.

Sometimes it looks like resilience.

Sometimes it looks like tears in the middle of the night.

Sometimes it looks like laughing so hard your stomach hurts.

Sometimes it looks like praying for people you’re learning to let go of.

And sometimes it looks like choosing to believe that everything will be okay before your heart fully believes it.

If I’m honest, one area of my life that has felt especially complicated this year has been my relationship with God.

I wish I could tell you this was the year I prayed more, trusted more, and drew closer to Him.

It wasn’t.

If anything, I drifted.

I backslid in ways I never thought I would. I ignored convictions I once held so closely, gave in to things I once believed I wouldn’t do again, and allowed shame to convince me that distance was easier than coming back.

There were days I barely involved God in my life. Days where I lived as though I could carry everything on my own. Looking back, I can see how quietly that distance grew.

And yet, somehow, I have never stopped believing that He is there.

I have never stopped believing that He is good.

I’m not writing this from the other side of the story. I’m not writing as someone who has figured it all out or suddenly become spiritually strong again. I’m writing as someone who is still finding her way home.

Perhaps that’s what faith looks like for me right now—not certainty, not perfection, but willingness.

The willingness to believe that God has not given up on me, even when I have wandered.

The willingness to trust that grace reaches further than my shame.

The willingness to come home.

Today, I don’t have all the answers.

I don’t know what my third year will hold.

I don’t know who will remain, which dreams will change, or what prayers God will answer in ways I don’t expect.

But I do know this.

If the first half of my university life has been filled with this much growth, this much love, this much joy, and yes, this much heartbreak, then I can only imagine the woman God is shaping me into.

So here’s to second year.

To every laugh that left me breathless.

To every tear that taught me something.

To every friendship that made this place feel like home.

To every goodbye that reminded me how fortunate I was to have something worth missing.

To every ending that taught me to begin again.

And here’s to third year.

I don’t know what waits for me there.

I don’t know who will walk beside me.

I don’t know what prayers will be answered, or what dreams will ask me to wait a little longer.

But for the first time in a long time, I’m not walking into the future because I know exactly what’s ahead.

I’m walking into it because I’ve learned that becoming has never required certainty.

Only the courage to keep going.

As I step into the second half of my university journey, I keep returning to one promise:

“He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

— Philippians 1:6