I don't think I've ever forgiven myself for not getting into Hogwarts. I know probably every eleven year-old child who had read Harry Potter desperately wanted to go there, but I always felt that I wanted it that little bit more. While I was quiet and polite, and excelled in my work, for the most part I hated middle school; I know I must have enjoyed it sometimes, but I've always been better at remembering the bad parts of anything. As much time was spent daydreaming a million dramatic showdowns where I got up and shouted at my teacher and classmates just what I thought of them before either running out of the classroom and never going back, or stabbing myself in the neck with scissors/ a very sharp pencil and collapsing in a pool of blood over my spellings (depending on my mood that day), as actually doing the work. I don't understand why. It's not like I had any real reason to hate school- I was never bullied, I had some really good friends, I didn't find the work too difficult- and yet I never felt I fitted in, and that made me loathe it. Getting that letter from McGonagall wouldn't just have meant I was headed to a magical place, to learn magical things among magical people- it would give me a reason for not having fitted in, one other than just being a freak, a weirdo or whatever else people called me whenever my back was turned.

Of course, September came and no pieces of yellowish parchment had landed on my doormat; although quietly devastated, I just about convinced myself that this was because Hogwarts doesn't actually exist, not because I wasn't special enough. Year 7 began where middle school had left off, but things slowly got better and, year by year, I found myself enjoying it more and more. Now I'm in my last year there, and for the most part I love it. Despite a sometimes monstrous workload, what I'm learning has never been more interesting and I'm supported by a group of lovely friends and the most incredible boy I've ever met. Sometimes my tender self-confidence fails and it's like I'm back in middle school, so even when I'm spending an evening with my best friends it feels like everyone is either laughing at me or wishing I wasn't there. But the vast majority of the time it's good, and I'm good.

This is why I'm terrified about going to university. I'm scared that it'll be like starting secondary school again, and I don't know how I'll cope the second time around with the people who have kept me sane the past few years scattered across the country. I'm scared that I won't fit in, that I'll hate it, that I'll drop out and waste my days 'til I die. I'm scared that, just as I wasn't special enough for Hogwarts, I won't be special enough for university. And with everyone else I know seemingly being really excited about it, or being there already and loving it, I'm scared that feeling all this is proof that I'm a freak or a weirdo.

I wrote this because it has been plaguing my thoughts for the past couple of months, and there's no way I could say it aloud. I don't like talking about how I feel; at least when I'm writing, I can take the time to make it a little more elegant than whatever stumbling rubbish would fall out of my mouth otherwise. And while I usually get annoyed when someone posts song lyrics in a blog- get some of your own opinions, why can't you?- I'm going to relish in my own hypocrisy and do it myself, because sometimes a song can sum up your own feelings better than you yourself ever could.

'I get the feeling I'm just not cut out for this
all strategies, hidden agendas and politics
But if we can stand before legions of enemy, just you and I
then I'd gladly put up with this shit 'til the day that I die'

--Easyworld, 'Til the Day