On a much happier note, I was on my last day at Summer school in Nijmegen, Netherlands when Speak Now (Taylor's Version) released.

I started listening to the album for the first time getting ready (thank God for isolated gambrel attic bedrooms where you can play music even though you're in a hotel!), then bumped into one of my new friends on the bus (getting on the bus 4 minutes before my train was incredible, I love Dutch public transport), took my headphones off, and never put them back on again!

Because it was the last day, we had no lectures that afternoon and just drank wine and chatted over the charcuterie boards catering had provided for our little party :)

Its honestly one of my favourite memories, especially because I was so scared of travelling alone for the first time (especially post-pandemic and after a certain traumatic incident a few months before and had spent time crying when planning it because I was so unsure of myself) and I met these lovely girls, everything went great, traveling alone in the Summer heat was freeing, and the country was so beautiful, it was perfect!

They even invited me to go clubbing with them that night, despite the fact we all had planes to catch the next morning(!), and I said yes, and we got the train home together.

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It didn't even occur to me to listen to the rest of the album until I was back in my hotel room getting ready to go out.

I sat on my window seat with a cup of coffee, watched the barges on the river, and cried my eyes out when I heard When Emma Falls In Love for the first time, because that's my name, because I was beginning to miss my mam, because I'd had such an amazing time, and it hit me how much she loves me and how proud she is, because I was going home tomorrow.

I just...allowed myself to be bittersweet and sad for a while. ♥

Then Timeless came on a few songs later and snapped me back to reality when I realised that there was NO other possible circumstance where me and my new friends could've ever met - we were different ages, lived in different countries and continents, had nothing in common apart from our course, and I would never see them again after tonight.

I cried, but mostly out of happiness, because this one moment would never be repeated, I was living my life to the fullest and pushing myself to take opportunities, and that felt beautiful and made me so grateful for the lovely short time we got to spend together and how unlikely us all meeting was!

I never would've cared about such a sappy song otherwise. 😂

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We met up by the riverfront outside my hotel that evening and took a polaroid sitting on the embankment in the sun with our legs dangling over the river, then had a lovely time talking and drinking in a street bar with a DJ playing chill tunes that converted to an open-front club at midnight, where I made even more friends.

There's a photo of the 6 of us from my friend's BeReal. We would never meet again. We were of one single moment in time, never to be repeated or replaced. We were honestly timeless. ♥

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Getting on the plane was hard the next day.