the end of school.

School has finished. Today, the academic year ended & I left the gates of Bishop Road Primary School for the last time. 

It is amazing to think that this time last year, I had no idea where I was headed. 

I had spent a year working in the Nursery Class of a Primary school where I learnt lessons daily about my flaws & inexperience, alongside a brilliant teacher who so gently taught me about education & children, showing grace again & again in the face of my ignorance. It had been a challenge, not just because of the daily holding up of a mirror to the cracks in my character, but because I did not know what it was all for, or where I should go. I felt like I had spent yet another year drifting along, not really achieving anything & this was disheartening.

And, just like that, another year has passed & I have left the school. I couldn't quite believe how simple it felt to hand in my fob key - my elite access to the school - and walk out the gates knowing I won't be going back to work there in September. 

My leaving card from the teacher I have worked with this year said:

'she is planning an elaborate escape'

In all honesty, this does not feel like an elaborate escape. This just feels like doing life. Some things are ending so that others can begin. That is not to say that I am not excited about the changes that are happening - going back to university to train as a teacher and more importantly - getting married to a brilliant man - I really am excited but in this moment I am amazed that this is how it feels for it all to have ended. It just feels normal. And I think that's ok, because endings & change don't have to be scary or sad, they can happen in the context of everything else. Sometimes the changes might make up the foreground, sometimes the middle ground, and sometimes they might be so subtle that they are only feint in the background in the context of everything else.