I didn’t enjoy secondary school much. The first few years were rough — I was bullied a lot and constantly felt like I didn’t belong. It felt less like a place to learn and more like a popularity contest. If you weren’t in with the right crowd, you were just easy pickings. It wore me down.
Things did get a bit better when I found a group of mates who actually got me. For a while, they made school bearable — gave me some space to be myself. But honestly, the damage was already done. I stuck it out through my GCSEs and gave college a go, hoping things might be different.
They weren’t.
College just felt like more of the same. Some of the teachers even seemed caught up in the same petty popularity stuff — the same judgemental atmosphere, just in slightly smarter clothes. After a year, I’d had enough. Most of my mates had moved on — some to other towns, a few to completely different countries — and I was left wondering what the point of it all was. So I walked away. Maybe I closed a few doors doing it, but at the time, I needed to protect what was left of me.
If I learned anything from all that, it’s this: stepping away isn’t weakness — sometimes, it’s the first real choice you get to make for yourself.
It’s been a long time since those school days, and life hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing. There have been plenty of ups and downs — mistakes, setbacks, moments where I genuinely didn’t know what I was doing or where I was heading. But somehow, I kept going. And the truth is, the last five years have been the best of my life. I’ve built something that finally feels like mine. I’ve got a career I’m proud of, a family I love more than anything, and a kind of peace I never thought I’d find back when I was that burnt-out teenager just trying to survive.
Sometimes I do wonder what might’ve happened if I’d put my head down, stuck it out, and gone to uni. Maybe life would’ve looked different. Maybe easier in some ways. But the truth is, I can’t change the past — and honestly, I’m not sure I’d want to. Every wrong turn, every detour, brought me here. And despite everything, I’m proud of who I’ve become.
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