Dear TinyBuddha,

This is a bit of a long story and I was not sure which topic it would even come under. I really hope someone takes the time to read to the end? I’ve been struggling to gain some clarity for a few years now and would really like some help. I am a law student and last year I decided that the university I was in wasn’t it for me and decided to move. Back in 2014 I joined a fairly prestigious law school back in my home country. I had dreamed of going to one of these unis ever since I can remember. Once I got there I wasn’t as excited or happy with what I had. The students were brilliant but the teaching was lacking and all the career opportunities I had seemed lacking once I actually gave them a try. I have always been a very driven person and I take life a little too seriously and so this hit me right in the gut and I couldn’t settle in even though I made some very good friends. So I decided I wanted to quit way back in 2014.

But at the time I was dating someone. We had gone to school together and were determined to keep it going even when he moved to England for uni and I to this university. It would be tough as we would see each other very little as we were continents apart and the culture we came from didn’t look at relationships very fondly. And as I was unhappy I unloaded on him as he was finding happiness at his university. And as we couldn’t keep it going after a year, we decided to end it. It was very hard and it still is. But it came at a time where I really had to make my decision to leave or stay at my university. And as I was studying law, England happened to be an obvious choice. But then I was confused as to whether it was the separation and heartbreak that made me think this way and I didn’t want to make a rash decision. So I gave myself another year to decide. At the end of it, I was still very unhappy and decided to quit. But as both of us had not wanted to break up and we found it hard to cut off any contact there happened to be a lot of confusion at least on my end. Eventually when I applied to uni and also convinced my mum that I was in fact in my right mind, I had a limited choices of unis to apply to. I had decided not to apply to the one he was in at any cost. But as luck would have it once I started to have such few choices, the boy situation seemed to matter less and I wanted to go to the best uni I could possibly go to. And in the end the practical choice for me happened to be the uni he went to as well. And once I had applied and had got in, I didn’t want to re-apply to other unit next year (like my mum had suggested) as I had also already lost two years. So I decided to go to uni there even though a lot of people in my life judged me and assumed that I was uprooting my life over a failed relationship.

And now I have been there a year and am due to go back in September. I am naturally a bit of an introvert and all these situations over the past two years have made me very comfortable with being alone. So I wasn’t the typical fresher and maybe didn’t go out of my way to make too many friends. As a result I did feel lonely at university. To add to it I knew that I still loved him and we weren’t able to make it work (he wasn’t on campus for the year).

Although I’ve done really well academically this year and received accolades like never before, I keep worrying if I made the wrong choice. What if subconsciously I was never able to settle because of this past relationship? What if I did uproot my life while I wasn’t;t in my right mind? My family and friends say that they see that I’ve become my old self this year. But I still worry because there has always been this feeling of unrest inside of me.

I know this message is long but if anyone has bothered reading to the end, then please respond?