17th January 2025

by Ella Gatehouse

I feel trapped

Everywhere is a prison

My face shows a million different people

I am floating

Slowly floating away

Over the sea

This happened a while ago but I never wrote it down. I went on a walk just before coming

back to Brighton. I wasn’t feeling great. I was stressed about essays I hadn’t written and I

was anxious over the thought of coming back to a place that over the past 3 months had

become a prison to me. I put my headphones on and played Bright Future by Adrianne

Lenker. Real House, the opening track played. I’m walking across the field recalling many

times before: walking to India’s at 8am during the ice cold months of January and February

to drive to sixth form. Year 13 summer was filled with walks and parties and the sense of all

our futures hanging over right before us. Even memories of walking to primary school. Book

bag in hand, ignorant to all the pain and suffering that comes with human connection. I

remember the first time we moved to Cromhall. We all went on a bike ride around what

would become known as the 5K route. We stopped outside the sewage works all out of

breath from the slight incline. That memory is present. Full of childhood innocence; of new

friends and playground games.

These walks so often fill me with melancholic nostalgia. The glint from the January sun

falling between the cracks of branches and leaves. The winding lanes that I walk through in

my memory as I lay awake in my 19 year old body. The woods and the puddles and the

wellies. Childhood in the countryside.

I am haunted by nostalgia. It is with me in everything I do and everything I will do. I am

constantly looking back at what once was.. My future feels like a faint dream, a constant

case of deja vu. Like I’ve already lived it out and I know it’s all bad. I’m hostage for things

that haven’t even happened yet.

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