I started university today. At 50 and on crutches (an unfortunate, middle-aged accident, ripping a ligament while running for a bus).
Despite this predicament and pain-related wooziness, entering into this hallowed space, I felt instantly at home. I never expected to be walking through the doors of Queen’s University, but it feels like I should be here.
I’m doing a Masters in creative writing, despite not having done a degree in anything at all before. I was supposed to be the first one in my family to get a university-level qualification, a long time ago. In the end, I managed to accrue a hotchpotch of different diplomas over the years. But a bit of me felt I had missed out.
Perhaps it has taken me this long to identify my space. I’m prone to restlessness, and life’s fluxes tend to make me even more so. All I know is that, today, I felt instantly at ease, untroubled by the newness of my surroundings.
People may well have been extra kind because of my current immobility, but I suspect it’s just what it is like here. There’s a sense of goodness; humanity within the humanities.
Someone offered to carry my coffee cup for me, let me into the room early so I could find an accessible seat. Those small acts of kindness knit daily life together and create a sense of calm.
Saying so long to solitude
Life has been hectic for a long time, and I haven’t had the psychological space to shut out the world and retreat fully into creativity. Today, I have the strongest urge to visit the library. It’s open 24 hours a day and you can borrow 25 books at a time! I can smell them already.
It’s unlikely that day-to-day life will allow me the kind of serenity that comes with spending hours inside a library, but I’ve realised over the past few years that writing offers that space for me. As an inherently social being (I’d describe myself as an extrovert) the idea of coming together with other writers to talk about books and critique each other’s work is hugely exciting.
My life has, like many other people, been much more solitary than I would like over the past few years. Sometimes there’s a necessity to turn away from the outside world, as brutal as it can be, or a desire to hide. Now I want the opposite.
Writing helped me find my voice and strength
I started writing in early 2017, encouraged by a close friend to write an article about my discovery that my ex-fiancé, who disappeared from my life in 2004, was an undercover police officer.
Getting my story down on paper remains one of the most therapeutic things I’ve done
Carlo worked for a secretive political policing unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), within the Metropolitan Police. Over 40 years, the SDS and its successor, the NPOIU, spied on left-wing and grassroots groups. Women activists were deceived into long-term, intimate relationships in order to gain greater access to the groups. I was one of those women.
I've just finished reading Small Town Girl. It's a powerful, shocking, and ultimately uplifting story. But it is also beautifully written, Donna. A really fine book. pic.twitter.com/SZgr2ubNVY
— Wayne Connolly (@KeeperOfPybus) February 10, 2022
The process of writing this bizarre, troubling story down, and the acceptance of the piece for publication inspired me to sign up to a six-week creative writing course. I started writing snippets about my life, a patchwork quilt of jumbled-up memories as they were at the time.
Those vignettes became a book, and getting my story down on paper remains one of the most therapeutic things I’ve done. Writing helped me find my voice and my strength.
Entering a new phase with hope
The decision to go into full-time education as a grown-up, with a whole array of competing life priorities and financial responsibilities, is a big one. In fact, it might be construed as self-indulgent. But, the last few years have taught me that life is both devastating and joyful and that change is inevitable, whether it’s chosen or forced.
In the face of anxiety, I’ve forced myself to develop a personal practice of acutely recognising the precious and the good in life, precisely because they are impermanent.
I’m entering this new phase and new decade with hope. That might seem like a strange term to use now, when life is so tough and the news from all sides is so relentlessly painful. During these times, hopefulness becomes another act of defiance.
I feel the urge to keep writing and learning. Something has been unleashed in me – a voice and a sense of identity that was suppressed for a long time. I also have a story in my head that has been there for 35 years, and now it is shouting to be told. Write me, it says.
I believe we are beings who seek both purpose and connection. Hopefully, that’s what I’ll find here.
Donna McLean is originally from Ayrshire and is a mum of twins, writer and activist
Conversation