As the year draws to an end one cannot help but muse over how fast time really flies. It seems like it was only yesterday when I packed my bags and travelled over 900 kilometres to study at UFS at the beginning of the year.

I still remember how the move to Bloemfontein didn’t make sense to anyone, even myself. Why was I leave Cape Town? people asked. I would look at them and scratch my head, thinking hard about an answer but finding none. Why was I leaving the comforts of home for a land I had never seen? My mother would ask.

Was it curiosity? Was it wanting to know how it feels to be alone in a city where you have neither friends nor close relatives? Did it have something to do with being independent and learning to make a life for myself away from my parents?

I still remember, too, the optimism that overwhelmed me on my way here. Life, for me, was only beginning. I was starting on a new path whose destination I could never be sure of. But I still felt optimistic about the year 2016. I was going to do all the things I couldn’t do under my mother’s watchful eye. I was going to party and have fun and just enjoy being me.

It’s so sad, though, that most of the things I had in mind are still undone because, well, life happened. Life happening. I think that’s how I will remember 2016.

Life happening. What does this mean? Life happening is when things beyond your control have an impact in your life and there is nothing that you, personally, can do about them. So, you just accept them as being part of this drama called life and you continue living. Life happening is when campuses become militarised and there’s nothing you can do about it and eventually the sight of seeing police and securities on campus becomes normalised.

Life happening is your father selling your family home and you are the last person to hear about it because, well, your opinion/feelings don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of life. Life happening is when 2016 keeps knocking you down and the only thing you find solace in is your knowledge that no matter what happens 2016, like any other year before it, is going to come to an end eventually.

Indeed, the year is drawing close to its inevitable end. You can see this everywhere you go. The shops with their Christmas branding and sales and tillers wearing Santa Claus hats. The “Ke December boss” posts on social media. But, for me, the end of 2016 is visible in how empty campus is. The Student Centre, which is usually filled to its brim with students buying lunch and chattering cacophonously, is now a ghost town and a constant reminder that home (wherever that is) is waiting for me. The chairs sit empty and listen to the silence that is not the usual.

“Where is everyone?” the chairs must be wondering.

As the year draws to an end most of us are happy that it is happening. Not because we’re happy that the holidays are now here and we can now do fun things, like reading books and falling in love with our summer flings and drink alcohol without being bothered by the thought of going to class tomorrow. No. Our happiness derives from the fact that 2016 was a year that at times felt like it was never, ever going to end; that it will hold on to us like a boyfriend who doesn’t want to make peace with the fact that all good things (even the bad ones) come to an end.

ZZ xx

Dish it: What will you remember most about 2016?