You can't take my heart it's in the city behind

As you may have gathered by reading other posts on here that I'm a pretty emotional person. I hold on to things and I don't let go, not easily anyway. But in a time of my life where everything is confusing and where every emotion I seem to feel is contradicted a few moments later, I seem to have finally made sense of something. Below is something I wrote into the notepad on my phone (as I don't have roaming wi-fi) as I left the city of Canterbury this morning...

I write this as I leave the city I once, if only for a brief time, called my home. I started the University of Kent, Canterbury in September 2007 and dropped out in March 2008 and since then Canterbury has always been a place that has made me feel so much emotion. After leaving I was plagued by "should have, would have, could have" and what if? scenarios. In my first year at Worcester I thought about it a lot and I always felt like I didn't really belong there because my experience at Canterbury was very special to me as it was the first time I was really independent and the first time I had friends who were so close they were almost family.

Last summer I visited my friends and was overcome with emotion so much in fact I broke down outside the halls where I used to live. When I first stepped into the city I regretted my decision to leave even though it was the right decision because of the course I was doing. Just being there made me doubt myself and the decision I made and seeing old friends that I fell out with because I left made things a lot harder.

This time was different. At times it felt like I had never left other times it felt like I had been gone for a lifetime. It was great to see old friends again, sit on Tyler hill one last time and watch the view of Canterbury city as it changed over the period of the day. A part of me will always love Canterbury but after two years away I finally don't see it as a home anymore. You might think that two years is a long time to come to this conclusion but when I left I left a lot behind. I left my friends some of whom I have lost, I left my passion behind where it had been destroyed by the course I hated and in a way I left a small part of my soul there too. It's hard to put it into words, as human emotion and feeling often are and I cannot expect anyone to ever understand just how I felt/feel about the whole experience. I thank the people who made my time there so great and I will always be friends with the ones I still hold dear. But it's time to let go of the life I used to live and the regret I feel as I can't keep carrying it with me.