And so, with the beginnings of Autumn, another year begins to draw to a close. Today is the first of October - exactly a year since, worried by the future and by my rapidly-dwindling time at university, I made a wish.

This is what I wished:

If there is only one thing I do this year; only one thing I achieve, it will be this - I will indelibly etch every thought, every feeling, and every emotion that we experience together so strongly and so brightly in our minds that nothing, not even time itself, will dare to take them away from us.

Of course, a wish is no good unless it comes true, and so it did. (After all, what’s the point in being able to do something and yet not doing it?)

It was, above anything else, a year of emotions. Not just happy ones or sad ones; my wish was not for good nor evil. It was simply for being, living and experiencing to the fullness of our capabilities. I’m not sure anyone’s year has been without its good and its bad parts.

Myself - I fell in love, but it is the very same feelings that abounded at that time to which I attribute my poor exam results. I lost friends and found friends and, in so doing, became a little less afraid of the future. Others, I know, have had just as turbulent a time over the year past.

I started this post wondering if, perhaps, I should end it with an apology. There are friends of mine, and more than a few names come to mind, for whom this last year may have been more of a negative experience than a positive one. And, if my wish contributed to the intensity of that negativity, then I suppose I do feel a little guilty. I’m not going to apologise, though. Doing so would imply that I regretted this year’s heightened emotions, and I don’t. Whether for better or for worse, for good or evil, there’s little I aspire to more than living life to the full - and that includes emotionally.

Still, that year is behind us. We stand now atop a cliff, looking down beyond the low clouds to another year spread out before us. Autumn is, as always, a time of stories and of dreams and of wishes.

Now we are far apart from each other, we may never share the intensity of those emotions with each other again. So, this year, I will wish something more appropriate.

Though we drift, may we never be lost. Though we are apart, may we all see the ways in which we are still together. Let time bring us closer together, not push us apart. Let our bonds of friendship never be broken, even until the lilac trees no longer bloom and the stars themselves burn out in the sky.