.... I hate those birthdays with a nought in them. It's as if they stand like pillars at either end of a decade, so big and momentous and solid. You end up looking at your life so far and even if it's been brilliant (which it has), you end up focussing on the things that haven't happened and you thought they would have. By now.
Actually turning twenty was fine, although I bet I was probably worrying about how my life would turn out. I felt wise beyond my years then when in fact I was quite naive and looked about 12 years old. But I was cool as I'd bought my first car while still 19 and it was a lovely bright red Volkswagen Beetle so I'd hurtle around town feeling like I was the best. I wanted to be the girl from the song "The Boys of Summer" but I didn't have a convertible. My car was still very cool and I had the Raybans and the hair pulled back to make me believe I was her. There was something about buying your first car while still a teenager that appealed to my need to have milestones with ticks beside them.
Me and my friend James would sit there for hours, drinking tea and eating Galaxy (we were such rebels back then!) and talking about life and how it all worked. We thought we knew everything and actually I had a fairly strong philosophy on life and apparently I was one of the most driven and determined little things that people had come across. I'd read an article by some old guy called Tom who used to write for Cosmopolitan (back in the days when Cosmopolitan was a brilliant magazine) and the article said something along the lines of "trust your feelings, follow your soul, you have the power to realise your dreams". It talked about implenting change in your life and being brave and all these things that made sense to me. I made James read it too! So, we thought we knew it all, that we had all the answers (courtesy of Tom's article - of which the best bits I still have, carefully handwritten in an old diary full of wise words) but we had zero life experience to put into practice what we believed.
I was truly curious to see how things would turn out. I'd been told that I could achieve anything I put my mind to (apart from my A levels which I failed miserably first time round and just scraped through the second time round). So a part of me wondered if that was actually true? Could I achieve anything I put my mind to? Did I have what it takes? And another part of me was secretly scared that somebody had convinced me about something that wasn't actually true and I'd find out the hard way when my life didn't work out, or at best, ended up being something average and mediocre (quite possibly my worst nightmare). So my debut into my 20s was excitement peppered with some drops of anxiety in case it didn't quite turn out how I believed it might.
My 20s were also the time to go off and do the things that might be more difficult once a family was in the picture. I first fell in love when I was 23. He was a few years older than me and at a stage in life where he was ready to settle down, have babies and that sort of stuff. I was still at university and wanted to live my life a little without someone else in tow. I skipped away from that without a backwards glance. If anyone had told me how difficult it is to meet someone who is really special, I might have done things differently. Or maybe not. But back then, I really did think amazing people were always around the corner. Actually I know that amazing people are always around the corner, I always manage to meet them wherever I go. But amazing people you fall in love with a really few and far between.
It was also interesting to see how I viewed my life would be by the time I was 30. I used to think that by then, I'd have the high-flying career, a penthouse suite, a designer car, a designer boyfriend and I'd be wearing sharp black trouser suits, with my hair pulled back into a slick ponytail. Obviously I imagined that the girl from the song (who of course I was) had just grown up a bit.....
I hated turning 30! It was like this milestone looming up and I didn't feel that I'd quite got to the place I'd expected to be. But life in the twenties hadn't followed that usual pattern of university followed by the start of a career. During my university days, I'd had the opportunity to live overseas and loving the experience, I wanted to do this again after graduating. I had two paths I could have followed - going to live overseas or embarking on a career as a foodservice design consultant (someone who designs back and front of house in hotels and restaurants). I'd spent my final year at university working with a consultancy, my dissertation was all about the role of design in high quality restaurants and I had the opportunity to join the consultancy after I graduated. But I felt too young to be starting a proper career.
I felt like a fraud. I don't know why because I was good at the work and obviously design is something that I have as an inbuilt gift. But I just didn't feel ready to hold my own in grown-up meetings and I was concerned I might get discovered as a fraud. It may have something to do with the fact that I still looked like I was under 18 (I got asked my age once in a supermarket when I was buying a bottle of wine for a friend. I was 24 at the time). I didn't think anyone would take me seriously because I still looked like a teenager. Now it's great as I still look a lot younger than I am and when I ever need to run through what I've done in my glittering career, you can see people doing the mental arithmetics trying to work out how old I am because there's no way I could have crammed all that in by the time I was 30!
So instead of embarking on the start of a career, I chose to run off to Japan to teach English and ended up there for three years. My dad has always said to me that if any opportunity comes your way, you should grab it and go for it (not quite these words, my dad doesn't speak like this and anyway, he'd be saying all of this in Urdu to me) because you never know if that opportunity will present itself to you again. Well this is what happened with Japan and off I went. After 3 years I came back and returned to university to embark on an MA in International Relations. It was difficult studying a subject I hadn't done since before O Levels but I loved it, relished the challenge of being thrown a topic I knew nothing about and then doing the research, finding out what it was all about, writing an essay, composing my answer. I'd always wanted to do a Masters but I didn't know in what subject. A diary I kept for a short time back in '91 when I went on a student exchange to the University of Denver talked about that desire then, but at that time it was angling towards an MBA. Now I'd found a subject that I loved. I even considered it as a PhD but didn't want to start my working life with a big debt over my head so I discarded that idea.
There was another reason for doing an academic MA at a "proper" university. Although I'd done well when I did my degree and came out with a 2:1, the whole episode of failing my A levels had left me feeling a bit thick. I'm not, I'm quite an intelligent person but in early adulthood, all you really have is your academic achievements to tell the world what sort of person you are. If you've failed something academically, you may end up feeling less intelligent than you are. Doing the Masters was a way of eradicating these feelings, of proving to myself that I was intelligent. And it worked! The funny thing is, when you're in your late teens, early twenties, that's how everyone sizes up everyone else. I have a wonderful friend B who jokingly refers to me as her idol because she is so inspired by my "get up and go and don't let anything stand in your way" attitude. But if she'd met me at the time of the A level failure, she would have thought less of me as a person as I hadn't proved myself to be academically brilliant!
I need to interject at this point. This was meant to be a post about me talking about how much I hate big birthdays. Instead I'm filling in the reader about various aspects of me and my life, all very positive - I started off feeling a bit crap when I started writing this but now I'm feeling pretty fabulous as I look back over the adventure that has been my life so far. Blogging can make you feel better!
Anyway, after that digression, I return to my twenties. After the Masters, I finally embarked on the start of a career at the ripe old age of 28. So it wasn't surprising that by the time 30 was on the horizon, I hadn't quite got to be the person I thought I would be. Thing is, I'd never be that person, it's not me. It doesn't represent what I feel is important in my life, it's far too materialistic and shallow, I guess it was just an image I thought I would be. Maybe it was how I defined "success" when I was 20, by the things you had attained in your life, not about the experiences you had had.
So, I found myself turning 30 living in a shabby but loved rented flat, working at the Foreign Office in a job that didn't really challenge me and I was aching to prove how wonderful and amazing I was! I reluctantly organised a party for my 30th, I felt I had to do something to mark the occasion. But honestly speaking, the way I was feeling about it all, I think I would have preferred to hibernate that birthday out as I didn't feel like I had much to celebrate. On top of all of this, my younger sister had just got engaged. Although I'd always known that my younger sister would get married before me, when it actually presented itself a reality, I did have an "oh my god, even my younger sister has a more together life than I do!" moment.
I had the party at my shabby but lovely rented flat. It was good to see my friends there. I can't remember who was actually there and I'm not sure I have photos of the event to nudge my memory. The thing I do remember is that even though I didn't enjoy my birthday as I hated turning 30, I loved the day after the party. My best friends had stayed over and on the Sunday we had a love-in on the futon in the living room, eating pizza from across the road and listening to wonderful tunes. It was pouring with rain and you could hear it drumming on the roof but we were all tucked up and happy. Before you think there was something untoward going on, the love-in was completely innocent. I think about six of us all clambered onto the futon that doubled up as a bed. We were all fully clothed but all got under the bed clothes and ate pizza in bed. Daryl was the only boy in the group and obviously he loved being surrounded by all these gorgeous girls. However Jayne might not have been feeling so gorgeous as she'd been horrendously ill the night before and was still a touch fragile. This is the moment I really loved. I was surrounded by some of my loveliest friends (and they are all still a part of my life so I am blessed with wonderful friendships), eating pizza and listening to great music. It was pouring with rain outside so the best place to be was inside and I loved it, truly loved it! So it seems as if once I got the big 3-0 out of the way, including the official "party", I could really start enjoying the decade.
This post has gone off on a tangent but I've really enjoyed writing it. I'll come back tomorrow to fill in on my 30s (which I may have done already on my birthday post from this year) and discuss why I feel so baffled about turning 40!
No comments:
Post a Comment