Twenty-two

I think this year might have been the first year that I have not felt sentimental about my birthday. Previously I have reflected on the year that has passed, and the year that lies ahead. I have written 'birthday resolutions' and made diary entries the night before and the night of, like ringing in the New Year except it is my personal year starting from my own first day on earth.

This year I didn't feel the need for such sentimentality. I spent the day and the weekend before it with people I love doing things that make me happy. That was all there was to it. I didn't feel the looming weight of being another year older, I just turned 22 and that was that.

Perhaps this is a sign of being a 'real adult'. Perhaps it is a sign of learning to stay in the present, learning to enjoy it as it is happening rather than dwelling on it after the event. Perhaps I will return to sentimentality on other 'big birthdays', ages which we mark with significance like 25, 30, 40 and all the decades to follow. I can't imagine those ages yet. Twenty-two is all I know.

Twenty-two. How about that.

Life is happening.

I have a heaviness in my heart and I can't quite put my finger on it. Well, actually I can, it is about the future. I am still hung up on it. I am still unsure of how to deal with such uncertainty. I crave the structure of my life that I had up until this moment.

I feel much more scared than excited. I am scared of what the future has to mean. It has to mean loss, sadness, and grief as much as it means opportunity. When my life changes, as it inevitably will, what changes with it? What do I have to lose? I feel like I am trying to keep myself suspended in the present so as not to have to deal with what comes next. The present is good, but at some point I have to move forward and I am terrified of the consequences.

The consequences are not necessarily bad. My life can fit back into itself with whatever changes occur. The people who love me won't disappear, I won't be catapulted away from them or they from me.

I am also struggling with the concept of what I actually want. The answer is I don't have a clue. I seem to have convinced myself that I need to make a decision right now about everything that will ever happen in my future. I am cushioning myself against things that might not ever happen, because I am afraid of the pain it will cause. I want all the pain in my life to be done with. I am worried that a good life involves no pain, that pain is a waste, and that if I make the wrong decision and I feel pain I will have ruined my twenties, my thirties, etc etc.

Everything I do in my life right now I feel the need to ask some authority figure, i.e. someone who is not me, if it is okay. Are the quiet moments I have and love okay? Is seeking one life over another okay? Is resting okay? Is this fear okay? Am I okay?

I fear regret, pain, grief, loss, change, 'wrong decisions'. But I cannot let this paralyse me. I must move forward. I must let life happen, because life is good and I cannot just let it pass me by.

The unbridled joy of pets.

I haven't written about my cat yet. I have a cat. We have had him for a month now and he has brought each of us unbridled joy every day.

I had forgotten that pets can do that. I haven't had a pet since I was about 16. That pet was a hamster called Hiccup who was, in fact, the sweetest hamster in the world. He also never failed to bring us unbridled joy despite being incredibly small and asleep in his cage for a lot of the day.

The pet before that was Tickles the rabbit who, to this day, I still dream about. Without any exaggeration she was the loveliest, naughtiest, friendliest little rabbit I ever met. Tickles became a member of the family because as a child I was poorly and she was a special gift to keep me company. And, without fail, brought us unbridled joy everyday and I loved her very much. At nearly 22 years of age, 10 years on from her passing, I still miss my little rabbit quite dearly.

Perhaps it is the unconditional love you have for a pet, and that you hope in some way they have for you. Perhaps it is their constant calm, their constant pursuit of play and comfort, their constant ability to be both extremely naughty and cute and annoying. Perhaps it is knowing you are never alone in the house, there is a little companion hiding somewhere. Perhaps it is friendship and trust across species. Perhaps it is the sense of responsibility and dedication involved in looking after a pet. Perhaps it is all of that which is so constantly lovely.

Alby, our kitten, is very loving and very cheeky and very clever and very cute. I did not know I needed him and I'll be the first to admit I resisted getting him and that I had a secret prejudice against cats, but here he is and how endlessly joyous it is.

It's been a while.

Hello. I hadn't realised how long it had been since I had last written. My mind has been whirring in its worst way. Obsessive, unhelpful, pointless thoughts churning round and round and round. There is such a thing as overthinking, and I do it.

I am still in that limbo of life. The past still close enough to mourn its passing, the future still so far away I can't see anything in it. And yet knowing full well that both exist only in my mind, especially the future, I obsess over something entirely without substance.

Sometimes when I feel like this I feel as if I have floated away from earth into some faraway corner of my head. The world seems distant and unreal as thoughts about events that haven't happened cloud over everything. It is quite hard to anchor myself back down, my mind floating up and up and up.

I want someone (myself) to scream "Now is the only thing happening! Now is good! Pay attention to now!" because now is going to disappear and I will regret floating away from it.

This is why I haven't written. Writing plants me in the now, and I have been too cowardly to properly find an anchor. But here I am, I am bored of my mind. My overthinking has tired me.

Back to reality, I hope.

Expanding

I used to write quite brazenly about my political views or the political news of the day. I suppose as a teenager those thoughts don't get filtered and it is a new and exciting thing to be able to form an opinion about something and share it with the world. But now writing about the divisive, bizarre, confusing politics of today seems, as I've said before, exhausting. Hats off to those who have the energy to work it out and put it into words.

Not only is it exhausting but, at the moment, I genuinely don't know what to think. What I thought I knew and understood is changing for me. I am having new conversations where the opinion differs from mine and we have to work out a path to each other's understanding. And in turn, like I have said before, this is making me stop and think and re-evaluate.

To be honest, I am having to admit to myself that I don't know enough to form a solid opinion. I am also learning that some opinions are not, and should never be, solid.

I feel like I might be repeating myself here but it is such an enormous thing to learn and I am so fascinated by it. To notice one's self growing and expanding in adult life is so different, somehow much more unexpected than it was when I was younger.

So I am taking my time. More time to observe, more time to think. It is really quite nice.
                                                                   

Conversations with myself.

I find myself writing much more frequently to this blog than to my diary. I like that way of saying it, "writing to", rather than "writing for" or simply just "writing" because it often feels like a conversation. I guess all writing is. I may not get a reply in return, or know who it is I am writing to, how large or (let's be realistic) how small the number of recipients is, but I know that in some way I am having a conversation.

In some sense my diary is also a kind of conversation, but with myself. I write to my future self and to the imagined self I address every time I start an entry. Maybe I even write to children who don't exist yet who might find the diaries when I am long gone, in a kind of narcissistic, morbid way. But I write much more carelessly because the audience or the recipient of that conversation is far away or even entirely imaginary. And now I am writing more and more infrequently because I don't have much to say or I find it boring, sometimes, to list the goings on in my life. I have noticed that when I am sad or distressed I have a lot to say to myself, but when I am happy I don't feel the need to explain or describe it all. Maybe I have grown out of it. Maybe I don't want to face a writing which is so secretive and honest because I don't want to find something in my subconscious which is unhappy.

I write this blog with honesty as well, but in a much more structured way. I think a lot more about what I am going to say, I want it to be written well, I want it to be understood. It is not an incessant record of heartbreak or frustration or confusion. It is a much more interesting conversation, even if I might really be having it with myself.

I suppose the other reason for writing a diary is to remember things you might otherwise forget. But sometimes I don't want to force myself to remember pain, and sometimes I am having so much fun, or I am so contented, that I don't want to come out of the moment and write for a future self I do not know.

But I will always want to remember the thoughts I had when writing to this blog. Often it is braver, more interesting, more telling, than the private things I can only tell myself. It is much less lonely, I suppose, to write to another reader. And no matter whether they respond directly to me, knowing my words are taken in, knowing I am part of a larger conversation than my own, is an undeniable comfort.

Fluffy and cosy.

I have just bought a new pair of jogging bottoms. They are so cosy and warm it feels like my legs are being hugged. In a good way. And now I am tucked up in my brand new bed, with a candle burning and the sky turning grey and I can't help thinking that I was really, really looking forward to this.

Funny, isn't it? How we (this might be quite specific to Brits) crave the warmth of summer all year round until suddenly August has gone on "a bit too long" and sweaty nights with the windows wide open letting all the creepy crawlies set up homes in your room is to be done with. The sooner autumn can come the better. Let the people snuggle indoors with fluffy blankets, for crying out loud!

Maybe I am speaking only for myself. I always find the transition of summer to autumn quite hard. I wish it to either be one or the other so that my goodbye to the hotter months may not be so sad or prolonged as I think of all the things I did, or didn't, do. Like summer is always a hot fling you grow fond of, always knowing it can never last, and that final transition causes a minor heartbreak. Autumn brings new smells, surroundings, cosiness, different food, fires, actually being able to cuddle in bed rather than lying as far as physically possible from your partner. Autumn is a distraction from the sad end to summer and is so full of life, albeit a life coming to its end, that the darker days don't seem quite so depressing as they might feel in February. And, as we all know, February has absolutely nothing going for it.

So finally, after months of sweating and throwing the duvet off, I am cosy and warm in my bed and it is blissful and great.