Accepting Change

Lockdown taught us all a lot about ourselves, I’m sure. I know it definitely taught me a lot about myself. Or maybe “teaching” would be more appropriate: the cycle never stops.

Time alone is both freeing and isolating. It’s terrifying to be left with your own thoughts after using other people, events and activities to avoid them for so long. Sitting on your own for hours upon days upon weeks leaves you with nought else to do but reflect. The cogs move even when you desperately try to tell them to stop. When the hustle and bustle of daily life ceases, you have to face the facts of your own life. There is no “next time” to look forward to when you’re stuck in a buffering world, between the same four walls.

You’re left open to emotional vulnerability. Thoughts swirl around your mind, like autumn leaves swishing around the ground in the wind, picking up pace when stimulated by brief bursts of wind; when you dare to relax too much, to lose focus of the material, the voices of your psyche are no longer drowned out.

For different people, it’s different things. Or perhaps a multitude of the same, in varying quantities. Your appearance, your personality, your relationships, your trajectory in life. Some things you never doubted were causing you problems; other things you thought you held steadfast certainty in, but with time, and silence, that certainty wavers.

I turned twenty-two just over two months ago. So, actually, now, I’m a sixth of the way to twenty-three. At the thought, my stomach churns; a low-grade icy flash of shock runs through. Not only has lockdown extended time, making it monotonous, lonely, depressing, it has simultaneously sped it up. Where have the weeks gone? They dragged and yet those are seconds I’ll never get the chance to relive.

Twenty-two years old. Young to some, old to others. I don’t know how I feel. I still remember being eight years old, reading Jacqueline Wilson and promising myself I’d never end up one of those moody teenagers. I remember being fifteen and being one of those moody teenagers. I still feel seventeen sometimes; I remember too well the nervous faux-confidence I tried to give off when starting my first post-school job. I had no idea what I was expected to do half the time and those underlying feelings of anxiety still grip me, periodically, when I feel out of my depth. I remember being taken pity on when I didn’t do things the right way, because I was a girl and I was young. The other girls were older than me - twenties - and they all bitched both amongst each other and about each other. They seemed too distant from where I stood to be relatable, even when we were all crammed into the same tiny storeroom between the kitchen and bar. I remember looking upon twenty-year-olds as my utmost superiors; now I look upon my sister and her similarly-aged friends as my significant juniors.

I remember turning eighteen, steaming drunk in the back of a taxi on Sauchiehall Street, desperate to use my ID legitimately to get into a club. I remember the next day, driving hungover and late to my dentist, experiencing the same brain-fog I do now after drinking. I remember first year being filled with several drunken nights out a week. My memories remain: of slipping down the stairs in Glasgow’s Hive and crying afterwards to the bouncers that I’d broken my back and I needed taking home and waking up the next morning too painful and nauseous to move until it was semi-dark at half four in the afternoon. I remember it, if blurrily, but it was still me in that head behind those eyes, having those thoughts. I don’t see it as another person; I don’t look upon myself as a foreign entity, an entirely different version of myself. I’m not that person anymore; but I am.

I remember turning nineteen and not getting to sleep until 9am the following morning. I remember downstairs’ neighbours banging on the door at 3am threatening to call the police if we continue making noise. I remember being mildly surprised that we were making noise, but when my flatmate asked them, surely they’d understand, it’s Freshers week? I still cringe at the juvenility. I remember the following day, sitting tired and hungover and nervous, holding a letter from the bottom flat, a formal complaint in typed writing about our noise and parties. I remember worrying that whole day - I was always a worrier - and I remember the snakes in the pit of my stomach refusing to regress. I still feel that now when I’m nervous; my whole body freezes; I can’t relax again until the problem meets its solution.

I remember turning twenty. We went camping by Loch Lomond, for the second time that summer. The first had been a warm summer’s evening in June. The air had been densely temperate, the type of weather comfortable enough to flash bare skin. The amber glow of the sun had projected itself onto everyone’s faces and different groups of people popped up here and there, some swimming in the icy loch, others prepping the barbecue. A day to remember and a day to do again; what we didn’t consider was that September and June in Scotland have entirely different forecasts and I turned twenty in what I believe was monsoon weather. I remember everything being wet, and no matter how hard you tried, no one could ever dry off. I remember we all crowded in the tent and passed around a cabbage, a jokey cake as I was going through my vegan phase. I remember still-soaking hands exchanging soggy bits of Tesco’s largest chocolate traybake, and I remember sneaking off to doze in the cosiness of my car with my boyfriend when, at 6am, the tent’s discomfort got too much to bear.

I remember turning twenty-one. Unintentionally cliché as I was, the party was huge. My parents lent more than a hand. Over a hundred attended, to ceilidh and eat and drink and chat. The large group separated into smaller ones, people mingling and voices merging; my head spinning at the start as I’d not had time to drink water, never mind wine, and hydrating myself on the bar’s £4 Pinot. I remember trying to act like I had my act together; always clueless and nervous, never quite there: I’ve still not changed. I remember constantly watching out for other people, to see if they were enjoying themselves. Throwing a party is never a breeze for the host, unless you’re a narcissist or arrogant, neither of which I am, for better or worse. I remember wishing people would stop wishing me happy birthday because I couldn’t go two minutes without being hounded: “oh hiiiiiya!” I kid, that’s said in jest; I was more than flattered at the numbers that showed, and yet I still reflect back with a degree of nervous curiosity: did they really enjoy themselves? Was it that good?

And turning twenty-two. This September was alright for us in Scotland, and likely the same elsewhere. I was lucky that life had not stopped, but it had definitely slowed. Halted. Crawled. Twenty-two isn’t as fun to turn as twenty-one. Twenty is only a year past nineteen so you’re not really an adult. Now, though, where are my excuses? I’m eight years to thirty, but still feel like that pretentious eight-year-old lives within me. I’m midway between the age my dad was when I was born and the age I was when I started university. I’m growing older by the second and yet all I want to do is get younger. Adulthood is supposed to be the time that you sort things out and know what you want to suck out of life, isn’t it? Do I know what I want now any more than I did when I was seventeen? If anything, I know less. Do I feel like I’m maturing? I feel like I want to curl up, fall into a deep, long sleep and open my eyes to be that cheeky eight-year-old again, whose biggest concern was making sure she volunteered at her neighbours house enough to complete her primary school’s Adventure Service Challenge award. I’m daunted by the fact that now I am an adult in my work; the eighteen-year-old girl looks to me for advice. My own little sister is past her first year of uni; time that even she won’t get back. Coronavirus has made me realise that maybe I should have thrown myself into more last year, instead of trying to acquire a taste for red wine and read classics and sit in dusty old bars having philosophical conversations, the basis of which I never fully grasped, despite my relatively successful acting. And am I past that now? There’s no going back in life, only forward. That’s usually said to be motivating, but how is moving away from the safest part of your life anything to be inspired by?

But then, I remind myself, after sitting, day upon day, locked in with mind on repeat, let’s frame things in a different light. What have I achieved in my twenty-two years of life? What does achievement mean? Is it measured in terms of end-goals, or in terms of starting certain journeys? I know that I am becoming a more assertive person; I’m less scared to say what I feel or believe or, dare I say it, want. I’m approaching a better relationship with food and my body; the insecurities of my teens are slowly but surely getting polished down, to leave but a shiny fragment of their existence in my memory. I’ve rediscovered my love of writing and reading; I was too busy before, drinking and dancing and dating, to remember what I enjoy. I now exercise, for fun. I have my good weeks and bad weeks, but my mood is generally pretty positive. I have a better relationship with my parents now that I’m no longer too skinny or too angry. I have a better appreciation of life, and maybe that’s the concept I’ve missed all along. Perhaps this longing for life is representative of my situation now. I’m lucky to frame most past events with a golden glow and I’m privileged to be sitting where I am now, typing and reflecting and thinking.

Because, as much as I am older than that wee eight-year-old year, both desperate to rule the world and yet utterly shocked at Tracy Beaker’s exploits, and as much as my innocence has gradually been chipped away, I still hold that youthful naivety that life is good and things will be okay. I think, perhaps, that’s why I hold onto time so much: to live in the present is a gift not all of us can afford. I know that I am that same person that I always have been. I know that I have done things along the way that I’m not proud of, and yet equally I’ve done things that I’m still too modest to take full credit for. I’m always going to have an underlying level of anxiety but I’m lucky that, amidst the change of the world just now, I still have me, and that internal eight-year-old girl has me, to cling onto and rely upon for help when things get stressful. We evolve and we grow and we can’t get those last seconds back, but as much as our appearance and circumstances changes, we still have our minds and our thoughts; our ability to reflect and show gratitude. Life has passed me, but it hasn’t passed me by. We are shaped by the events we experience daily, and there is no exception to that rule. We are always growing and evolving, and yet we remain our core self. Life’s paradox; not to be feared, but to be enjoyed. Lockdown has taught me many lessons, but its greatest is something that I am very much still in the way of learning: the acceptance of our own changes, welcome or otherwise, that have transported us to our here and now.