Looking backwards.

When I was 16/17, I thought that when I was a few years older, at university, I'd worry less about the things that were giving me crippling anxiety. At 16/17 I thought my older self would be braver, less troubled and her opportunities would be broadened. I thought getting older meant getting better. I thought it meant that everything that was awkward and cringe-worthy would disappear and I would forget it all. It wouldn't matter. None of it would matter. And that's what people say isn't it-'you'll look back on this period in your life and think you were crazy, there was nothing to worry about. Trust me, it gets better'. 

In some ways it's true. If I could go back I would tell my 16 year old self that things get easier. They aren't less painful but they get easier. The things I worried about back then, eventually dwindled. But life doesn't allow the blips to disappear into a void. The bloody blips keep returning. And I look back at my younger self and think, crap, that's where everything began. Emotions and feelings you thought had disappeared merely buried themselves like ants that scuttle away back under their rock when they see a shadow loom above. Events I thought would stay hidden beneath those rocks began to creep out in different forms and startle me. I did not expect the past to return. And I most certainly did not expect the past to return during a time when I was supposed to be getting older, wiser and more mature.

I suppose I am realising more and more that growing up means constantly returning to the beginning. As I move forwards I look backwards and that makes it harder to keep moving. I keep getting stuck as I remember my younger self who in many ways I envy and miss. I feel so naive and I wish I was 16 again so people could expect that of me. On the days I remember specific past versions of myself I grow melancholic and deeply sad. I want so badly to hug my past self because my present self knows how difficult the past was. My present self knows that all those experiences left residual mess behind and that the present self is still cleaning up the debris. It seems as though that is what growing up is all about- coming to terms with the past and cleaning it up, time after time. 

All I wish is that these times grow fewer. I hope that I'm not still cleaning up my old mess. I hope that I learn to lift the rock and let the ants scuttle free. I hope that I give myself room to make new mess. 

But until then I am still cleaning, still re-organising and still struggling to make the steps forward.

At least I am trying.

x

T

'Tis the season. Everyone is going back to school. There's something about the move from August to September that signals a new year for me. It's the time when many of us re-learn what it means to be a student. And more specifically, we re-programme ourselves to write because let's face it, we've used our fingers to tweet, post instagram pictures, blog, scour Netflix and search YouTube. Writing seems almost archaic. Even though I am an avid letter writer, I have felt almost disallusioned with my penmanship over the past summer. I have forgotten how my pen fits into my hand and what it's like to physically hold it to paper. With typing, the words rush from you and swiftly appear on your screen but with writing in real time I feel as if my brain is moving quicker than my hands and words are eluding me. Cutting and pasting is so much easier than TipExing or striking through an ill-fitting word. And yet for some reason I have only ever used my laptop at university once over the past few years. It may be archaic and fewer people may use it as often as they did centuries ago, but there is something about the act of writing that intrigues me.  I don't know. Maybe this struggle with writing is a pscyhological barrier that represents coming to terms with the new year. Maybe it's the same reason why as a child I used to love going back to school just to be able to write the date on the immaculate first page of my exercise book. It was always bittersweet because I knew that the first moment I unleashed ink onto that page, however delicately, was the most important. It set the tone for the rest of the book (and the rest of my school year) but it was at a moment when I'd just returned from the holidays. I could never get my handwriting right despite my continued efforts over the years, so in the end I would make the intention of finishing the book early so I could start over. Writing in the summer is like that. Starting over. What will your font be in the next year? What size font? I prefer small. What type of pen? Fountain or biro? I prefer the fountain. How will you underline the date- single or double? I'd go for the double. Black or blue ink? Definitely blue.

It seems inane and perhaps it is. But as I began to pen a letter to my friend today I thought about how my hands seemed so uncomfortable. I tried writing with a black ink pen and it seemed so unfamiliar I had to change to my regular store-bought blue ink fountain pen. It felt better but I wasn't completely there yet. I think my transition from August to September is slow moving. But I think that's the point. I can't barge into my last year of university. I need to enter it slowly and I feel (in a very corny way, I know) that re-learning how to write is my metaphor for entering back into the 'Academic Sphere'. It will be a gentle transition albeit a messy one. It's not something I can force, but something I must settle into naturally. I have to go through that process of entering all my classes with a clean slate, a chance to start off well. Even though I've been so out of practice that I will inevitably forget the month and have to cross out something, it's something I need to go through.

This will be the last year that I am a student.

I hope I write it well.


T

15 year old Amelia from No. 56

It happened at the same time every day. And each time, I berated myself for my cowardice.

For the last few weeks builders had been working in the house opposite. Since the moment they arrived in their dreary, grey overalls, they’d spent half the working day smoking and belching in a repeating cycle. But it wasn’t this that annoyed me. Every day around 8:30, fifteen year old Amelia from number fifty six would leave her house and walk to the bus stop at the end of the road. Along the way, Amelia would walk past the dreary builders who would without fail taunt her. They would eye up her skirt and ask her what colour panties she was wearing. They would puff smoke into her face as she tried to pass them hurriedly. Once they even tried to brush against her by “accident”. Each time I saw this, clouds of smoke and dust trailed behind her. Each time I saw this I remembered the first time.

The first time, I was leaving my house when I noticed Amelia walking past the house opposite. I raised my hand to wave at her and say hi as I usually did but she hadn’t seen me. Instead she was walking at a faster pace than usual because the brawny, beefy builders at the house opposite had started whistling. “Nice legs”, one of them shouted. My instinct was to swear and hurl profanities at them but being a coward I backed down. I didn’t defend her. I knew that I should have. As soon as I walked away in the opposite direction to go to work I knew that I’d regret my decision but I still never walked back. And every day afterwards, I saw Amelia gradually walk faster. I never did anything. The first day she wore a skirt, on the second day she wore tights and on the third day she wore trousers. On the fourth day she tried wearing a skirt again but she never did after that. As for me, I still never did anything. I never told anyone. I knew that shouting or even talking to them wouldn’t make them feel guilty. But it would have made a difference to Amelia. Every day I would watch her walk past and I'd walk in the other direction, trying to ignore what I heard them say. I still never did anything.

Finally the builders completed their job and they left. Amelia seemed to be more cheery and started saying hello to the neighbours again. Even I stopped to chat to her a few times. I wanted to ask her if she was okay. I wanted to apologise for never saying anything about what I saw. But again I was a coward and I pretended that we'd been missing each other in the mornings for the past few weeks. Once the builders had left, I noticed that Amelia’s walk became more relaxed. I noticed her smile reappear. I pretended when I spoke to her that I hadn’t witnessed her being sexually harassed for two weeks. I pretended that I hadn’t seen her switch skirts for trousers and a fast pace for a slow one. I never asked her why she started to look closely into the windows of cars as she walked past them or why she would walk quickly past large groups of people. I never asked her why on warmer days she never wore that cute floral skirt she used to love so much.

These were the things I couldn’t ask her and the things I wished I didn’t have to.