It's times like these...when I'm trying to get to sleep but can't, that I start to long for my childhood. Not just because my life over the past few years has catastrophically gone up in flames...but because things were so much easier back then.
I was told when to eat and what, what to wear for school (uniforms were/are the norm in English schools), who to be friends with, what subjects I was good at, what subjects I should give up at the age of five and most importantly...what was expected of me.
These days I can't seem to get out of bed for the sheer force of trying to make the right decision. Do I job hunt today? or do I do grad school essays? do I make plans? or sit on the couch and pray for an intervention?
I loved being a child. I loved my friends and playing with my brother. I loves fish fingers and baked beans for dinner, I loved doing cartwheels on the playground and being chased by boys. Now I hardly ever see my friends. My brother is living thousands of miles away from me, I have to be conscious of carbs and fat whenever I'm hungry and I can't do a cartwheel without the possibility of throwing out my back on waking up in the morning unable to move.
Even my love life was better when I was nine! By that age I'd had a least two "boyfriends" one of whom had made his mother drive to my house on valentines day to leave me chocolates, a hand made card and a rose. I haven't had such a romantic gift since! I was completely unselfconscious and while I was shy I still had a relatively good sense of who I was and what I wanted.
Now I'm a complete and utter mess. I can't fathom what my next move should be let alone have the wherewithal to get the ball moving. Every single day I care a little bit less. I haven't looked for a job in two weeks and to be perfectly honest I don't really care if I get one before Christmas. I'm beginning to enjoy being a lady of leisure and fear that one day my sheer laziness will leave me sitting on my parents couch in twenty years time like some bad sitcom characters who eats bon bons out of the box and complains about things like the quality of daytime TV or how her shins and ankles have somehow, over the years, grown into a single entity.
I was a spirited little girl. I was pretty and fun and I was the best at doing a handstand into a bridge...and now I can't even get up the enthusiasm to do anything. I can't get control over even the simplest thing like what I eat and how much I weigh. I'm sad and I never used to be sad.
And yet, somewhere in the layers of crap that have become my life in recent months, there is still hope. My mother bounces through the world and icon of relentless optimism. She smiles every morning whether it's sunny or cloudy and her motto is "every day's a bonus." And while I am conscious of how lucky I am compared to so many people, that little girl inside of me is still itching to get going again. I can be pretty and thin again one day, I too can have a job that I don't hate and a boyfriend who actually exists.
Hope is an amazing thing and while overwhelming misery will occasionally sneak in on me in the dead of night when I can't get to sleep, in the end I am always conscious of the fact that there are other people far worse off than I am.
One day things will work out for me. One day my family will all be in once place and I'll have someone who loves me unconditionally (excluding for my family of course, who thankfully already do) even if he's a terrier names Henry. I'll eventually do something I love even if I get paid a pittance and maybe one day I'll have my own little redheaded girl who is shy but knows who she is, and what she wants. And I think the little girl inside of me is a little excited by the prospect of that.
1 comment:
Awwww Hannah, come back to England?
I remember how cool I used to think your house was, with that playroom upstairs with the funny cupboards all round and the scaletrix on the floor. I also seem to remember that you had a horrific Cabbage Patch doll which gave me nightmares for weeks on end!
You were always the best at handstands into bridges, something I could never quite manage without ending up a mangled wreck on the floor.
I remember beibg distraught when you left for the US and thinking I'd never see you again, even though you used to write and drawn pictures of Forever Friends bears to put in with the letters.
Unfortunately we got older and things changed and, if it wasnt for the wonders of Facebook, we'd probably have lost contact forever.
Now, although we're both very different from the little girls we were at school, you're still loved from the other side of the pond (if thats the right saying - maybe meant for Ozzies though...hhmmmm?).
Hope you're ok xxxx
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