When I was 18 I had a plan. My plan was solid because I could see so far into the future. I could see so far, as in, up until the age of 21 – the age up until when everything was laid out and navigable. When I was 18 I went to university and I definitely shouldn't have. I mean, I definitely shouldn't have left home at 18. I was too young and I was still a child. I was still too young when I finished university and turned 21.
I don't know when I grew up. Maybe it happened the second time I left home and my mum and I were at this new pizza place she had read about in the Guardian and somehow, all of a sudden, we were both crying in the middle of the restaurant, Mum squeezing my hand over the table. I didn't cry again – not even when she left – because I had a huge new bedroom with bay windows and a blossom tree outside and Friends to watch on Netflix and the sweetest new friend with the most beautiful ginger hair I'd ever seen, just in the bedroom next to me.
Until about a year or so ago I thought it all had to mean something – life – and every moment of every day had to be worth something, or I was wasting time, or what was the point? I had the plan until I was 21 and then I got lost but found my way again and then after all that, and another breakdown, I decided I didn't need a plan – not a long term one, anyway. Going along with what everyone else was doing, and what I thought I should be doing, was very overwhelming. Back then, and maybe even now, still, I filled every spare moment with things and people and events and stuff. I had no time to think or be by myself and stop thinking about other people for just one minute or spend time with God or learn about anything new. I spent so many days, weeks, years just ticking over to the next, following a plan I had laid out for myself, following what the world said, following, following, following...
When I was 18 and I moved away to university I latched onto the most beautiful person I had ever met. I remember the first time I saw him, leaning against our new kitchen door as he introduced himself and my jaw dropped, which I always thought was so romantic. We argued maybe twice the whole time we were together, and I can't remember exactly how long that was because there were a good few months either side of the ~relationship~ when we were still texting and saying I love you. He bought me flowers and Krispy Kremes and he read difficult books and wrote these amazing essays and he taught me a lot about films and history and literature, because at 18 I was still a child and he was 19 and had had a gap year and was so wise. I would describe what he looked like but his face has kind of faded from my memory now. It's not even about what they look like when you fall in love, anyway.
I wrote a lot of romantic shit when I was 18. Like, if I could go back to uni now and re-do my degree, I know I'd write some amazing stuff. But sometimes I think maybe I don't want to be a writer anymore, except I know that isn't true. I am just extremely lazy. I think (part of) my problem is I don't know who my audience is, and I've written self-indulgent internal monologue type diary entries for far too long and it's hard to change your style once you've found a groove, you know? Another truth is... I'm scared of what will come up if I'm alone with my thoughts for too long. In a way, therapy helped with that, but I dreaded going every week and I still don't know if it fixed me.
When I was 18 I didn't know anything about mental health and sometimes I wish I still didn't. I was 18 when I first experienced anxiety and I thought I was dying. I couldn't leave my bedroom and I couldn't get on a train and I couldn't go to work and I was too scared to do so many things because of this sick feeling that wouldn't go away. My friend said something recently that I've thought about loads. She said that mental health awareness may be worsening the problem for some of us. And at first I thought, nope, I don't get it. But now I definitely do. When I read about other people's experiences of mental health problems I have to try really hard to see if I can relate. What I feel and think and experience is so different to what everyone else does, and that's the scariest thing about mental illness. I can talk about it now from a grounded perspective and see where I have been in the past as seasons of change and growth and disruption and pain, because right now I am okay, but I still can't explain any of it, really. And no one can. There is no test or scan, only a questionnaire you fill out at the doctors and the words you can scramble together to describe how isolated and scared you feel, and even then it's their interpretation that determines how sick you are. So how does that work?
When I was 18 I was on the precipice of adulthood and the unravelling of myself. Sometimes I go back to that town, where my best friend still lives, and it's like I didn't exist. My halls of residence are no longer, my friends have dispersed, old love dissipating with every new build that concretes over where we walked. Only one book shop we spent collecting novels for the summers ahead remains and if I go inside and put my hands on the shelves, stacked and stuffed with titles we both know and don't know, it almost feels like that time never passed.
