A speck of dust

During a season of change it's easy to forget about everyone else. There are 7.6 billion beating hearts in this world and all I can think about is my own.

Perspective is one of my favourite words because it is one that cropped up four years ago when I was first getting treatment for my anxiety and depression. Perspective is the word I go back to every time I stumble, every time there is change.

Even when the change is good, it can be hard. I started a new job a few weeks ago and I love it. It's what I've wanted to do ever since I figured out what I wanted to do (this has been the year of, like, realising stuff) but it is bloody terrifying.

I think I will always feel like this – fear will always manifest itself in my experiences, following me as I venture down different avenues. Today, however, I am finding my groove and I am staying put. I feel useful. I am contributing to something I care about, finally. I am placed exactly where I need to be. I am a cog in this magnificent mechanism that is life – something I will never be able to fathom.

I don't know why, but writing and rewriting a sentence to grammatical perfection makes my soul sing. And I know I don't always get it right. There are probably mistakes in this blog post, but I'm in my flow, I'm feeling it. It might be different for you. Whatever it is that gives you a buzz - feeling needed, feeling new, feeling like you can change something in this gigantic world. It's the same feeling I get when I finish my to-do list, when I cook my favourite dinner, bake a delicious cake, when I finished an essay in school, nailed that point I had floating around in my head, speak up when I'm scared, find a fiver in my pocket.

It is these moments that bring me to the surface of my own suffering. My head bobs up and sees the potential in everything else. It asks someone else how they are. It gives someone a compliment. It sees a sliver of your life.

Because it's not just me and my problems. There are 7.6 billion others feeling this, feeling more, feeling less. I am just, in the words of Kimya Dawson, a speck of dust inside a giant's eye. And, while my purpose is solely grounded in God, my time on earth is limited. So, steeping in my millennial self-indulgence I will not. There is work to be done and I'm getting on with it.

Post Uni Life: Am I an Adult Now?

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I started my big grown up job last month and I still can't quite believe it. When I get a spare moment between editing stories at my desk I find myself thinking... WOW. I would have never expected I'd be doing what I'm doing now if someone had told me a year ago. I know I've said that before, but it's just taking so long to sink in.

This time last year I was working on my dissertation and other various assignments for uni, not knowing what I was aiming for in the long run but feeling very stressed nonetheless and, just, going with it. Even though a full time graduate job wasn't what I had in mind for my life after uni, nothing else worked out. Nothing.

I am enjoying it more than I thought I would and I think I'm OK. I get this feeling when I'm walking from the car park to the office, through the hallway and when I sit down at my desk — I get this 'grown up' feeling. I ask myself, is this it? Have I made it to the adult world?

I love that I can snack at my desk. I love that I can have my lunch whenever I want. I love that I can drink as much coffee as I want. I love that I can read all day and do what I do best. I love that we can have a laugh and talk and not have to serve customers — that the computer and the stories are the only things I have to face. But I don't think I love this transition into adulthood.

I wonder how I'm supposed to feel. I wonder how everyone else feels. The problem with me, is that I wonder these things, and I don't think you're actually supposed to. Growing up just seems to happen, but even though I have everything that tells me I'm a grown up — a degree, a car, a full time job — I just don't feel there yet. I look at all the older, more experienced people working in the office and they seem to have it all figured out, in the way they talk, walk and work with such confidence and ease. 

Am I an adult now? Then there are people my age getting married, having babies, and although these two things are major goals for my life, I can't think of anything more terrifying at 21. We all develop at different ages, of that I'm sure, I would just like to know when I'll develop a bit further, or at least stop worrying about how I am now, because right now I feel a little stagnant, despite everything I am so fortunate to have achieved.

Growing Up

Day 13: The place you grew up

One day I woke up and I was living in Wales. I was twelve, and had been preparing for this transition for over a year, but one day it happened, and we were there. 

My dad had lived in Caerleon, a small village in Newport for a year while Craig, Emily, my mum and I stayed in Dover. I endured a year of misery at an all girl's grammar school where I made some great friends but felt like the least intelligent and valued member of the form. Craig had to finish his GCSEs and Emily her A levels, but finally, at the end of the summer of 2004 we packed up and left, Craig holding a collage of photos of his then girlfriend as she waved goodbye from our old front garden. They cried while my own lips quivered until I could not hold in the tears any longer. Dad drove the four hour car journey to Abergavenny and by the time we got there, I had forgotten my grief and enjoyed a Pick a Pizza for my first meal in a town where we lived for the third part of my childhood.

Christmases felt different. There were no Sunday afternoon walks along the seafront, penny sweet mix ups after church, no overwhelming end of year exams and impossible homework. There were boys at my school. People made fun of my accent. 

"Say no," they would say.
"No," I would reply.
"Noy," they would mock, falling about laughing. 

This was when I began to understand that there were a lot of dumb people in the world.

But there were also kind, great, intelligent and interesting people too. I became acquainted with Bethan who became my third sister while the other two grew up in cities, studying at University. She saw to countless heartbreaks of mine and failed Science exams and abandoned friendships and being diagnosed with Crohn's disease. 

In Abergavenny there was no beach, no view of Calais from the cliffs on a clear day, no Mcdonald's happy meals, no familiar faces in the streets, but there were mountains to climb, trains to catch to Cardiff, and a church where the people waved flags and hugged everyone. And, somehow, this place, where I spent just six years of my life, felt like it had equal measure with Dover in delivering unforgettable memories and experiences. When I left in 2010 I never felt happier than when I came back to visit on weekends and at Christmas, and when I moved back indefinitely in July 2013. I don't pine for Dover.

Is the place you grew up the place you were born? The place you spent most of your childhood? For me it is the place that holds the most significance in my life. Where did you really grow up? And more questionably, when?

Day 2: Facing the Fear - Growing Up.

To grow up is to be really brave. You’d never think it at fourteen. It’s what you always wanted. You would do anything to get out of that age. Away from school and all those pointless subjects. Live with your friends and eat sweets every day and it would be like one big sleepover except who would do the cooking and cleaning and washing and ironing?

If you’re lucky, your parents will teach you how to do these things, or you learn by just watching them. If you have older brothers and sisters, that’s good too. If you have younger ones, even better.

You should know how to do at least one of those things by the time you’re eighteen. Apparently that’s when you’re an adult.

Sometimes, I watch those wildlife programmes that try and be as clever and interesting as David Attenborough with their commentaries. I wonder how animals cope when they grow up. I bet they forget all about their mothers, until it comes the time when they have to be mothers, or fathers. How do they know what to do? Instinct. Must be. Yes. That’s it.

When I “left home” I had to say goodbye to my mum and sister in front of a crowd of strangers who would soon become friends, boyfriend and a load of people I’d never speak to again. I cried and it was embarrassing because I couldn’t go to the bathroom to wash my face or blow my nose I just had to stop crying without a tissue or anything and then hang out with these new people who were all quiet and on their mobile phones and a few of the more socially aware awkwardly making small talk.

I cried when I moved back home as well. Strange, that. I was like, in limbo between childhood and adulthood. Didn’t know where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do. Growing up, you get stuck in that sometimes. You get a bit lost.

University was like one big school trip and then I had to leave all my friends and a place I had grown quite comfortable in over the three years I had lived there. I could do whatever I wanted to do. I went to Tesco in my pyjamas and ate Mcdonald’s, Pizza Hut and chocolate one day and was sick the next day and cried and felt very sorry for myself in a big pile of duvets.

If it’s not fun, why do it? Was my motto. Actually it’s Ben & Jerry’s motto. A lot of mottos aren’t that good because you can’t apply them to every single situation in life, and it’s important that a motto should do that, otherwise, how is it a motto? I didn’t think about much when I was eighteen. It was easier then.

To grow up is to know yourself and to be comfortable being on your own. That means – I think – to know what you believe and what you think is right and wrong. To know who and what makes you happy and you at your best, and who and what does not.

Being comfortable on your own means you can sleep at night without having someone lie next to you, or for someone to be thinking about you, or talking to you, or texting you throughout the day. You are quite happy to spend the evening in alone, and equally as happy to go out and spend time with friends. You pretty much never get sad. Grown ups never cry.

I have been an adult for three years. I can cook a meal, wash my clothes, clean the bathroom, lock up at night, work and pay bills, all of that just fine. But anyone can learn to do that. There is something else that needs figuring out, and perhaps there are people who do not need to – perhaps it just comes naturally to them, as naturally as the instinct of animals leaving their mothers and becoming mothers themselves. Maybe they have something they don’t even realize they have, the natural ability to grow up.