Saturday 10 April 2010

Past

So glad I'm not 18 anymore...

I haven't quite got myself together again after coming home from our holiday yesterday, and no holiday pics have been uploaded yet.  Still, it was an interesting and reflective time.  Sometimes, when I go South, its fine, and I really enjoy the sun and the seaside and the Downs, and seeing my mum and step-father.  Other times, it feels like walking through a graveyard.  This time it was the latter, and a graveyard of my teen years to boot, the hardest time of my life. 

It is a strange feeling to be assaulted by so many uncomfortable memories.  It made me think about how different I am now from my 18-year-old self.  It made me think, 'Gods, I'm glad that's over!'  Some people hark back to their youths as if they were an idyll.  Mine wasn't, and I'm glad its done with.  Okay, I miss the youthful skin and the tiny waistline, but a wrinkle takes 200,000 smiles to form, and I am glad of every single one of them.  I wouldn't go back there for all the peachy complexions in the world, and that's saying something, because I'm really vain!

No, I am proud of my 42-yea-old self, and I am glad to be her.  Yes, there are things maybe I would change (the waistline for starters), but not a fat lot.  I have stopped trying to change myself into someone else, and started trying to be more myself.  On the whole, I think I haven't turned out too bad, and things are always improving.  If I met my 18-year-old self now, not only would I find her pretty irritating, I probably wouldn't recognise her as the same person as me.

 New Year 1990- love the hair!

Sometimes I look at the old photos and  grieve for those years that are gone and can never be recovered, for the opportunities I missed, for the way things felt then, so intense.  I wish I had done more with that time.  But I wasn't that person then.  It wasn't my time.  And now it is.

1 comment:

  1. I found that really, really moving. Thank you for sharing.

    ReplyDelete