Catfish and the Bottlemen – The Balcony
Next month I will be home an entire year, 365 days and it doesn’t feel like I’ve achieved very much in 12 months. I’m still living at home (yippie its just so fun, she says sarcastically), I’m still in a job that isn’t what I want as a career, I’m still a single independent woman (this one I’m not too bothered out tbf, women are from venus men are from mars and all that) and most importantly I still have no clue what I want for myself in life. I am constantly being told that my 20s are supposed to be like this, about “finding myself”, spending time really trying to figure out what I want from life and who I want to be. What an utter pile of shite! The people that say these things are usually in their late 30s still trying to “find themselves” or they’re my age and completely set up in life and feel pity for me and my wayward ways resulting in them spouting complete bullshit that they think will make me feel better when in reality it causes the opposite effect. I can see the look in their eyes, weeping with unwanted sympathy and slight disdain with a curtained veined interest in what I have to say. My seemingly failed existence seems to put a bit of a downer on everyone else’s success. However I have some uplifting and sincere news for everyone, I’m alright, honestly it may seem like I have no future but trust me I do. I just don’t 100% know what it is yet but thats ok with me, so it should be ok with you too.
Another wonderful occurrence that starts to happen in your 20s is, if you’re single get used to all your paired off mates really wanting to set you up with all of their eligible male friends that are just perfect for you but for some reason they never actually went their themselves. I may complain about being single and dying alone but its just a bit, I am your novelty of a friend, that special attraction that can be brought out to make everyone laugh and feel better about themselves, I can poke fun at myself and deliver you some wonderful anecdotes about all my nightmare tinder experiences and about that time I was on a date without realising it but I don’t need you to “fix” me I’m good, really. Besides I don’t think I would know how to deal with being in a relationship, how do you look after a boyfriend? How often to they need to be walked and fed? Men baffle me, they really do. I’m not sure I would even know how to be a girlfriend, Jesus I don’t even know how to be an individual person never mind having to look after someone else.
Something that has become most apparent this year is that I’ve lost a few friends, people that I thought cared about me but quickly became clear that some people just have their own self interest at heart and no matter how much I think that I’m helping I can’t stop the selfish acts of others and maybe I should be a little selfish myself sometimes. Life is too quick and fleeting to spend most of it trying to fit in with others and allowing for negativity to cloud your life experience. I try my best to surround myself with positivity and good people, in turn I am a happier person and this is all I could wish for.
My family also suffered a terrible loss this year, sort of my first real experience with grief in my adult life. Death is a strange thing, I’d never really consciously gone through the stages of grief before. Of course my family have been through some truly terrible losses but I have always been that little but too young to fully understand what was happening. However with this one everything was different, my emotions where well and truly up the left, I didn’t cry for two days then when I did everything just exploded one night and it was awful but strangely liberating and at the same time I was so unbelievably sad. A weight of heavy denial had been sitting on my chest and this sudden outburst of emotion lifted it. Of course I’m still sad, I try not to think about it too much because that bundle of sadness and grief is still there and it doesn’t take much for it to be opened up again but it gets better. I’m still trying to get over the guilt though, that I wasn’t there, that I didn’t get to say goodbye and a strange feeling that I don’t deserve to feel like this, as in I shouldn’t be this sad. It took me some time but Ive realised that only I know how I feel and most importantly I’m allowed to feel whatever way I want and that’s ok.
I have a message to myself this year, onwards and upwards my friend. Keep doing exactly what you’re doing, don’t let anyone tell you don’t look good in dungarees, eat that extra slice of pizza and spend that 20 quid on the perfect matte lipstick, fuck everyone else. You do you.