From a children’s book called “Once There Were Giants”, to relatives telling me “Look how much you’ve grown!” and American films with cheesy graduations and proms and goodbyes I think I’ve always been told and prepared about how much I was going to Change and Grow Up and Everything Would Be Different. The idea of everything changing indicates so much: people being gone, buildings being gone.
And up until recently, recently being last Sunday night, I didn’t really think that was happening at all. There’ve been a few times over the last few years when I’ve realised I’m older than I feel, like the realisation when I was in Year 9 at school that there were people my age and in my classes at school that were having sex and doing drugs and whilst I probably didn’t seem less mature than them I still felt – still feel – about eight years old. It’s just weird the moment you realise it’s not just in TV soaps, it’s real, and it’s not happening to far off characters you’re introduced to in teachers’ warning PowerPoints but people you sit next to in Maths or went to primary school with.
The other evening it was a few simultaneous factors marking change that made me realise how quickly things have moved without me realising – I was smoking, it was the night before the first of my GCSE exams, resulting in the end of high school in a few weeks. And the place I was – the closed down site of a garden centre and small wildlife zoo which I visited frequently during my childhood with my parents, went to to buy candles in a phase I had in my early teens, and more recently have used to learn to drive in the closed-down car park or just sit around in the surrounding fields to be on my own.
Then I thought about why I hadn’t been attentive to all of this changing and happening. It’s really just because all I spend my time doing is walking around the town and getting buses and trains away with my friends, two and three person parties, and then reading books and eating meals and going to concerts and homework and sitting at my computer. The only things that we have to mark time, really, is Firsts. And I’ve had a lot of Firsts in the last year but they don’t seem like the things that make time pass either, like the first time travelling alone, the first published reviewing of music, the first time drunk and the first New Year’s Eve on a beach. And Lasts too, because coming up is my last day of compulsory education, my last time all of my school year will be in one place, and probably the last time I’ll see a few people.
I can’t work out if time is marked by these, the things that get referred to as “milestones” or just when you look up one day and think about the fact that your body is different, despite never seeing in the mirror that you suddenly are taller or have different eyes or longer hair. It’s really strange, and I can’t come to any conclusion except that they don’t suddenly baffle you with introducing moving metal boxes on wheels. They do it slowly.
***
In other news…
- I’ve gotten pretty into Ben Howard recently.
- I read a really brilliant and unusual book, called “Kafka on the Shore” and it’s by Haruki Murakami.
- As of tomorrow, I will never have another RE lesson and I couldn’t be happier.
I’ll see you soon.
Lizzie x
Oh, and a song:
"Bikes" by Lucy Rose
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