A few years ago I had a seizure, and a friend died, and I changed. I never really got back to being the girl I was before, never understood her properly again. I mean, I still like the same songs, and have the same favourite foods, but now, I don’t necessarily like myself very much. I’m selfish, when I wasn’t before, I’m more impulsive than I’ve ever been, I don’t always think things through, and I don’t have any regrets. I don’t believe in them. I’m argumentative and stubborn, and more than anything, I am afraid. Of myself. Of my life. Of letting the next 30 years pass me by in the same way the past 30 days have. Of living a life and feeling nothing. Of allowing apathy to settle in my veins, of waking up, 50 years old and having nothing to show for it.
I’m scared of the nothingness of life, of how quickly it disappears, and how people can wake up and realise that they wasted it all, working nine to five in a dead end job that they hate, all for minimum wage and a state pension at sixty-five. So when people are asking me if I’m scared of what I’m about to do, I tell them no. I’m not scared of moving, of taking the risk. I’m scared of not doing it. I’m scared to the bones that I’ll chicken out, and next week and the week after and the week after that, and so on, will all be the same week placed on repeat. Because nothing ever changes, nothing ever improves, it just stays the same. And I don’t think I can bear it for much longer. And if I do, I’ll probably end up being one of those women that suddenly break down in Tesco, unsure of how to deal with the choice between tinned and fresh fruit, crying into my bananas in the middle of the tampon aisle. I’ve always been prone to melodrama.
So I’m fed up of simply existing. It gets you nowhere, except a couple of years closer to the grave. I want to start to live, on my terms, in the way I choose, in the place I choose to be.
