for her
I got my nose pierced recently. It’s something I’ve been thinking about on and off for the past couple of years but I could never be bothered to deal with the hassle of it. It went well. I mean, I was so nervous I broke out into a full-body sweat, but the lady that pierced a hole into my flesh was very understanding about having to hold me still while I trembled like a jelly.
Anyway. I keep looking in the mirror at my new piercing, and it reminded me of the time my sister gave me a pack of stick-on body gems, and I would attach them to my nose and imagine being a cool teenager. Suddenly I found myself rocketing back in time to my childhood.
In my memory, I am sitting cross-legged on the floor in my bedroom. One of my sisters (Lisa) has given me some old CD singles. I remember this being in Hastings, but it must have been really close to the end of living there, so sometime in the late nineties, because we didn’t have a CD player until then.
Anyway, I remember sifting through the jewel cases, enjoying the clicking sound they made as I stacked them on top of each other. Alanis Morisette. REM. Natalie Imbruglia. The Rembrandts. My middle sister (who would have been maybe 16–18 at the time) was my gateway into an older, and much cooler world, one where you listened to music that might have swearing in it as opposed to S Club 7.
I wanted to be her so badly. At the time my biggest sister was grown up enough to have left home, and my middle sister was my reference point in terms of what it meant to be a teenager. I loved everything about her life: the cool shoulder bag she took to college. The complicated-sounding homework she had to do. Her long hair. Her Saturday job at the Haven Holiday Park gift shop. The little stick-on bindis she used to attach to her forehead (before everyone realised this was cultural appropriation). The crop tops she would wear on a night out. The music she liked.
Everything about her was grown-up.
And I wanted to be a grown-up.
I look at my own kids and see the same impulse in them. Developmentally, it makes sense. They’re always striving for independence. But still, there’s something kind of sad about how fast it seems to go. I feel so tender towards that version of me, and the version of my daughter that will be here soon. That quietly bold, naive, slightly clumsy phase at the end of girlhood, where all you want to do is be taken seriously by a world that sees you as a kid.
I liked listening to Alanis Morisette. I liked her raw anger, although I couldn't really comprehend what she was screaming about. It was nice to visit her world. It was nice to listen to Torn by Natalie Imbruglia too, allowing myself to feel her sadness for a moment before returning to the safe, marshmallowy haven of Never Had a Dream Come True.
But of course, being a grown-up was not what I imagined it to be. For starters, I don’t consider a 16-year-old to actually be a grown-up. But also, a lot of it is just not fun. At all. Grief and heartache and bills and gas prices and family stuff and emotional issues come at you thick and fast. At times everything is so serious and draining that I think I have forgotten how to actually have fun. Sometimes I spend almost my entire day just sitting here staring at my computer and frowning.
That is NOT what I signed up for, thank you. Being an adult gives you freedom in one hand and snatches it all away in the other. They don’t warn you about that in schools. I could have done with learning about actual life as an adult, instead of algebra or whatever.
I look back on that version of me — frizzy-haired, probably wearing shorts and one of my Dad’s t-shirts, admiring my new CDs and wondering if this would finally be the thing that made me more like a teenager — and I wonder. What would she think of me now?
Would she find it cool that I am quite mumish, that I tell my kids the same annoying things my mum told me, and that I like to get to bed at a reasonable hour?
Probably not.
She might like the nose piercing though.
I don’t know, I just feel like I owe her. I owe her more fun. I owe her more of my life lived in the abundant freedom of choice that I now have (within the obvious limits). I owe her my joy.
Sometimes I do fun things that are completely unnecessary. I listen to music too loudly in the daytime while the kids are out. I play video games instead of doing housework (well, sometimes). I go out for drinks with my husband and wonder how I am going to escort him home safely on the bus without either of us falling into a ditch. I take my kids to the park and swing as high as I can go, even if they’ve wandered off to go on the slide together (probably because they don’t want to be associated with me).
And I do all those things for her.
I should do more of them.
