Growing into my life – a self-indulgent “I am 30” blog

So tomorrow, I turn 30. The Big One (or the first of many Big Ones, each more dramatically Big, with every passing decade from now on). So *assumes caring American psychotherapist voice* how are we feeling about that?

Well obviously, there is a surprisingly persistent school of thought which should have me weeping into my pillow and mourning my soon to be concluded youth and beauty. And it is hard not to freak out just a little bit, to quell the voice within that whispers that this innocuous milestone is really the beginning of the end.

Logically, however, it seems to me to be remarkably precipitous to designate 30 the summit of the ‘hill’ from whence it is allegedly all down from here. I mean, back in the day when a woman’s entire worth was measured in fertility, and even the most fortunate were bidding fair to be pushing up daisies long before 70, it may have made a certain kind of sense. Not so any longer, when living beyond 90 is a prospect most of us can aspire to – if aspire is the right word. Modern medicine’s ability to keep the engine running having far outstripped its capacity to make the journey enjoyable, there’s still a lot to be said for a considered exit somewhere between the first hip replacement and losing control of ones bowels. But there, I’m getting ahead of myself.

For the time being, I am only 30 – barely a third of the way through what I can reasonably hope for in the way of life. Why then the big hoohah, you may well ask (particularly if you are one of my closer friends, who have had to put up with me wailing “Oh God, I’m so old!” at ever more frequent intervals over the past three months. It’s just my little way of reminding you to buy a card).

Well, much like new year, a birthday for me is always an opportunity to take stock, a decade-mind even more so. An opportunity to review, and to plan. So, I’m going to do the self-indulgent thing of considering where I was 10 years ago; where I am now; and where I’d like to be in 10 years’ time. Although I imagine pretty much any of my blogs could be greeted with a “and-I-give-a-shit-becaaaaause…?” response, this one falls so much into that category I would advise everyone except the terminally bored, my mother and my future biographer to give it a miss. I really am – to further wear out the overused and almost invariably untrue canard of would-be authors the round world wide – writing this “for me.”

So, 10 years ago today, where was I, and who? 19 year old Merinne had just started university a month or so ago, after a year of travelling around. She was too scared to go into the University Library because she didn’t know how it worked and would have cut her throat rather than ask, so spent her entire student loan on core texts in term 1. She had been in and out of love with about 15 people in rapid succession, most of whom would never become aware of the fact. She herself was unaware she had already met the man she would be living with 10 years later. She was alternately thrilled to bursting point with her new life (lovely friends! Lovely new city! Lovely new job! Lovely new books to read!) and racked with crippling anxiety about everything past, and passing, and to come. She was quite convinced she was going to have a wild, fantastic, remarkable life, full of grand passions and quotable anecdotes. She was, in short, a giddy adolescent mess. But she would be in the driving seat of my life for most of the next 10 years, and she got me this far, so I feel a certain grudging affection for the clueless dipshit who danced and drank and lost her phone in Po Na Na on November 5^th, 2004. She did alright.

She eventually figured out how the library worked in the later part of 2^nd year. She got a degree in literature she had not the first idea what to do with beyond making a paper aeroplane. She hid out at her big sister’s house for a while trying to figure out what to make of herself. She worked in the call centre of a bank for three months, crying in the toilets about 3 days in every 5 until coming to her senses and getting a job as an NHS receptionist. Eventually, she did another degree, this time in Women’s Studies (can this girl ever pick unemployable subjects!). Having failed to figure out how to turn that into any kind of a thing, she moved to London and set up home with her best-friend-cum-boyfriend in a flat on Seven Sisters road.

There are two shootings on the road within 3 months of moving in. She hates London, especially the tube. There are many many parties. There is a great deal of self-doubt and soul-searching and ambitions that fail to come to fruition. There is an appalling admin job that nearly drives her absolutely mad. And then she remembers how much she enjoyed her library job, and wonders how you go about turning that into a thing. A fantastic job in the Foreign Office Legal Library – she no longer hates London. Yet another degree (this one fortunately on the AHRC), embarked on with a grim determination that this time she will actually use it.

It is around about this point that someone recognisable to me as me takes the wheel – which is not to disown responsibility for everything that went before; merely that it is at this point where my life ceases to seem like a loosely-connected series of interludes and starts looking like something intentional and joined-up, things building on each other to the point I am at now. It was only about 4 years ago that this began. Yikes.

So where am I now? Not where 19-year-old Merinne would have imagined, for sure. But 29-year-old Merinne feels pretty good about it all. I am living in a flat I like, with a man I love, pursuing a career I love more every day I’m in it. I have some truly fantastic friends and family, most of whom I feel closer to than I ever have before. I have some good achievable short-term goals – to get a job I can stay in for more than a year, to charter with CILIP, to buy a flat, to write a book. But what about November 5^th, 2024? Where will I be then, and what will I be doing?

39-year-old Merinne is a stranger to me now, but I feel curious about and responsible for her, as if she were a theoretical child I’m not sure I’m fit to conceive. I’d like to think she won’t be freaking out about the Big Four-Oh – that she’ll be happy enough in her skin and in her life that she doesn’t mind about these milestones any more. I hope she still says “I” when she refers back to me – that the path I’ve been walking for the last 4 or so years continues unbroken to wherever she’ll be standing, that she recognizes me as being fundamentally the same as her. That she’ll be pleased with the choices she’s made, the life she’s living. I’d like to think she’ll be thin and gorgeous and rich as well, but hey, you can’t have everything – I’d settle for happy. And from where I’m standing, here at 30, that doesn’t seem like such an unlikely hope.