Tinkerbelle

It was my birthday this week, so last weekend I celebrated the final days before I turned twenty five and said goodbye to the heady days where I was closer to twenty that thirty years of age. Christ!

I honestly feel that, like fine wine, as I get older I get better. I feel better, and I have more of a sense of myself now than I did when I turned twenty. But it’s funny, because when I turned twenty I was living in a shared house, and now, at twenty five, I am back in the nest with papa.

At twenty I was in an already long term relationship, I was managing people in my job and I spent my days as a makeup artist, painting the faces of old ladies and wishing they were more adventurous than the standard browns and reds that they requested. I dreamed of using their faces as easels and creating my own masterpiece in bold colours and sharp lines. It wasn’t to be. My nights were spent dining with my best friend and her husband; watching tv and playing with her two year old. I went clubbing every weekend, returning home as the birds began to sing and the sun rose, and slept the weekends and my days off away. I was happy, but I was young.

When I was in America my seventeen year old cousin commented about how old I was, and it made me think. Am I boring because I don’t drive, singing along to my music with my hands off the wheel? Nope, dead has lost its cool in recent years. It really limits what you can do! But I have changed, and in five years my world seems to have spun on its axis. I now live at home, I write for a living with my job (although it’s not the sort of writing I love. The words stick at the end of my fingers and I struggle to put the thoughts to paper, writing about things that don’t excite my mind, rather than the writing I do out of love where sentences wrap themselves around my teeth and the world bubble out like steam from a kettle. They distort and twirl, and I often have to go back and re jumble the intricate web of undulating words.) and my best friend now resides in Brisbane. She has another baby, and a third on the way, and I feel like we held hands at our crossroads, but she went left and I went right, and our paths have never rejoined.

If I could go back five years, would i? Absolutely not. I know what I will and wont do now and Im far more able to say what I think. Don’t get me wrong, at twenty I was forthcoming and forward, but now im less trappy and more confident in quietly believing what I believe in. I don’t follow a crowd and I stand up for what I believe in.

“Belle,

Don’t worry too much about things not going to plan. You’ll soon learn that they weren’t right for you anyway. Be a bit better at not worrying when plans don’t come to fruition; if you just go with the flow you will find yourself a lot happier, and life has a funny way of doing what you don’t think it will anyway. Let go of hurt and hold on to happiness; stay in touch with the people who enhance your life and let the others fall to the wayside. Don’t stick with friends out of duty; some people will hurt you despite what you give to them, and that’s just human nature.

You can’t always be healthy, but be happy. Strive for the best and push yourself; there is nothing rewarding about complacency.

Be humble and thankful, youth often causes a lack of respect when you think you know the world; but you don’t and one day soon you will need your daddy and what your granddad has to say. They have lived the life you are just stepping into, so at least listen to them. They won’t be there forever, and one day when you fall they won’t be there to catch you. Take the time to be polite.

Hold your sisters hand when she needs you. She has your back forever.

Lots of love, your old granny self.

x”

Tags: birthday, blog, dailies, funny, just sayin, personal, postaday2011, postaweek2011