Written By Elizabeth Graham
Stop waiting for tomorrow, next week, next month or next year…..
My early twenties were a challenging time for me, of note; I was politely told not to return to university (which is another blogpost altogether!), won £1000 on the lottery and decided I was the small-town equivalent of a millionaire, and bought a house to escape my wonderful but equally challenging parents. Upon reflection I was lost, in a world full of expectation and disappointment however, at the age of twenty-five something happened.
It wasn’t a sudden coming of age, marriage, pregnancy or death, more of a realisation that this was it, my life, and the time had come to value what I had, what I had lost and what may be ahead in the future.
At twenty-five I was onto my second home, having decided I needed a “project” which subsequently translated to money pit…always think carefully before buying a house would be my advice! I was three years into my chosen career as a Police Officer, had a fabulous social life, equal numbers of house parties and nights out, holidays to Ibiza, Italy, France and very few cares. Or at least that is how it looked to the outside world.
Looking back, my mid-twenties was the time when I finally began to accept I didn’t quite fit into any social norm, and I was actually a little different, socially awkward and not entirely comfortable in my own skin.
And that was it, the point in my life when I began to embrace myself, when I stopped caring so much about what irrelevant opinions people had about me and started to “be me”. I found happy places with the most unexpected of people, made friends to treasure for a lifetime and dared to be different, or maybe just dared to be me.
Life changed from there on in, I planted hanging baskets and lovingly watered fuchsia all summer long whilst tickling the leaves to encourage growth and singing along to The Carpenters in my back yard.
I drank Prosecco and my old school friends took the piss out of me because they were still on pints of lager. I invited a stranger to share my home as my lodger and founded an amazing year long friendship built on two females who didn’t realise they were making memories to last a lifetime.
I share my story, in a very abridged version, because I have never talked before about that time when I finally realised it was ok to be me, to let go, wear the maxi dress and have nights out without stiletto heels. I started to find myself and I only wish I had embraced myself at an earlier age…..but I am now in my mid-thirties and I have lost the person I was at twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven.
After that age life got serious; relationships, motherhood, relationship breakdowns, being a single parent in an oh so unaccepting environment of Catholicism. It all took over and the maxi dress wearing care free fun part of me slid away again to be buried under life.
So here is my plea to you, wear the dress, wear the hot pants, wear the dungarees; who cares!! Be you, be your own kind of beautiful in a world that demands we fit into the socially acceptable normal boundaries of life…. what the fuck is “normal” anyway? Embrace your mid-twenties and take that person, in fact no, let that person lead you into your late twenties, your thirties, and don’t loose them or you shall end up searching and hoping they can be found once more.
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