I know, I know, before you jump down my throat for using this line in describing myself, since I'm only 29, let me remind you the young & old is a relative description of a person's status & as such cannot be restricted to one age group!
This line barged in on my thoughts returning from work today while thinking (& excuse my mental jump here but I did use the word barge) about the merits of living in hilly green Kent! On a day when London is basking under C30 temperature & 90% humidity I only had to step outside the train onto the platform to feel the difference, the cool fresh breeze was a wonderful change from the artificial coolness of recycled air in the office & the mugginess of the air on the streets.
So I was in the middle of mentally congratulating myself on my choice of location when this intruder line jumped in without any obvious logical connection to see.
So me being me I took my blackberry & started punching in the line & retracing the mysterious thinking patterns that led me to it. If you're wondering, this is how I write the majority of my blogs & that should answer to why my sentences and thoughts are all over the place sometimes.
So back to young @ Heart! I will ask for your patience here for this will take some extra lines to go through. I remember my family’s reaction when I first told them that I'm planning on buying a house outside London! To my parents who spent their entire time in this country centralised in Fulham road, living on the edge of zone 6 (about 27miles away from central London for those who don’t know the “Zone” lingo) resulted in a reaction similar to telling them I’m buying the house in Scotland! They were very polite about it knowing that I’m the one who will be living in the place after all but they didn’t hide their “concerns” about the distance and the daily commute that I will have to follow.
My siblings were more open about it, “why the hell do you want to live outside the tube network”, “1 hour commute every day by train!!!” and the star reply “you’ll be a total foreigner there sticking out like a sore thumb”! well that day has passed and I’ve been living in my house for more than 3 years now, my parents love staying over with me whenever they come, they swear by the easiness of moving out and about and I’m a usual stop point for those on their way to cross the English channel.
Me buying my house was the first “adult” decision I’ve made! You might think that coming over here to begin with was a big enough call but actually it wasn’t, it was a mix of luck and impulses that led me to England and it was a similar set of reasons that led me to my current job which resulted in my settling here rather than returning to Syria after my degree.
That first decisive conscious choice that I made was followed by other, equally important and fundamental ones which resulted in me being where I am today. But here is the trick, I’m a free independent woman, living on her own and shouldering a job and a mortgage but it hasn’t been that long, relatively speaking, when I was the youngest of lot, spoiled in every imaginable way and without a care in the world! that is my “young at heart” soul that had to make a disappearance in a very short period of time for a verity of reasons. Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you see it, it hasn’t disappeared without a trace, it still peaks it’s head every now and then when I shock people (especially those who only know the new me) with something completely out of character.
At the same time, for those who lived with me before, they remember a cheerful young girl without a worry in the world and they expect to see that girl every time they see me! It is a bit difficult at time when people expect you to even talk in a cheerful way every time you’re on the phone, and if you don’t then something is wrong and they have to fix it! It is a hard call to make, do you let them in on the new grown up version of you and let them see the worries and the concerns and all the life calculations that grown ups do or do you keep the young at heart version alive and well in their eyes so that not to cause them any undue concerns?
This has never been easy, a lot of the times, I wish I can go back to my young version, let someone else worry about the big things, the life decisions and the tough choices. Sometimes, the burden of responsibility can be overwhelming and people tend to forget that because one is always putting on a mask of easiness over everything but what is the alternative? Can I go back to being me 5 years ago? No is a very simple and effortless reply, I have so many priceless things because of the past 5 years none of which I’ll be willing to let go of.
Do I forget about my young self that is lurking in the deep, longing to be set free from all these adult demands? Not too sure.
It maybe the biggest call of my adult me, a call that a lot of people had to make at one point in their life. To chose between a life full of pull and push between old and young and a life which is rapidly progressing forward without any emotional maturity ties to its youth.
I’m not sure, but I think that while the former is much more of a rollercoaster ride, the latter is too smooth for my taste, not being able to be childish when I want to is way too boring and way too “grown up” for me!
So the answer at 29 is for now, I will always be young at heart, I will carry the freedom of my 24 self to prevent me from tying myself too much with life’s road and decisions. Young at heart is a safety from being too rigid and too old to see the freshness of a new day and feel the coolness of an easy summer breeze on a tired face waiting at some platform in green, hilly Kent.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
