I feel like this week I'm doing a bit of work on myself. Going back and opening up some old feelings that perhaps I didn't deal with too well at the time. I've started tapping into memories by playing the music I was listening to at the time.
To walk between the lines would make my life so boring, I want to know that I have been to the extreme.
These tiresome paper dreams
The Kooks - Naive, She Moves In Her Own Way - the year before I went to university
Richie Spice The World is a Cycle, Nick Cave Let it Be, The Beatles Because, John Mayer Waiting on the World to Change, Neil Young Heart of Gold, Alicia Keys Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart, Cat Stevens Wild World, Adele Someone Like You. Sad sad music that I used to listen to on my pink ipod 'mini' (a brick that was thicker than two iPhones) before I upgraded to the fancier version.
Just the first opening chords of U2 - Stuck in a Moment take me back to crossing the border between England and Scotland: as the train crossed the invisible boundary I'd slip from one set of dramas to another, at once comforted by the floating away of the south, and pitched into new angsty turmoil as the train rattled through The Borders.
But the nights you filled with fireworks, they left you with nothing.
I'm finding that playing these songs, the lyrics falling from my lips as if I only last listened to them yesterday, is helping push me back into those past places and feelings and explore what happened. Sober.
The last time, the worst time, my heart was broken so I just ran and ran and ran and ran. I ran to the other side of the world and lost myself in being loud and staying up all night so I didn't have to go home and be alone with my thoughts.
I spent nearly two years in my early twenties just spinning. Spinning round and round and round with a lot of just ok people and a couple of brilliant stars who I still hold close to me. Then I met my husband and I didn't spin anymore. He kept me grounded, but I still wasn't still and we had a fair few years of hedonism together. Now we've reached our quiet times, especially these recent years with the kids. But I haven't used that time to reflect and unpack my old self to see if I even know who I am now.
How far removed am I from that girl on the train who was so confused and so sad? How different is she from the teenage girl who listened to Avril Lavigne and Pink in the park?
I've spoken about Clare Pooley's book, the breakthrough when she finds a school photo of herself and asks - what would that girl want? Now through this old, memory-filled (sometimes god-awful) music I feel like I can feel that younger self. And I can rebalance myself on the pathway she wanted to take, or should've taken.
I don't regret my life. How can I? My wonderful husband, my beautiful children, a really blessed decade of - let's face it - a fair old bit of decadence. But I am finding a raw exhilaration in peeling back the layers that I've built around myself for the past 15 years.
You know that satisfaction when you cry and it feels awful but actually really cathartic? When you allow yourself to wallow in melodrama and self pity (perhaps even checking yourself out in the mirror look how sad I am!)? That's kind of how this feels now. Like a good pain as I shift through a lot of shit I pushed away rather than dealing with.
We used to joke that everyone who lives out here, away from their home country, is running away from something. I basically ran away from it all and now, more than a decade later, I'm finally facing it all. Maybe that's why I finally feel ready to go home.
Who am I?
It's just a moment, this time will pass.
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