ruining our own lives: part one
I’ve stopped sizing up other women’s thighs. I realised when I was falling asleep last night, it no longer plagues me. And it once did plague me. For years every woman I met only existed in relation to me. Bigger or smaller was step one, and then if they fell into the smaller camp, more or less beautiful face. I usually won the face competition, but that’s something it is unbecoming to admit and something I’d rather not dig into too much because it’s my armour. Maybe it’s because me and my three sisters always decided we won that particular award. Odd though because it wasn’t like our parents showered us with it, and Dad insisted on only taking candid photos where hair was covering our faces or we were eating an apple or sandwich. Looking at the camera was breaking the fourth wall and it sent the camera away.
These twin girls I went to school with had framed photographs of them across the wall that went alongside the stairs, photos of them, through the ages, and they were the kind of photographs taken in studios. Their parents hadn’t missed a year of matching outfits and showy poses. Their popularity and confidence was obvious and the roots were traceable. They also had the golden ticket of attending dance classes since four. Girls who did dance classes through school are given magical powers over the nation. If you understand the eight-count rule of life and can pop an elbow in a snappy sassy way, the world unfolds differently.
So we never looked into cameras, but somehow, someway we took on the whispered memo that we were the most beautiful of all and we never learnt to pose. At dinner last week Harriet said she thought four sisters was spiritual and I realised maybe our awful unforgivable delusion comes from that. It gives quite a robust sense of self to always have three automatic friends who look like you and think you are always right and the world is unjust. Gemma said once she finds it ultimately creepy when people look the same, and I wonder what it feels like to meet us and realise we all speak and move our mouths in much the same way.
Anyway I was talking about my thighs and how they used to plague me and how I no longer think about them. I’d like to think it’s all the healing, self work and evolving I’ve done that’s allowed me to let that go and perhaps it is a bit. But what’s truer is that I’ve found other things more compelling to compare. Don’t worry! I still ruin my own life - just in other ways :)
In general people fall into two camps: people I can be happy for and people I can not be happy for. There are common patterns I can identify and then there’s also just my freaky discernment that is the final judge. Friends are not safe and neither are strangers. For example, certain news arriving in my phone or to my face (horrifying) is not automatically easy to swallow just because it’s about my closest friend. And someone who has been nothing but lovely to me might unfortunately have her name on the black list. And it doesn’t mean I don’t like you, want you in my life or anything like that, it just means I don’t mean it when I say that’s amazing. I actually mean: how dare you do this to me?
The other kooky thing is, I might initially be happy for you and ok with the news but then change my mind at a later date because of that Instagram caption. It’s usually an Instagram caption that does it. I have followed countless authors of books or essays I’ve known and loved, and then found myself becoming annoyed by their human reality and bitter about their success. Confusing isn’t it!
Unfortunately it is probably because of the patriarchy and the whole, she has it so that means there is less for me, but I honestly find it boring reading these points and I’d rather stay with the toxic surface of it all. Funny really how much of a turn off I find it when people get hot and heavy about feminism, but also most likely because of my internalised patriarchal beliefs.
When I was in the second half of primary school my best friend was called Jasmine. She wasn’t from the village and came in from the Garrison in Colchester because her dad was in the army. She lived near the riding stables and her mum had a background in horses so she was way more advanced with horses than me. The other member of the horse gang was Rachael. She lived in the village and her mum was also a horse person and they even owned a horse at the farm up the road. Rachael and her mum Theresa I now realise really let me latch on, I was even allowed to head to the farm early one morning when Millie (the horse) had a foal. I literally saw a one day old foal and life hasn’t felt so magical since, I can remember the feeling exactly - literally goosebumps. Theresa made us minestrone soup and wholemeal bread and nothing tasted delicious in their house but I spent a lot of time there. Rachael and I spent our spare time playing this computer game where you look after horses and make them show jump and we were always a bit chilly and Rachael did not under any circumstances share her Easter chocolate.
They were from what you’d call a very middle class background. Meanwhile Jasmine lived in one of the army houses that all look the same and didn’t have her own horse. Her dad was British Indian and her mum was German and when they moved to Germany at the end of school I went to visit her. It was my first ever time on an aeroplane, I was 10 or 11 and I went by myself. Insane now I think about doing that. A bit like how I can’t believe my parents let me fly to Hong Kong alone at 17 to see my boyfriend who was studying out there. Even more horrifying when I think about how we slept on a random beach one night. Anyway, that holiday in Germany was over the Christmas holidays and it was freezing. They had a stable and a bunch of horses and I can hear the sound of the stiff broom, sweeping straw against the wet concrete floor. And I can viscerally remember having cheese fondue for New Years Eve and it being the worst thing I’ve ever tried and feeling weepy and homesick the whole time.
One day we went out on the horses and galloped across a field. It was the first time I’d ever gone that fast and reader: it feels like flying. After I left, I never spoke to Jasmine again. I think it was too much too soon and it was long before we had phones, so from time to time I try her name in Facebook and never get anywhere. Rachael and I still follow each other on Instagram but probably haven’t seen each other since we were 14. Life. I was jealous of them in different ways. Jasmine because of her wild free spirit galloping across fields on horses, and Rachael because she was the kind of girl who passed the 11 plus and I’m pretty sure she owns property now.
What I’m saying is, girls with raw natural charisma and girls who get everything they want are hard to palate. And that’s just the way it is sorry.
For as long as I can remember I’ve heard about how great things are in your thirties. There was literally endless chat about how it’s the decade you stop caring and just own yourself and all insecurities melt away. Now i’m here to tell you that is not true. By the time I got to 30 my thigh based shit was fairly long gone, so there wasn’t a whole epiphany about that. I also was too sensible and not enough of a wreck in my 20’s to think ‘well thank god that’s all calmed down’. So what snuck up on me was what I believe to be, 30’s: the decade of comparison. And it’s much worse than whether in a photograph I’d look bigger or smaller than you.
Once again I don’t want to get into it but of course it’s a product of SOCIETY and SOCIAL CONDITIONING. And I know I’m not the only woman in the world who googles celebrities to see at what age they had kids. But that doesn’t mean it’s not real and tiring and it doesn’t mean we don’t collectively cheer when we hear Eva Mendes talking about having kids in her 40s. What a relief. And we also love to hear of a struggle. I automatically put you in the people I’m happy for camp if there’s been a struggle of some kind. Because i’m fucked up and feel like that means you deserve it.
Sometimes in the darker corners of my mind and days I think about how I should have had the baby I could have had at 29. And I think about the relief of not having these questions to answer. But the truth is, I’d have had other questions to keep me up at night instead and I’d long for other things like the relationship I have now and all the extra Saturday and Sunday mornings. The benefits of not having kids yet always sound so trivial next to the deep love and purpose that people get to claim when they have them though. Oh hey I get lie ins! Doesn’t really stand up next to: but I know a mother’s unshakable bond now does it.
I don’t have many friends who are boys (can’t think why) but Andy and Tom (who is my boyfriend, yes) they are much calmer about life and they don’t think life is a race (bizarre). And they are not just saying it, they genuinely don’t worry about the timing with which other people exist within. Pretty sure Andy said something about being on our own paths the other day and Tom always always says it’s not a rush and in fact, it’s better not to rush and in fact he actually won’t be rushed. Now I can’t help but get on my high horse of what it is to be a woman again, but what if I didn’t let it ruin so many days?
When I look back at photographs of myself when I was most unhappy with my body, I a) have the luminous beauty of youth and b) obvs weigh about 8 and a half stone. So, go figure.
That boyfriend I went to visit in Hong Kong, George, my first love and a really really great one. Well, he was about 5 years older than me and he had an girlfriend called Hannah. And I am literally not exaggerating when I say I checked her Facebook page every day, twice a day for upwards of two years, honestly could have been four. She became bigger than the sum of her parts, poor love. When her profile became private, I even made a fake one to add her on and the sucker accepted me. The reason I bring this up to close the essay is because what the fuck! What a mad way to ruin my life. I even became invested in her subsequent boyfriends. Once, after a break up she wrote the caption: ‘sometimes good things must end so great things can begin’. I can remember it and the images that went alongside it. Like, what the heck. I once bumped into her in Yates in Colchester and pretty sure suggested we all get lunch (alarm bells).
Some people are more preoccupied by what other people are doing and I think it’s clear I am a little unhinged. Ironically, it’s also why I'm the best and never forget to message a friend on an important day, check in daily after a tricky moment or send quite brilliant voicenotes. See, our gifts are always close to our anti-gifts. I’m in a process of trying to be a bit less available to my friends - I think it’s called boundaries. It’s hard for me, I’m sure it’s hard for us all in our own ways. On a voicenote Nicola said, yeah you need some of that energy for yourself and for your own life. Sometimes I feel so compelled to reply to a message that I tune out of a conversation I'm in with Tom or Beth. Nicola literally stopped me in my tracks, it had never occurred to me that I was allowed to say that, that my life was important too.