Married With Kids by Twenty-Two

I don’t know what it is about comic sans, but majority of the time, if I’m struggling to start writing the first draft, switching the font to comic sans just lodges something in my brain, just enough that I can eek out a few words, and a few turns into more and more. One sentence at a time. No over-thinking.

Remember when things’s felt inevitable?

I have often thought about the fact that even as a child, I wasn’t particularly good at being a child. I was shy and self-conscious to the point of tears and in general, fairly high strung. I look back and thing, I could have been so much weirder! Had more fun, made harmless mistakes, said silly stupid things. You’re a kid, I want to reach back and tell them. You won’t be one forever. Take advantage of it. You’re free!

That being said, there are many ways that I did let myself be a kid—things that I suspect are knocked out of a lot of kids earlier. Is twelve too old to have an imaginary world? I’m glad it wasn’t for me.

I grew up playing dolls with my cousin most weekends, one of us being driven to the other’s, lugging around American girl dolls and doll clothes, as if we were packing for a sleep over. Sometimes it was barbies or pollypockets or groovery girls.

We were sisters, me and my cousin, two years older than me. We had our daughters who were cousins, and we usually spent ore time on the backstory than actually playing in the made-up world.

One of our favourites was Cyclone. There was a big cyclone coming, and we were preparing to have to go shelter in the attic/cyclone protection area for a long period of time—the attic being a designated corer of my room. We would spend hours “packing”--making sure we had enough food and clothes and medicine. We would all crowd into the attic, get everyone comfortable, then when the cylcone happened we closed the binds, turned off the lights, and made wooshing and other sounds to imitate a big storm.

Then… I don’t remember what we usually did after that.

Sometimes, we played in the living room, and the couch was our “boat”--again, spending most of the time packing and stocking up to make sure we had enough supplies.

We were always sisters, me and my cousins. Our husbands were always away—at war or doing some other “boy’s activity”. Or, there had been a mysterious disease that had spread and for some inexplicable reason, only killed all the men, The only boy was my cousin’s stuffed frog/son because we liked playing with him. I had a purple frog named Tory. I think Tucker and Tory were twins.1

There was always a way to rationalize things. We could create our own logic.

It was fun to pretend to feel grown-up—it felt like we were rehearsing for the real world.

When you’re a kid, you see “grown-up” as something vague and abstract, a thing you know in theory you will eventually be. It’s a destination.

You assume that once you’re an adult, everything will be okay.

I won’t be shy anymore.

I’ll know how to talk to people.

I’ll know how to express myself.

I’ll be confident and not confused all the time.

I won’t be lonely.

It seemed like a given that we’d grow up, meet someone, fall in love, get married, have kids. Have a job. It didn’t occur to me for awhile that it was a choice I could make.

I did grow up. I met somebody and fell in love and got married (fairly young). I do not have kids, and as of this moment, I’m unsure but fairly certain I don’t want them anytime soon. I currently do not have a job but half the people I know are out of a job right now.

When I started high school and went to a different school than all my other classmates, I thought that would be a brand new start. And it was—but I was still shy and awkward and still myself. Then I started university—now I was an adult. Or not. It was towards the end of high school that my mental health struggles really started, and it carried into university, which ended on a fairly mellow note, taking one extra semester to do one more online class. I didn’t bother going to graduation..

With every big change, every transition, I was convinced that this was the moment when things would change and all my problems would be solved.

My life looks absolutely nothing like I imagined it would. And for the first time as I’m writing this, that realization makes me smile, instead of being a judgement on what I have and haven’t achieved.

I spent years waiting for some grand arrival of adulthood, not realizing that I was already building it, figuring out what a meaningful and fulfilling life looked like for me.

It is picking up watercolours and acrylics and learning how to put paint on a canvas or paper in a way that lights you up.

It’s teaching myself how to draw, realizing that it’s a learnable skill and not some innate ability you’re either born with or without.

It’s waking him up to tell him I need to go to the hospital. It’s him trusting me on the bridge again.

It’s slowly getting over my fear of phone calls and being able to call someone when I start to feel unsafe.

It is slowly believing that most people mean it when they say they’re there for you. It’s giving people to say yes or no, and learning to be okay with either answer.

It’s letting myself get stoned and leaving a long rambly voice message to my online friend group telling them how much I love them all at least once a season.

It’s letting myself say what I mean more often.

It’s realizing how wonderful it is to be annoyed and inconvenienced by people. Please call me at 3am if you wake up from a nightmare with a panic attack. Please ask me to help you move.

It is finding rituals that keep me going and sustain my own momentum.

It’s an equally additive and subtractive process, and one that I am (again, slowly) learning to fall in love with, more and more. The ultimate creative practice.

It’s learning how to be a child again.

Remember when things felt inevitable?

I was eight years old, discussing the future with my cousin as we played with our dolls. We’d probably be married by twenty-two, we reasoned. Have had our first kids. We’d plan it so that we’d have them around the same time. They would be best friends, obviously.

We usually spent ore time on the backstory than actually playing. Or maybe the imagining, the coming out with storylines and scenarios was the playing.

Usually, there was some natural disaster scheduled to occur, and we had to go hunker down in the basement or some sort of safe house for months. We’d spend hours “packing” supplies, lugging everything into the corner of my room we had designated as the safe area..

We were always sisters, me and my cousin. Our husbands were always away—at war or doing some other “boy’s activity”. Or, there had been a mysterious disease that had spread and for some inexplicable reason, only killed all the men.

There was always a way to rationalize things. We could create our own logic.

It was fun to pretend to feel grown-up—it felt like we were rehearsing for the real world.

To be an “adult” was something vague and abstract, something I knew in theory I would eventually be but couldn’t quite imagine, except that it seemed from my child’s point of view that it meant getting to do what you wanted more often.

You assume that once you’re an adult, everything will be okay.

I won’t be shy anymore, self-conscious to the point of tears.

I’ll know how to talk to people.

I’ll know how to express myself.

I’ll be confident and not confused all the time.

I’ll never be lonely.

It seemed like a given that we’d grow up, meet someone, fall in love, get married, have kids. Have a job. It didn’t occur to me for awhile that it was a choice I could make.

I did grow up, inevitably. I met somebody and fell in love and got married (fairly young, too). I do not have kids, and as of this moment, I’m unsure but fairly certain I don’t want them anytime soon. I currently do not have a job but half the people I know are out of a job right now.

I kept waiting for my new start. When I started high school and went to a different school than all my other classmates, I thought that would be a brand new start. And it was—but I was still shy and awkward and still myself. Then I started university—now I was an adult. Or not. It was towards the end of high school that my mental health struggles really started, and it carried into university, which ended on a fairly mellow note, taking one extra semester to do one more online class. I didn’t bother going to graduation..

With every big change, every transition, I was convinced that this was the moment when things would change and all my problems would be solved.

It’s taken me awhile to realize that that’s not how it works.

My life looks absolutely nothing like I imagined it would. And for the first time as I’m writing this, that realization makes me smile, instead of being a judgement on what I have and haven’t achieved.

I spent years waiting for some grand arrival of adulthood, not realizing that I was already building it, figuring out what a meaningful and fulfilling life looked like for me.

It looked like,,,

picking up watercolours and acrylics and learning how to put paint on a canvas or paper in a way that lights me up.

Teaching myself how to draw, realizing that it’s a learnable skill and not some innate ability you’re either born with or without.

It was waking him up to tell him I needed to go to the hospital.

It looked like being able to call someone when I start to feel unsafe.

Slowly believing that most people mean it when they say they want to be there for you. It’s giving people the chance to say yes or no, and learning to be okay with either answer.

It’s letting myself get stoned and leaving a long rambly voice message to my online friend group telling them how much I love them all at least once a season.

It’s letting myself say what I mean more often.

It’s realizing how wonderful it is to be annoyed and inconvenienced by people. Please call me at 3am if you wake up from a nightmare with a panic attack. Please ask me to help you move.

It is finding rituals that keep me going and sustain my own momentum.

It’s learning how to be a child again. How to play again.

It’s an equally additive and subtractive process, and one that I am (again, slowly) learning to fall in love with, more and more. The ultimate creative practice.2

Read it here!