twenty (25/07/21)

 

20 

(25/07/21) 

Tomorrow I exit my teenage years for good. No suffix that allows me to cheat the beginning of adulthood. A woman. An adult. I remember the little girl in her pink roller skates, scrapping her hands as she reached out to catch herself, miniscule pieces of brick pressed into her palms. I remember the little girl filming herself, talking to the camera as a document for her future self. Demonstrating her interests: dolls, makeup, decorating, and dancing. I remember the little girl that climbed trees, feeling fifty feet high. Hands firmly grasping the branches that overlooked deserted fields and other lone houses in the distant sky.

Oftentimes I think that I have lost the bravery that little girl, with her full fringe and plaits, had many years ago. Now I rely on pills to get me through the day, breaking down into tears more days of the week than not. When I think of the house I lived in last year, my most vivid memory is of me laid on the middle of the floor in front of a portable heater. I was probably crying because I was too anxious. Too sad to stay inside all day, at intervals logging onto video chats with strangers to get a degree.

I remember when I had just turned 18. I stood inside a corner shop in central London with the knowledge that I could legally purchase the drinks that lined the shelves. I saw Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers, standing for several minutes alone in front of it. I had a moment of realisation amongst the paintings that had outlived their painter. Van Gogh lives on, forever immortalised amongst the brushstrokes, the swirls of yellow and orange. Van Gogh was dead by the age of 37. That was less than twenty years away from my age, stood in front of a lifetime’s achievements. But that’s nothing, Arthur Rimbaud stopped writing at the age of 20.

At 19 I have learnt that we go at our own pace. I may not have been able to finish Moby Dick, but I have watched Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels. I have one day until I reach the age Rimbaud was when he dropped his pen, leaving a body of work one could only dream of conceiving. But my life is only really beginning. I am only now taking photos that I think are okay, writing poems that don’t make me want to throw up, I even started volunteering at a picture house. Comparison robs us all, grabs the jewels from around our neck and yanks them remorselessly. The beads fall to the floor with nonchalance, rolling under the sofa, never to be seen again. In just over two hours I’ll enter my twentieth year. My life starts now, I was so stupid to think it was already over.

me by @orvillius on instagram