From Maiden to Mother

I have this old brown battered case that has followed me from house to house. Often I’ve considered burning it, just burning the lot without even opening it for one last look at the contents, a symbolic letting go of the past and the painful memories locked away in that case.

I’ve been sorting out Tater’s room and making space for his ever growing collection of toys. And in doing this that brown case has resurfaced again, as it does every once in a while, dredging up with it old memories and feelings. Almost casually I decided to take a peek inside yesterday morning and while my other half dressed Taters I amused myself reading snippets of my teenage diaries. Predictably they made me cringe with embarrassment – it was all exactly as you’d expect, the insane crushes on pop stars and older boys, the jealousy and back stabbing amongst the girls in school (I was such a teenage cliché!) I tried to avoid reading my accounts of the bullying I suffered, but I can’t say I need re-read all that anyway, I still carry a lot of it around with me. I wish I didn’t, but there you go. There’s lots of other memorabilia in there besides the diaries, not all bad – there are letters from friends, magazine cuttings of my teenage crushes (they’re always fun to revisit), a sympathy card from my best friend when River Phoenix died. There’s later stuff too from my early days at University, much happier times – valentines cards from the man I went on to marry, a tape of songs he made for me.

Basically that battered brown case is a memory box filled with memorabilia from the most intense periods of my life and whenever I open it, the concentrated emotions that fester within can be overwhelming. That’s why I often think it would be healthier to just burn the thing (perhaps removing the nice things in there first). At the moment it sits hidden away half buried in corners of the house, almost polluting the atmosphere around it.

Anyway after my little meander down memory lane I sat on the bus to work listening to some old albums I’d recently uploaded to my ipod. It wasn’t a conscious decision to revisit my university years but as I listened it was almost like travelling back in time – I could clearly recall dancing in rock clubs to those songs, the thrill of the loud music, the dark room and the smoke machine veiling me, the alcohol and the dancing, the fantastic new friends and sense of belonging at last, I relived the first rushes of love and excitement as me and my now husband started seeing one another. I remembered the newness of life; the turbulent times now behind me, free for the first time, happy for the first time in a long time, the future full of hope and possibility. It was a truly magnificent time.

By the time I found myself listening to those same songs on the way back from work the effect was now somewhat draining. In fact when I arrived home I felt rather depressed, wondering why the memories of both those eras (teenage years and uni) burn so much more brightly than the more recent past? How can it be I remember something more vividly from ten years ago than from three?

I think the true source of yesterday’s malaise was the feeling that I’m losing myself, that girl burning with passion for life back then, packed full of potential and dreams for the future, that she’s fading and all that potential is wasted. In my darkest moods I feel like I didn’t blossom into the woman I hoped to back then and now I’m wilting. It’s partly because the old me is currently submerged in motherhood, struggling to find an outlet to just be “me”. It’s also a lot to do with getting older.

I am very much shaped by that era of my life, scarred by the memories of school I want to forget, moulded further by the memories of university that I try to hold on to; clinging to the same people, trying to do the same things, I still have the same hair, I don’t dress all that differently, it’s like I’m still trying to be the same girl. I supposed I’m scared to change the formula that worked for me. Yet I’m still viewing the world through the eyes of a 20 year old, which makes looking at my thirty something self in the mirror harder and harder. It doesn’t work for me anymore. Of course I’ve failed or “sold out” if I’m judging myself by the unrealistic, idealistic standards of a teenager. Yet here I am getting all depressed because I am viewing myself from that very perspective.

So is it time to burn that brown case and properly grow up? Let go of the pain of school years and the glory days of university. After all these are the new glory days and I hope in years to come they burn even more brightly than the last. But I do think I need to redefine myself as a grown woman. I’m not the maiden now, I’m the mother. Yes this is a new golden era, and there needs to be a new me to go with it. I don’t want to look like a faded version of my old self, I don’t want to be a faded version of my old self. I want a new self. I’ve resisted change for far too long.