I think that one of the moments, or collection of moments, that I miss the most were the times that I began to practice at adulthood with a small group of friends. All of us tentatively trying to apply observed theory and the idea of how we thought things should look or be as we tried to cook a meal or we went on holiday or undertook a decidedly adult activity like go for a walk or attend an exhibition. Obviously we didn’t realise at the time we were performing at adulthood or we wouldn’t admit that we were patchworking together from books, films and tv shows ideas of how you began to build a picture of a parentally unsupervised life.
There was a nervousness to it all but the shared fact of general novelty that lay across us all calmed us, occasionally astounded by a friend that could suddenly drive (a pursuit for professionals and those with busy schedules previously) or someone that had fledgling knowledge of how to exist as an independent force of self-sustenance.
In hindsight I see, quite clearly, how there was a small gap in proceedings, a lull in the billowing sea of existence at this time. One that is designed for promise and reinvention. Moving through the childhood state and beginning to realise there might be an autonomous identity that I could put my arms through like a warm jumper and wear, should I choose.
I had a few of these moments, fairly interrupted by my own personal (and apocalyptic) approach to self-care, but I remember how full of people they were, and curiosity, joy and grace. We didn’t expect each other to know yet, we were all reaching a threshold of invention that can be a lonely casino of rolling dice. Fully unsure of how the chips land, but nonetheless with others alongside us, turning up.
Life gets real. These alien practices become the necessities of the mundane. The great peaks of having a driving license become mechanical issues on the side of the M25 when your phone dies and the great strangeness of newness becomes the routine of the rest of life. But the practice at adulthood had turned into effective patterns of behaviour that look very much like those of the ‘functional adult’.
I’m not sure if it’s the hope and the very possibility of something exciting, of me being able to become something or somebody exciting that was there and that I miss. Or if it’s the actual practice of stepping through into a new phase of existence with so many others, as the journey becomes much more staggered after that.
So was it hope, was it novelty, was it the connection and community, was it the grace and patience at maybe the world knowing we were all new to this? Was it imagination rather than necessity that made it joyful? Was it trying to exist? Was it the strive to be real?
They really are snapshots for me, ones I regret not having more of, snapshots of innocence.
Re-learning how to live, trying to summon up a desire to exist was the next phase of my life. One that didn’t come naturally, quickly or wildly successfully for some time. I felt like a failed human prototype, born without the core coding that makes people able to happen and terrified that I had missed that class on a rainy Thursday morning and will forever be without.
It did become the core tenet of my wellbeing, years afterwards, when I realized I had to step my way into the surreal ballroom of my own reality. I had to show up. It sucked.
No pretending, performing or innocent burnt dinners. A steep precipice with a 4,000 word manual for life carved into a rockface in a language I couldn’t read.
As I sit here and write this I can’t help but realise that what I’ve been trying to do with my clients and in my work is help people find the joyfulness in their existence because it eluded me at the time. So much of where I work is at this stage, hoping that those I support will become interested in who they might be.
Thank you, to all those who were interested in who I might become before I was.
