Chapter 15
15
CHOOSE LIFE
It’s almost seven by the time I get home. I use what little reserves of energy I have left to take Daniel out for a quick wee, feed him, and drag myself upstairs and into the shower. I’m too tired for the performance of a lifetime and Lizzo dance routines, so I simply switch my audiobook on and shower while the softy spoken narrator regales me with a tale of reinvention and true love. The now very tired and definitely very needy cynic in me mocks the romantic prose and the author’s assertions that everyone can find the missing piece of them that makes them feel whole again.
I believed it once, I suppose, but now I wonder if anyone on this earth ever feels completely happy and content? The nature of life is such that things always change. It’s foolish to get too comfortable or to assert you’re finally happy.
People die. Children grow up. Pets die. Jobs are lost. Husbands have affairs. Friends make choices that have catastrophic consequences for the trust you had in them and we, us adults, get complacent about just about everything. We stop looking at the world in the same way we did when we were sixteen and full of hope and expectation.
God, I remember how excited we were just to grow up, my friends and I. As if we thought the process of ageing was all that was required to give us everything we ever wanted. We had it all mapped out – and by ‘it all’ I mean our twenties and thirties because we didn’t really think too far beyond that. Very few teenagers lose hours fantasising about turning fifty and going for their first mammogram or joining the NHS bowel screening programme.
We’d go to ‘uni’, as the characters in Neighbours called it. It was only known as university before we all became virtual residents of Ramsey Street and picked up the Aussie slang.
After graduation we’d live in fancy apartments together like the characters in Friends – not flats, flats weren’t considered glam – and life would be one big sleepover with big cups and purple walls. I was the Monica of the group, Laura the Rachel and Niamh was Phoebe, of course.
We imagined we’d spend our free time hanging out in chic cocktail bars and coffee shops. Booking girly holidays to Spain and Greece and getting our nipples sunburned under azure blue skies before plunging into crystal clear waters. We’d work hard and play hard – and let our hair down going clubbing. Choosing life as the Trainspotting soundtrack encouraged us to do, without really taking in the fact that the lyrics to that particular song are actually really bloody depressing and, it seems, prescient.
We didn’t notice because we were too busy shouting and dancing in clubs through the late nineties – getting knocked down, and getting back up again, dancing while shouting ‘lager, lager, lager’ over and over again, even though we didn’t drink lager. We were the original Bacardi Breezer generation. Pass me a couple of Lime Breezers and I was happy as a clam. We were the generation who grew up with girl power soundtracking our late teen years, and we believed Madonna when she told us that it would all be good if we just expressed ourselves.
But now, without realising how fast the years were passing, we find we’re hurtling towards fifty and standing in the shower with greying pubes, stretch marks, and boobs that are starting to sag. That and the knowledge that we have ended up with only our own company to look forward to. Of course, that last one is deeply personal to me – the divorcee of our ensemble who has realised it has been years since I last had sex, never mind made love. The phrase ‘making love’ used to give me the absolute ick but now I’d kill to have someone make me feel loved, and desired. Damn it, I’d settle for a grope behind the bike sheds these days – something to give me that flutter in the pit of my stomach and to remind me that I’m alive and not a dried-up husk of a sexual being.
We never did live in a fancy apartment or get sunburn on our boobs – the latter not necessarily being a bad thing. We clubbed a bit, yes, but those years went so fast it’s hard to pin down the memories of them now. It’s all become a blurry montage of sitting drunk on a pub toilet feeling the music pound through our bodies, and standing in taxi queues regretting the open-toed high heels we were wearing. It’s the hazy memory of the time we invented the term ‘chipulary burns’ when our post boozing sharing bag of chips on the walk home was much too hot. We used that expression a lot, and fondly, until we didn’t any more, because we got into the habit of blowing on every single bite of food instinctively in case it was too hot for tiny mouths. This would become such a part of our identity that we would do it even if our children were nowhere near… or grown up and moved out.
We had jobs – careers even – and got married and had children, and the sense of routine we so looked forward to rebelling against in our teenage years became a survival essential. We prayed – and still pray – for the boring days and for a lack of drama, because life teaches you that drama is rarely a good thing and at times it feels relentless and you wonder how you’re still standing.
But then you, as in I, get out of the shower and dry off, slipping into your comfiest pyjamas and woollen bed socks, slather on age-defying, criminally expensive face cream and don’t allow yourself to think any more about what is now firmly vaulted in the past never to be repeated.
You plod downstairs, order the damn pizza you’ve been looking forward to all day and you eat it while watching Casualty on iPlayer and the only thing you allow yourself to worry about is that that you seem to be developing real feelings for Ian the paramedic.
Before I go to bed, I send a quick message to Saul, feeling guilty that I was annoyed earlier at his fecklessness. I tell him I love him and I have his back. I tell him we’ll have a good chat about his finances when he comes home for Christmas. Then I message Adam and tell him that I’ve sent him enough money to cover the cost of his flight home too, even though I know he has already booked it. I feel guilty that I have given money to Saul and not him as well, so this goes some way to tackling that guilt.
I pop a message to my mother to tell her she is to call me in the future if she needs anything and she’s not to risk going out in the ice or snow. The last thing either of us need is for her to break a hip. I’ve seen it on Casualty before, older people breaking hips and that marking the start of the final decline. Of course I tell her I love her but I don’t tell her just how much I need her because it will only start me crying again.
Then I try to sleep, but it seems to be escaping me for now. There are too many thoughts dancing around my head and not one of them is conducive to a good night’s rest. My pizza sits leaden in my stomach and I try not to think about how many calories are contained in the average twelve-inch pizza. I left one slice – a really skinny one – just so I can tell myself I wasn’t a complete glutton.
It comes to me that I read once if you can’t stop your mind racing, it’s good to get your thoughts down on paper as at least that is them out of your head. It’s worth a try, I think, sitting up in bed, switching on the lamp and fishing in my bedside drawer for a pen and a notepad.
I figure if I’m going to do this I might as well do this right, so I scrawl today’s date at the top of page and then I begin. If a letter to my future self got me into this state, then maybe a reply can help pull me out of it.
Dear sixteen-year-old me,
First of all, you should know we go by Becca or Becks now. Mum still insists on giving us our full title of Rebecca. Or Rebecca Louise Burnside if we’ve done something to annoy her. (And yes, we are still a Burnside. We weren’t for a while, but we reclaimed it about ten years ago. That’s a very long story though – maybe best kept for another time.) Anyway, we dropped the Becki with an ‘i’ when we went to university to study journalism.
It was around that time we finally started drinking too, you’ll be relieved to know. Sobriety does come to an end for you and for a while you embrace the clubbing lifestyle. With Laura and Niamh. Yes, you’re still friends but it gets complicated a little in the middle. That’s another one best kept for another time.
I’ve read the letter you wrote me and placed in the time capsule. I’ve reminded myself of all the hopes and dreams we had when we were younger. I think maybe we were a little na?ve…
Nope. I score through that last line. I don’t want to dash young me’s hopes before I’ve even got started.
The truth is that life kinda got in the way…
Nope. That’s not right either. I have to keep this upbeat!
Sadly we did not marry Fox Mulder but we do still have all our own teeth so that’s a win, eh?
I score through this line as well, and the rest of the damn page. I think of my list. Of how I’m already intimidated beyond words at the thought of stepping into the dating pool once again. How even a relatively small trip might be beyond my financial means just now and for the foreseeable while my children navigate university and the ridiculous expense that comes with it. I think of all this and I’m tempted to tear all the scrawled-on pages out and roll them up to use as kindling to set fire to the clothes of doom, but then I think of Becki. I think of how I could imagine her vibrating with happiness earlier and I know that I’d be letting her down if I give up this easily.
I know I’d be letting me down if I give up this easily.
I don’t need to write her a letter. I just need to give myself a good shake.