Notes For A Life Do Over
A while ago I was on my afternoon lap of the country roads when I passed a girl who was about sixteen. She had her ear buds in but she looked up and beamed broadly at me, a smile I recognised as the one I always used to do to signal to grown ups that I wasn’t one of the scary teenagers, I was a good one. As I smiled back the thought in my head was “god I wish I could switch places with you”.
This was new.
I have always been vehement in my rejection of this hypothetical. Any time I’ve been asked “would you want to go back in time to school and do it all again?” my answer is a long stream of “no, God no, ugh no, can you IMAGINE, no, oh no, no.” Partly that’s because I’m forward thinking and don’t like to go backwards, and partly it’s because being a teenager is really awful (and I should say, partly it’s because I like my life how it is, although I must be honest that this didn’t occur to me as a reason straightaway).
So it was interesting that the merest sight of this plucky girl had my subconscious ready to make a deal with the devil and go back in time.
I think it’s because I’d been thinking a lot about the decisions I’ve made that have led me here, to this exact point in my life. And thinking about how they were maybe…not great. How differently I’d want to do things if I got a do over.
The first set of instructions to my teenage self would be: work harder in sixth form. Spread the net more widely when looking at universities. Apply for proper, paid jobs in third year. Move to London with your friend. Do not, I repeat, do not, commit early to a man too old and not at all nice for you.
These are things that would make everything different now. And of course, I don’t know if they’d be better or worse, but I do know that it’s irrelevant because while their impact still ripples the decisions themselves are dead at the bottom of the lake. Everything that has happened up to now has happened because of them, and cannot be changed.
But it got me thinking about the other things I would say to the remade, younger me. Wear a bikini on a beach, all the time. Tell him that you love him – the friendship won’t last anyway. Befriend your cycle, listen to your body – it has more to tell you, and is more on your side, than your brain. Warm up properly before you play netball in January. Do the writing even if it’s not for something, stick at the blogs. Make more effort to stay in touch. Go more places, even if you’re on your own. Have the conversations. Stand up for what you want.
I cannot go back in time, and I don’t want to do that sweet girl the disservice of shoving her into my life while I get to start afresh in hers. I can’t go back but I can go forward. I can’t tell my past self all those things… but I can tell my current self. I can make better decisions which don’t box me in to a certain trajectory. I can warm up, and I can write the things, and I can make the effort, and maybe I could look into buying a bikini. There’s no do over; but also, it’s not over. There’s more to do.
