*In honour of Taurus season, I’m revisiting a blog I posted for my 24th birthday because, you know, I’m so much wiser now.
The theme of this year for me has been about healing, and in doing so I’ve dug up years of old journals and have been digging in and writing about my past as an attempt to heal my core wounds.
I’ve been surprised, but also kind of not surprised at all, at how smart I used to be. Mostly I’ve been completely smashed open by how overwhelming it is to remember. For my whole life I thought I just had a bad memory, but there is a whole chunk of my life that I’ve suppressed, and I’ve come to realise I subconsciously repress lots of memories, not just the ones my ego thinks are too painful.
So here it is: All The Things I’ve Learnt In Life, with 2019 annotations. *
Another birthday has come and gone and I always get reflective and melancholy around this time – I’m pretty sure it’s been this way since I was about seven so it doesn’t make a whole heap of sense or hold a lot of gravitas.
*Okay, so now I’m at a point in my journey where I’m questioning everything I feel, which makes me happy to know I must be growing because clearly I wasn’t doing this in 2016. I was accepting myself for what I was instead of wondering why I am the way I am. My first instinct as Zo of 2019 is to question why I get reflective and melancholy around my birthday. My initial thought is all of the birthdays my parents missed. Realistically I think this happened twice – their annual work conference always seemed to land around mid-May, and I think once they were in Malaysia visiting my sister – but formative years really seem to mess with your perception of time and importance and how they form you and everything. It seems obvious to me now that in doing this, my 10-year-old brain made the assumption that my parents valued their work and my siblings over me. Adult-brain can rationalise, but the emotional energy has lived here too long to undo the subconscious belief. How has this shaped me?
Now my thoughts go to how I spend my birthdays, and forever the mental image of my birthday has been me in my bedroom (a room disconnected from the house, that was a breeding ground for mould and I realised years later was the reason I was always sick as a teenager..!), alone, because my boyfriend had gone home to his parents (don’t even get me started), on the bed my dad made me and I painted lime green, surrounded by the paintings I did while (usually) high and often with hair dye glooped on top of my head, and my Pretty Woman and Marilyn Monroe posters, obviously, while eating a Veggie Whopper. Why the fuck is this my mental image of my birthday? That’s too hard, let’s try an easier question:
Why have I eaten a Whopper on my birthday for the last 11 years? I’m right now having the realisation it’s because of the association I have with going to my fake grandparents’ house and having Hungry Jacks with them. I think they are the most pure form of being loved, but I think them not being my actual, related-by-blood grandparents has fucked up my idea of pure love and love itself not being real. Interesting.
I should probably visit their graves and/or even acknowledge that Lorraine died at some point. Why am I avoiding that? Because the two people that loved me, that I believed was unconditionally, actually did have conditions because they weren’t actually related to me, but then that brings up questions of what family really is and just because you’re connected by blood or marriage doesn’t mean anything about love, and also, they fucking died so where does that stand on conditions of being loved? How can they love me when they aren’t here any more? How can I apologise for how shitty of a quote unquote granddaughter I was? Why wasn’t I there when she passed?
Right, where were we?*
I’ve learned a lot of life lessons in my years, and thought I’d share in the hope to learn some more lessons from people who are much smarter than me.
*Okay first of all, the number one thing I’ve learnt since writing this is that no one is actually any smarter or has more lessons to share than anyone else. I used to put people, especially business women and entrepreneurs, on these pedestals of epic proportions. Then I met them all and realised that most of them maybe weren’t worth all my attention. But you know who will always deserve all of your attention and will teach you all the lessons you need to learn? Your goddamn self.
Why am I so angry?*
1 – You will meet people who get you.
In high school all the adults told you that come uni, you’d meet people more like you than anyone in your small town. These new people would have wide open minds and big dreams and together you’d have the world at your feet.
That won’t happen.
At least not in the first few years.
But slowly, slowly, gradually you’ll get there. You’ll go from ragers at 17 with 100 people invited to one day sitting down thinking about who to invite over for birthday drinks and realise that the friends you can now count on your fingers are the very people you can spend days on end with, or not talk to for months and pick up where you left off as if no time had passed, or talk to about the entire universe and its meaning, or drink with until four in the morning gossiping about cringeworthy blog posts and making flatbread.
You’ll find your ride or die. When you do, hold on tight.
*Or you know what, don’t hold on tight. Let people go. If they don’t come back, they weren’t really yours to begin with. And maybe you just needed them for a certain season or reason of your life. Don’t waste time loving those who don’t love you straight back. It doesn’t have to be ride or die. I know it feels like it’s ride or die with everyone you meet, especially when your overactive imagination shows you a whole fictitious life with everyone you come across, but it can be ‘ride for this moment in time’ or ‘ride and learn a lesson from this person’ or just ‘ride and see what happens’, or not even ‘ride’! It can be talk or work or walk.
It’s not all or nothing. Just a little bit can be all you need. *
2 – You’re going to get smarter, and braver, and become the person you want to be.
When you were a teenager, you’d often write in your diary journal about knowing the kind of woman you wanted to be, but not knowing how to get there. That’s not gone (yet), but when you think about the years since graduating, you’ll see how far you’ve come with what you’ve learnt, your opinions, the snap-judgement – or lack thereof – when you meet people you wouldn’t have usually associated with. You’ll find yourself doing things your teenage self would never have even thought possible for you.
And that will feel incredible.
*True this. I used to picture this woman every fucking day. I never do that any more. Now I know I am that woman. Day to day, hour to hour, I can step in to her essence and be more than I ever thought possible. *
3 – You must travel.
Sometimes upon returning home you’ll think about the $30K you saved for your trip and wonder if it would have been better spent on a house deposit than a fleeting experience. But you can’t do that. It’s something that you had to do, and something you will continue to have to do.
Those itchy feet and birdlike feelings will return and you’ll still have a yoga mat and a sleeping bag in your car for just in case.
*BIG OOF. Still very this. *
Travel is the biggest teacher, which has its pros and cons.
Sometimes you’ll learn things about yourself that you don’t really want to, but you’ll also always have that time on that bus on the south east coast of England that brought the most incredible clarity and realisations about life, the universe and everything which remains your mantra on bad days. Or the time that Spain was kicking your arse and everything was going wrong the way that everything goes wrong all at the same time and then you saw that painting you’d studied in school and the security guards had to kick you out of the art gallery because you stayed there all day without realising.
Travel. Just go.
4 – You’ll get your heart broken.
It will tear you apart, and with the torn-up scraps of flesh you’ll build yourself again. This time with all the cracks filled with gold.
*Sometimes when things break the pieces will be big enough to put back together. Sometimes they’ll fucking SHATTER. But you’ll learn to see the fun of making an omelette when your egg shell smashes beyond repair. (No, I still haven’t come up with a vegan alternative to this.)*
5 – It’s not what happens to you, it’s how you deal with it.
Some of the best people you’ll ever know are the ones who have had been dealt the shittiest hands – but you’d never even know about it.
*When I wrote this, I thought of dealing with your cards as your front to the world. I’ve come to realise that facades mean absolutely nothing, and you actually need to deal with your shit. Your poker face doesn’t matter; you have to actually heal your shitty hand.*
6 – Retain your naivety for as long as you can.
People will give you things if you just ask. Find that person’s email address. Send them that email. Start that business with no thought of funding or business plans or what ROI or USP means.
If you knew all those things, or stopped to think about what could actually go wrong, you’ll never do it.
Stay hungry, stay foolish.
7 – Actions speak louder than words.
The more you hang out with ‘business’ people, the more you’ll hear all these wonderful ideas for projects that never, ever come to fruition. Talk is incredibly cheap. And boring.
8 – A lot of boys will say a lot of things they don’t even mean a little bit.
9 – Girls will, too.
10 – Give away the things that you need.
You know those days where you really need an extra dose of love or encouragement or inspiration? Give that to other people. You’ll receive what you give freely, whether that’s positive or negative.
11 – The places where you struggle are the places you have the most to give.
You are the expert in the field of where you struggle. Anxiety? Divorce? Time or money management? Even the act of other people simply knowing that you struggle in a similar way to them will be more reassuring and helpful than you could imagine.
*Remember that lesson a few dot points ago about actions speaking louder than words? Do that, idiot.*
12 – If you can help teach someone something, do it.
People who worry that teaching someone else will put them out of a job are not as good as they think they are at that thing.
13 – You create your own luck.
There is such a thing as being in the right place at the right time, but a much bigger thing is having the know-how when you’re in that once-in-a-lifetime situation.
The biggest thing of all is creating those once-in-a-lifetime moments for yourself. See “naivety” and “just asking” and “being brave”.
14 – Things don’t always happen for a reason.
Especially not in the short term. Don’t waste time looking for the deeper meaning. Shit happens, find a way to clean it up.
*OOOOOF. ALL I do now is waste/spend time looking for deeper meaning and it’s made me happier than ever. HEEEEAAAAALLL that wasteland Mama. You can clean the shit up all day long, OR you can find out where the shit is coming from and turn that tap off. *
15 – Women’s intuition is never wrong.
About places, people, situations… anything.
*My unironic first response to this was BIG YEET. Help me. The internet stole my brain.*
16 – It’s okay to be different.
You spent way too long worrying about being different from your outgoing, confident and happy-go-lucky mother and brother. Family trips with other families always saw a lot of time alone in your room, utterly drained and much happier with a book or writing in your journal.
It will take you far too long to realise that you aren’t any lesser, you’re just different.
When you finally figure that out, a whole damn lot of your past will make more sense.
*So much yeet. How much am I going to cringe reading the words ‘yeet’ and ‘oof’ when I do this again in 2022? Christ, how much cringe am I going to feel reading this the minute after I publish it?
I will add though, once you make these connections about your life, keep questioning them. Why did you feel lesser for being different? Because you thought that your mum wouldn’t love you as much as your brother? How deeply has this not-being-enough-ness (or, insert personal underlying belief about yourself that keeps fucking your life up) ingrained in your subconscious? And how can we heal it?*
17 – You need to eat twice as many vegetables as you currently are.
DARK GREEN LEAFIES ESPECIALLY!
*Goddammit past and also present Zo! *
18 – Do what you love.
Maybe not for your job – not everyone can be that lucky, and even a passion can turn into work when it’s your livelihood at stake. But you need to do what you love, every day. Sing, paint, walk through nature, listen to music… joy nourishes your soul.
*Joy nourishes your soul. Fuck, I was smart. I like this a lot.*
19 – You can’t compare your chapter one to someone else’s chapter 20.
And you definitely can’t compare your behind the scenes to someone’s social media highlight reel.
*Just fuck social media in general. And fuck comparison at all. Raise your vibration, create something, have real connections with people. *
20 – Forgiveness is a gift you have to give yourself.
Cue Carrie repeating, “You have to forgive me Aiden!”, only this time it’s you, at yourself.
You’ll harbour guilt about the shitty things you did when you were younger, or how terrible a friend you’ve been recently, or how much work you should be doing. The only way to move forward and get better is to forgive.
*And if it has to be every fucking day, that’s okay.
Side note: Apparently I like public swearing now?*
21 – You’ve survived 100% of your worst days. You can get through one more.
You remember the worst day of your life? When you didn’t think you could possibly continue? Guess what, you did. You can continue through this one, too.
22 – You’ll never have enough time do read all the books you want to read.
Life is too short to keep reading books you don’t enjoy. Same goes for bad wine, uncomfortable massages, sleazy guys with cheesy pickup lines and terrible sci-fi movies.
*Okay, but for real past Zo, give Star Wars one more chance. In a couple of years you are going to have a dog called Padme, pictures of Carrie Fisher above your desk and be itching out of your skin for episode IX.*
23 – You’re allowed to say “No’.
24 – All we have is love and fear. Challenge the fear. Embrace the love.
——
*I feel like I should insert three more lessons, but really, what’s the point? Future me is going to tear me a new one no matter what wisdom I try to impart. Just keep learning about yourself Zo. Get to the bottom of this. Let me know what you find. I’ll see you on the other side. *