The question is not when I became aware that I had moved beyond my youth – it’s a question of whether or not youth ‘ends’. While I know that there comes an indescribable point in life when you move beyond your childhood and embrace being an adult citizen of the universe – I’m hard pressed to realize when that happens. Probably because I’m also a big believer in being young at heart, always have been, always will be.
Too many people are in too much of a rush to grow up, to be completely mature and so end up completely forgetting how to search for joy in the little things. You don’t have to be immature to be youthful, and you don’t have to be trapped in childhood to have the heart of a child.
But none of that is the point.
Have I moved beyond my youth? Yes. I think so. Though I am unsure as to precisely where and when the change occurred. Probably the first time I became responsible for my own bills and my own travel arrangements. In truth though, when I think of my ‘youth’…when I think of the time I was the most free (though far from the most wild), and the most joyous (while also being the most miserable) – I can sum it up in one word: London.
I had never travelled alone before I shouldered that massive dance bag and got on the plane to Europe. Most girls when they move out? They move across the city, or to the mainland. Not me, I moved across the Atlantic. And for the first time in my life I was completely at my own devices, with no one to answer to, no one to tell me what to do. It was terrifying and exhilarating and absolutely key in developing who I am. I remember dropping everything on a Saturday to go to a show that night, learning to ride the underground alone and unaided until I could make my way around that huge city without blinking an eye, and every day finding something new, slipping and sliding my way across the street to college in the middle of an unexpected snow-storm, and trudging home in the pouring rain from working my 3rd wedding of the week at one in the morning.. I worked two jobs and dropped my tips from work into a china piggybank to save up for what would be a magical trip to Glastonbury later that summer.
Those two years were probably the most magical, free-spirited and yes challenging of my life…
But I’m not that woman anymore. I no longer live in a garret in a falling down British flat above an overly-loud and drug-addled barbershop, and these days I’d probably get terribly lost on the London underground…
I hold onto those memories, because they’re beautiful, and they made me who I am. I carry that rose-tinted, Christmas scented version of London around in the pocket of my heart like a miniature snow-globe, but I know that time can only move one way and we must move with it.
So yes, I had an amazing, incredible, youth…I treasure it, cherish it, and look back on it with a pride that turns out the corners of my mouth on a regular basis….and yes…I moved beyond it