An 18 Year Old Looks Back On Life

An 18 Year Old Looks Back on Life


Although this is inevitable of all new generations, ours seems to be the most conscious of the importance of adulthood, and how it is something to strive towards. When I was ten my Mum bought me my first makeup. It came in three separate Christmas presents, each one wrapped in a different paper. I opened them in turn and revealed a mascara from Maybelline, a dark pink No. 7 lipstick, a makeup brush, and eye shadow of brown and green. I looked around at her, knowing only she would have chosen this. I was confused and I asked her if they were meant for my sister Jess, who was seven years older than me. She sighed and told me they were definitely for me. I had no idea about how to apply makeup and I had never before thought it was something for me, but now I had it I couldn't help but put it to use. I knew other girls who had begun to, although some with disastrous results. I begged my sister to teach me how to apply the liquid eyeliner I bought out of my own pocket money a few months later. She refused, she didn't have time for me. We didn't get on really. I tried to apply it myself, squinting centimetres from the mirror. I jabbed myself in the eye and that caused me to blink. When I saw myself again the glistening eyeliner was a smudge across my eyelid. I heard my mum calling me from downstairs, saying it was 'time for school' and burst into tears in panic at the thought that I might have to go out into public like this which, of course, did not improve my situation in the slightest.

Ten was a big age for a few months before the actual birth date because Jess had rumoured that would be when I would have my ears pierced. That was apparently the age she had hers done and, having heard that, I felt this to be a plausible notion as my parents usually tried to keep things fair. Nowadays I barely wear makeup, my ear piercings close up often and I have to force the jewellery through till the blood spots on my fingertips. It's mostly because I am incredibly absent minded and can keep track of neither earring nor butterfly, nor can I be bothered to keep a stock of them. The motivation I once had to keep up my appearance when it first became an appropriate thing for me to do has faded and been replaced by other priorities.

A few years later, at around 14 I began to go to house parties and saw girls 'sexy dancing' with their friends. I remember one particular girl who was three years older and a dancer at a top dance school the name of which I never knew. She would pick a friend and perform for us all as the small group of watchers soon transformed into the entire gathering. It was around this time I also discovered beer so it follows suit that I began to give it a go. We felt so mature, we were doing what we thought all adults were doing. We tried to look alluringly at the boys but I often got the impression they looked more uncomfortable than turned on. Now I have reached eighteen I rarely dance like that with my boyfriend and when I do it becomes a joke between us. It certainly still requires a copious amount of alcohol.

We have so much information, a bamboozling amount of information thrown at us everyday. More than ever before, from the internet and the television, the radio, and even from real people in the real world. Yet we take it all for granted because of course we take it all for granted, most of the technology that saturate us with knowledge has been there ever since I can remember. We have so much more than ever before yet we're always bored. Bored of being inside with our technology but outside holds little more to interest. When we meet up with friends, what do we do? We're too old to play, except at video games. To watch a film. To drink. And older generations moan about us because we never go outside, or we're always out partying, we only care about our video games but what else could we have done when its all we've ever known, it has never been a novelty. Whatever else we may be we are definitely a complained about generation.

Another thing often pointed out about us is our materialism but I don't feel we are especially so in comparison to previous generations. Maybe that's just a personal view, as the youngest I have always been queen of the hand me downs. A large portion of my wardrobe has always formally belonged to someone else, usually Jess. My bed sheets originally belonged to a girl down the road and I owned very few of my own toys. I never complained, some of my favourite items of clothing when I was young - a dark green velvet dress I remember in particular - had been my sisters back in the 90s, and I inherited great big boxes of Playmobil from both my siblings. Perhaps this is why I didn't feel so bad when I accidentally broke off a miniature man's arm or snap the leg off his tiny table. My siblings complained that I didn't treat them well enough. Today I shop mostly at charity or second hand shops. The one thing I have always really wished to own, myself, is a bed. I have always had a bed in my bedroom however it has never been a bed either bought for me or by me.

I feel, in a lot of ways, my generation is an apathetic one. I remember sitting around the table at a dinner party my parents uni friends were holding. It was an annual affair between a few of them and they took it in turns to host. I was sat, sleepy and quiet between my parents, as the only offspring present, and I listened to the group talk of their terror growing up in the 60s and 70s. My dad said he remembered 'shitting himself about the Russians and that bomb'. They were all convinced they were going to be invaded any day. I tried to imagine feeling that fear myself, today. 9/11 had to be the big event in my life time, the big act of terror and violence, that created a climate of fear. Definitely an event that changed the world. But it didn't feel like a big event, not personally. Certainly, six year old me did not understand the impact of such an event - I remember having an argument with my mum about why dinner was late that evening. But even 12, 13 year old me, who had been curious enough to understand broadly what the impact of that day had been, did not feel fear when travelling on the underground. Even when the bomb hit the London transport system or even the M&S down the road, it didn't feel like my worry, my problem.

I worried a lot as a child. I was terrified of death, to put it simply. Absolutely petrified. When I was really little it was by, what I saw as natural but freakish deaths; fires, earthquakes, volcanoes (I remember a documentary about super volcanoes having an impact). As I grew up this fear switched to humans and the things they could do to me. It was murderers and assailants who filled my nightmares now.

When I went Drayton Manor High School I was regularly told we were lucky to be at the school as it was the 'best school in the borough'. I wondered often what this could really mean when the bullying was rife and the care the staff showed us was often non-existent. The school's main priority seemed to me to be uniform and where the league tables placed us. The tried their best to drain the personality from us, allowing the arts and extracurricular to fail while a select few subjects excelled. The uniform served this purpose too - blazers on at all times, shirts tucked, top button done up, and a half hour if not. I remember getting pulled over into the deputy headmaster's office for having a 'Ban the Bomb' badge on my rucksack, that ambiguous chant from the 60s too politically charged for Drayton.

I have pretty much always been in top set, except later on for maths. When I was in year 6 I was in top set maths but I found the work challenging and I spent most of the year cheating by copying the people on either side of me. It wasn't my fault, I made the mistake of spacing out once and missing some key mathematical principle. It meant I couldn't do a lot of the other work and then I became convinced I couldn't do any of the work. My classmates soon cottoned on to what I was doing and they used to refuse to sit next to me. I never did cheat in school again, until year ten when a very strict RE teacher set us a test to complete in silence. He was called from the room on some head of department duties and instructed us to continue what we were doing while he was away. Two of us handed out the textbooks and we sat with them on our laps, researching our answers. The teacher checked on us several times but he was always so preoccupied that he didn't notice. Every time he left the room we all shared in the giggling and the shushing, the little rebellion felt like something we had all, as a group united in doing.

I am sad to say high school had killed my love of reading. When I went through stages of unpopularity in the first few years I often turned to the library as a place of solace where I could be alone with my thoughts and the quiet voices of books. When I'd walk out at the bell I overheard mutterings from girls in my year, and even the year above. They were commenting on all the time I spent in there alone, and alone, at that age, meant friendless. God forbid you be friendless in high school. When I was little I'd take a whole box of books to bed with me. Sometimes I'd fall asleep halfway through my selection and my parents would be waken by the crash the box made when it hit the floor, knocked from my side by my moving in my sleep. I read more now, my love of books returned with the end of my worrying about studying for exams. Taking a gap year allowed me to rediscover that I want and love to learn more than anything. Maybe because I did so little and allowed myself to be so bored that now I love having something to fill my time, particularly something such as reading and writing which have always been my true loves deep down inside. My only real, long term hope for the future is that I can keep that need to write, to devour books, as bright and as hungry as it is now at eighteen. That I can craft a space in which I can continue to do both those things for a living and use that skill to build the life I want - the house of my dreams, the items I wish for and the partner and even children of my future. I don't want a lot, and as long as the bed is my own I think I shall be happy.