Wednesday 30 March 2016

The Plan



I had a plan.

It was a great plan. Everything was figured out. I "had it all together". 

Only I didn't, not really. And the plan fell apart. No-one was to blame, not really. All that matters is that at 24, for the first time in my life, I'm alone. 

Three years ago this would have terrified me. Budgeting, bills, spiders, being ill.. all things I thought I would be scared to deal with alone. As it stands, I've dealt with all of the above without so much as flinching (it's just my car that I can't deal with; no matter how hard I try I just can't work out how to get the bonnet open to refill the screen wash...). 

So now I have a new plan, or the fledgling seeds of one. This summer is going to be a good one. 2016 is going to be the year I look back on and think "yes, that year made me". 

I'm not going to lie and say this isn't still all very new and scary. I won't pretend that my flatmate didn't come home one night last week and find me crying at Super Vet, two glasses of wine down, or that I haven't been binge-watching Suits on Netflix because I've taken to going to bed at 8pm... 

But I'm surprising myself every day. Anyone who has known me for any length of time will know that I'm plagued by self-doubt, which often comes across as an almost burning desire for perfection in everything I do. Anything less was always immediately cast aside and relegated to history as a 'failure'. 

Not so much now. I'm slowly learning to be kinder to myself, to be a little harsher where necessary, to say 'no' but also to love the wonderful people I'm surrounded by with a renewed, raw kind of honesty. 

I'm learning that I'm as deserving of love as anyone else, even when it doesn't feel like it. That no-one's life is as perfect as it might look from the outside and that everyone has a story. That I don't have to win the approval of every person I meet; and even if I do, that they have to win mine too. 

So, I did have a plan. And that plan fell apart. But like a broken mirror, whilst the initial smash is a shock, and you might worry that you'll face seven years of bad luck, when the shards of glass catch the sunlight they are enchantingly pretty.