I wrote this entry last night as it was too late to go on the netty but I felt obliged to write something. I guess was in a very pensieve mood to make working at McDonalds into a metaphor of personal growth! God I was a bit gushy wasnt I?
Well even if it is a load of poo it did come from the heart at the time - and how! It is about 2000 words long. My goodness I wrote more in an hour than I managed to write for my English project at AS. :s
Hehe. Well here it is anyways:
I recon today is actually the final day of my childhood.
It just makes so much sense...
Today I have severed the final tie that binds me to the life I have lived here in Doncaster for the past 18 years. I am talking of course about finishing my last shift at my job at McDonalds today. It was a strange shift actually with me having the unusual job of window 2 - the money taking window at which usually only newbies and spare parts are chosen to do the job. I guess that is kind of symbolic of the way of things there. We are all but little seedlings to begin with lost within the great expanse of the earth, thrown in at the deep end with not a clue of what to expect, what to do, what to take in, what to ignore, what to become. We are pointed in the direction of the surface by the more experienced people, but the journey itself is only one you can make on your own.
Every moment you are there you take in tiny details - exactly how many millimetres to move your hand to stab in £20.00 in one swift movement, adding or taking an extra word in to your set customer repertoire for maximum efficiency, trying out new ways in which chunks of information can be recalled in bigger and better ways, figuring out which rules are there to be kept and which are simply formalities. Every little bit of what you do you take in and use and so working there becomes the sum of your experience. We who have done this week in, week out can give the new seedlings pointers but there is so much to take in it is simply not possible to pass your knowledge on and so on my last shift I was assigned something simple to do. Perhaps to allow myself to feel like I have achieved something, to remember how far I have come from the meek and lost little soul I began as.
I don’t think I made a single mistake today - surely a record in itself. I even spotted that a £20 note was fake - something I have never faced before. The shift was strangely easy and quiet for me. Things just looked and felt different somehow. As I saw the tears welling in Kirstie’s eyes I began to wonder why that was. Was it that she was simply frustrated at the things going wrong on the job for her - after all we all get emotional on shift when there is so much pressure and one thing after another goes wrong. I wondered if perhaps she was upset on that level but also because she knew that this is what her life had become, and perhaps what it always would be. After all she is at uni but that so often does not help out the managers at McDonalds and they end up just keeping their jobs where they are. Maybe she was crying for the future, maybe for the present or maybe for the past that she looked back on so fondly. Maybe she just had a moment in which she could see where her life was going, straight down the line, on a train she cant get off if she leaves it much longer.
Maybe it was just something else. I guess I will never know.
What I do know is that the past few weeks have been the most bizarre and extreme of my life. Everybody and everything looks so different as to how it did just 2 months ago. My life is like a new life - like I am on the path to the life I have always wanted, becoming the person I always wanted to be. What does it do to a person when everything a person has ever known - their whole way of life suddenly ends after 16 years? Since the age of 2 at nursery it has all been about learning - understanding, preparation for something bigger - infant school, junior school, secondary school, sixth form, university. Everything is just a step to the next thing. Learn, test, succeed, repeat. It is the life I know and the life I am accustomed to and now that is just not there any more.
They say you don’t grow up till you leave home and I think they are right. How can you know who you are until you have no constraints and no responsibilities to hold back who and what you are? I think that is where I am now.
Its like fate has made the transition for me - as I came towards the end of my school life and had nothing to challenge me, to keep me ticking over from late June to late September, fate saw fit to deal me a helping hand in an ugly disguise. My mother fell ill and suddenly I had so many new challenges to face. For the first time I was the one in control. I truly had the responsibility of others and myself.
My Mum in her illness became dependent on me for the first time which at first I found very shocking and upsetting. Then as my Dad had to go away to work I had to assume responsibility for all the things I had never even had a taste of before. Firstly I was truly responsible for myself for the first time - of course I don’t answer specifically to anybody. My parents have always granted me generous amounts of choice and do not breathe down my neck at all. I do of course have to bear them in mind daily by coming in at a sensible time so as not to disturb them, keeping things in places where they wont get in the way for them, not doing things that would make them worry excessively about me. The moment my Dad left the drive in his car that was gone. I would look after myself and answer only to myself for the first time ever. A liberating thing indeed.
I assumed responsibility for my lovely cats Ollie and Oscar. Suddenly I couldn’t just pet them when I felt like it, I was in the thick of it cleaning up things that before I didn’t have to imagine, dealing with mangled animal corpses, getting up early so that to feed them and let them out and worst of all getting them inside at night, God that was a challenge! You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to get a cat through a door if they didn’t want to come inside. I resorted several times to leaving trails of treats, sleeping in the living room with the patio door open and a sword in my hand just in case or simply grabbing them and taking a good clawing.
The housework was certainly an eye opener but a good one. I now love ironing - there is nothing quite as therapeutic as gently working out the creases in a piece of clothing and thus restoring it to perfection, especially when listening to your favourite songs with the bass on full, rattling your teeth and singing like a banshee!
I guess most importantly I was left in charge of Mum. Of course she can look after herself but I am sure that having me or anybody come and visit her when she was feeling truly terrible must have helped her out. I was now a commuter as well!
In all I actually enjoyed my new lifestyle being a full time housewife, mother to two mischievous little cats and taking care of my Mum. It was really very liberating. I love independence and that was it in its purest form.
I also discovered just how brilliant all of my friends are. They were all so supportive but also stepped back and left me loads of space for me to just do my own thing. Spending so much time with Keith was certainly an eye opener. I really got to know him so much better, like I used to and we are now really great friends again rather than the occasional recro buddies we were becoming.
Man I love all of my friends so much. In fact I just want to thank them all right now!
Tina - you and me can talk about anything in the world and you know that I would climb mountains for you matey! You and me really are two peas from the same pod even if we didn’t realise it before! Peace to you imzadi.
Keith - You are my rock. You always go out of your way to help me and everybody else out and you are so damned funny! You are my 3rd bro! Could anybody else really just end up living at my house for 5 days without us noticing?
Kat - You know me so well you often know me better than myself! You always see through the façade and can tell what I am thinking, which although can be scary you always say exactly what I need to hear. You tell it like it is when nobody else is brave enough but you are never cruel. You give me a metaphorical slap when I need to come down! Thanks for being so honest and so supportive.
Scott - I haven’t known you long, but in this short space I you have been really supportive and a great laugh. You aren’t just Kats boyfriend I consider you one of my close friends and really like spending time with you. Although you sometimes go into more detail than I would like in some areas (heehee), I love your honesty and generosity. Thanks :)
Mike - Don’t you just love the internet? Without it I doubt you and me would be good friends! I know you probably think that our conversations are a bit one directional but that is not true at all. All of the things that worry you worry me too, and by attempting to give you advise you confront my demons . You always listen to what I have to say even when I talk shit. Who else reads my blog regularly! I really value you as a friend as you are always there for me when I need to talk. In fact, by listening to my moans and by reading my blog you probably know a side to me that maybe nobody else does. Thank you :)
Becky - Although you missed a lot of what has happened to me recently, you still have provided me all the support you possibly could. You offer me support in a different way that other people often forget. When things get tough, you always need a sense of normality and some stability. Without this, how could we keep going? I remember when things got tough for you a couple of years back you told me that you just wished people would stop treating you differently and let you keep going and working through your pain and I really empathised with you. Thanks for doing the same for me J you are my oldest friend and so you know me in ways that other people cannot. Thanks for sticking with me all these years :D
I love you all guys so much!
I will stop this sentimentality as it seems like a letter of goodbye and it isn’t. I wont let it be.
To come full circle, I think today was the last day of my childhood as not only have I left my last responsibility outside of my family, my Mum should (fingers crossed) be out of hospital tomorrow to make the rest of her recovery at home and thus that concludes that challenge.
I feel like I have grown up now, that I have life experience. People have commented that I seem more confident, more independent. I feel I have more perspective. I guess it just shows in the little things. I know I certainly surprised a few people at work a couple of weeks ago when I started speaking my mind more and being assertive. I guess when your work is just a small part of your life you treat it as such.
I am ready now for life. Before I thought I could do it. Now I know I can. If I can just keep in this mindset I know that I can go far in my career and achieve everything I want to achieve.
Farewell childhood. You have been a beautiful adventure full of little joys.
Enter life, what shall be an epic journey mine for the shaping…
Lets do it. Lets live.
