The end of the innocence...

22 Feb 2007

I'm going through a bit of a change at the moment. My hair's going gently grey, and the dreaded THREE-OH has now appeared on my doorstep. It's wiping it's feet on the doormat, ready to enter my life whether I like it or not. I've only just realised I'm not likely to be a rock star and I'm certainly not going to be an astronaut. I spend much of my time, between frantically busy bouts of work, daydreaming about youthful dreams like these and all I do all day is moan about my lot in life. With the gradual receding of these dreams, comes another, scarier thought: that none of us are invincible; eventually I'll have something real to moan about and that's really scary. So I sit, quietly and frown, and I've even been given the nickname 'little rain cloud' because of it. I sometimes tell myself that I've lost my joie de vivre.

But if that's the sum of my problems, then I really should be ashamed.

A friend of the family got diagnosed with a brain tumour the year before last. He's gone through quite a significant change in appearance due to the steroids in his treatment. I can't begin to understand the daily pain that him and his family has gone through over the past 16 months or so. They've just been told that they're likely to lose their house, as they can't keep up with the mortgage. There doesn't appear to be anything they can do about it, and it strikes me as being really unfair.

I saw a girl with two heads the other day. Not in real life, but in a documentary on Channel Five earlier in the week. The girl(s) was sixteen years old, and lead a relatively normal teen existence, but with two necks, and two heads. It had to be seen to be believed. We were talking about it at lunch yesterday, and one of the chaps I was with pointed out how all that most girls had to worry about was their hair or their weight - this seem like something so insurmountable it was a wonder they didn't just curl up and go mad.

It was our anniversary on Sunday. Nine years ago I met a beautiful student named Rachael in Southampton and we've been together ever since. I look at her, across the room, watching 10 Years Younger on the box, wrapped in a white faux fur throw and find myself wondering what I'd do without her and hope I never have to find out. I asked her to marry me last year and I was simply overwhelmed when she said yes. I look at her and realise that my joie de vivre isn't gone, it's just hibernating. I look at her and, in fact, I need to finish now, there's a space next to her on the sofa.