Packing

Every time I get to a point where I think I'm wiser, more mature  - that I've changed, grown, developed, blossomed (this all thought while staring wistfully out of a window at a carefully selected spot of blank sky, obviously) - something happens to prove that I'm definitely not. Sometimes it's big - a horrible decision, or a stupid comment, or something expensive broken or lost because I'm too lazy/distracted to look after it properly - but often it's not: it's simply little tiny pieces of evidence that prove that very little blossoming is happening at all, no matter how much time and effort I'm putting into staring at the buds and willing them to do something other than fall off the tree.


I am currently sitting in my flat, trying to pack. When I say trying to pack, I obviously mean: looking at a disgusting mess of clothes and hair grips and orange juice cartons and half empty shampoo bottles and plates of pasta covering every single inch of floor, shelf, table, chair, and doing to my best to force them - with the power of my mind - into a large pile that the power of my mind will then happily set on fire and dance around, laughing hysterically. I am not an adult at all: that much is clear. Every time I get up to 'pack', I half-heartedly fold a jumper in half, put it on top of something else - knowing full well that I'm just going to have to pick it up later and refold it and put it somewhere else - get bored, and find something else to do: make a semi-scrapbook of receipts and stickers, or draw a picture for no reason, or send an email, or... you know, write a blog. I can't make myself do it. Worse: even though I know, with utter certainty, that I am nearly 30, that I am completely on my own, and that my flight back to the UK will leave without me on Friday, I am still a little bit convinced that somebody is going to come and do it all for me. I don't know what time I need to be at the airport or any idea how to get there, I have no tickets, I have only just found my house key after leaving my flat unlocked for two entire weeks (sorry mum), and I appear to have left my iPod in a curry house somewhere in Yokohama, but I can't remember which one. The washing up is not done, the fridge is full of food I cannot and will not eat in two days, everything smells like yoghurt - apart from the yoghurt - and I have no idea how my boxes are going to get to Miyazaki because staring at them hopefully doesn't seem to be moving them very fast at all.

I had so much hope for myself: that, in my 8 months living solo in a strange country, I would become self-sufficient, grown up, mature, responsible, tidy, neat, capable. That I would learn to wash up like a grown up, and maybe enjoy it like a grown up (or whatever grown ups feel about washing up: I don't think I really understand what motivates anyone to ever do it), and not lose things like a grown up, and organise my own life like a grown up. Do my laundry like a grown up. Clean out my fridge like a grown up. Clean my shower like a grown up. But I haven't. At all. I'm still just a massive typical teenager sitting on the sofa of life and waiting for somebody to clean up around me, and then shouting when they get in the way of the telly. Even more humiliatingly, I'm not even a teenage girl: I live life like a massive teenage boy. I have the glass full of Coca Cola and mould in my bedroom to prove it.

Which reminds me of what my best friend told me the night I left England. Or - rather - what she told my answer machine.
"It's me. I just wanted to check that you have your tickets and your insurance and your birth certificate and your passport and your visa. And that you've had your jabs and know where you're going and have a forwarding address, and have your phrase book and your bank card and traveller's cheques and you know what to do if there's an earthquake or a typhoon or a fire and if you have an emergency contact number and.... and.... and...."
And then she started crying.
"Of course you haven't: it's you. Oh my God, how can we let you out into the world yet?" sobbed the voice recording, as if I was a baby penguin born in captivity. "You're not re-re-reaaadddy." And then she hung up.

In truth, she was right: I'm not ready. Facing facts, though, I'm probably never going to be. The day - the magic day I assumed happened to us all eventually (the day where we wake up and have a desire to separate the trash properly and pay bills before they're in red and dry our towels properly after every shower instead of leaving them on the floor) - has not happened, and I'm not sure at all anymore that it's going to. I'm 29 this year, and nada: no desire to behave like an adult at all. So - perhaps - the only wisdom I can really hope for is not expecting to ever learn anything; to never blossom, never change and never develop. To simply adjust to who I am and learn to deal with it. Or learn to modify my life around it (like never, ever living with another person again). Perhaps that in itself is wisdom enough.

Perhaps, in fact, I've blossomed after all.

On which note, I've just seen another piece of sky I feel like staring smugly at. I'm just going to have to climb over my packing first.