My life right now is just like one long spin-off of ‘The Big Chill’, but without the infidelity, the drugs, the corpse or the ‘six times platinum’ soundtrack. Yes, just like it.
I think it may have something to do with turning 40 this year. Increasingly, I’ve found myself having frank and open conversations with old friends about our shared capital H ‘History’. This is of course is made easy because most of the things we are being frank and open about happened so long ago they may as well have happened to other people. Nice.
I suspect a lot of this has been an attempt to purge myself of some of my more inglorious moments – you know, those kind of moments that your mind likes to replay to you like some kind of PowerPoint presentation in the middle of the night instead of, say, letting you get some sleep or something crazy like that. The moments that make you go ‘Ouch!’ or just shudder with the embarrassment of it all. The moments that make you go ‘Eurggggghhhhh’.
One of the highlights of my own personal PowerPoint presentation is the tryst I unexpectedly found myself in with a boy that my bestest Uni friend ‘verycleveralias’ liked at the time. My friendship with verycleveralias, which had been closer than close, subsequently cooled a little and, a few months later, I left Perth, ostensibly forever. I have blushed from head to toe every time I have thought of that gross error of judgment. Eurgggghhhhhhh.
Recently, I was having brunch with VCA when she spontaneously confessed to me that she had long since felt responsible that we’d drifted apart at that time because, knowing I was leaving, she had deliberately distanced herself.
“But I thought it was because of me having [insert embarrassing details of encounter with boy here]!” I blurted out.
“You did that?” she laughed. “What were you thinking?”
“Well, obviously I wasn’t thinking about you because you liked him,” I said.
“Did I?” she said. “I don’t remember that at all.”
So basically I’d been beating myself up about something for almost twenty years without due cause. Doh! My PowerPoint presentation was now one slide shorter – in fact, I thought, I could probably go delete a whole heap more and live the rest of my life virtually guilt-free!
But then I caught up with my friend Some Guy In Paris. Over the course of many bottles of wine (he and my friend Mistress M were drinking Aldi cleanskins which, according to Mistress M, cost $9 for a case of six. Them’s $1.50 per bottle, people!), we ended up having another round of ‘Big Chill’-style confessions.
Some Guy In Paris reminded me of an incident. Someone once told him I’d said something Not Very Nice about him and he’d harboured that hurt for a number of years before he and I had met up again and managed to sort the whole thing out. Of course I hadn’t said that Not Very Nice thing about him at all – in fact I can’t remember even thinking it let alone saying it – but I began to worry about what I actually did say that had caused that Someone to report such a thing. I mean, l’ve said a whole lot of things in my life, some flippantly, some in anger, many more under the influence of alcohol. And I guess I can never know what people will choose to grab hold of and hang their own shit on for years and years.
And I realised that for all those things I’ve been beating myself up about over the years which I needn’t have, there’s probably at least as many things which I should be beating myself up about which I don’t necessarily know about.
Which is just great, if you think about it.
Which is why I think I’m going to go have to buy a whole truck load of those Aldi cleanskins so that I never have to think again.
It’s funny – as formative as my own 20 years ago experiences are – as tightly as I may have held on to these pieces of Truth and History – I think I’m ready to be done with a number of them. This may be part of the process you’re referring to. Akin to pulling out old photographs, sorting them and sticking them away in an album that you no longer need to look at.
Or pulling out your teenage diaries and posting your bad teen poetry on the internet??
What? Aldi sells alcohol in your your state? That’s it, I’m moving.
Great post, funny what we beat ourselves up over. Hope you have a top 40th when it comes around with Aldi cleanskins for all!!
Why, I could easily budget for four bottles per person. Then I don’t have to worry about anything else because nobody will remember the next morning what happened.
BTW, my 40th is still 4 months away… Nothing like a big build-up, though.
*snicker* My memory of the Boy is that he was a rather nice, rather overgrown puppy dog, but I don’t have any strong memories of a holding a deep abiding passion for him. Although…..maybe I blocked these memories out because of the NDM’s dastardly betrayal!!!! Just keeping you on your toes NDM
Eurrggghhhh….
I agree, thinking is very bad for your (mental) health!
Unlike drinking $1.50 bottles of wine, for example.
I can’t remember a single inglorious moment from my 20′s, probably because I was cruising carefree around the world on a steady diet of local whiskey, local mushrooms and local boys. I could do no wrong. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it
Oh, and I reckon there would be a much cooler soundtrack to your life – maybe for another post?
Sheesh! Sounds like VeryCleverAlias and I should have been hanging out with you in our twenties.
BTW, I’m totally revealing my age by even mentioning ‘The Big Chill’ soundtrack. It was the Must Have album of 1983. Although, admittedly, it took me about 3 years to buy it. I really wasn’t that cool in my teens.
If Bolivian hospitals, Pakistani hijackings and Brazilian jails are your thing, we would have been perfect travelling companions
Oh, and for the record, I’ve got a copy of ‘The Big Chill’ soundtrack too, doesn’t everyone? I’m going to dust of my vinyl copy tonight in honour of your post
Wow, by the time I got to the end of that, I was incapable of thought. Clearly I need me some of them Aldi cleanskins too. I like Lisa’s version of her 20s though – I think I’ll take that story and run with it.
My posts tend to do that to people. I put it down to bad punctuation.
Haha, isn’t life funny?
It certainly hilarious when viewed from 20 years’ distance…
Hey, stop beating yourself up – your life sounds so interesting – you need that to be a successful writer I think. you’ve so much to write about now. Keep mothering, stop drowning and keep writing!
I prefer just to think of my ‘past life’ as a pleasantly blurry, hazy photo of when I was younger. Rough around the edges, smudged with something a bit icky sometimes though neither of those worth too much investigation as you don’t want to get a nasty surprise when you work out why / what it is.
So you just take in the glowing wrinkle-free skin and carefree smile of the blurred face of youth in the middle of the shot.
My own PowerPoint presso is about 300 slides long. If only I could forgive silly, young, drunk and needy Maxabella I feel I could be freeeeee.
PS – Hot Guy Sitting Next To Me On The Bus (well, I’m actually sitting next to him as technically he was here first and I deliberately sat next to him because I am a 38 year old haggy mother of three and that’s the kind of thing we do) where was I? Oh yes, he was obviously reading over my shoulder (and probably still is – hi there) and said “you were young, drunk, needy and silly. The whole world forgives you.” Thank you hot guy on the bus!
I think we’ve met. I was in Australia 20 years ago and was in a pub and asked a woman if I could buy her a drink and she said ‘get stuffed’.
I know what you mean! Back in high school, a friend of mine asked a guy I liked to go with her to the school formal – shock horror! She’d asked me if it was Ok first, but she’d done it kind of obliquely, and I’d said yes thinking she was talking about a completely different person (you know how these things are … you know.) Then, to add insult to injury, someone had obviously told him that I was a little upset because on the actual night he gave her a lavish bunch of flowers and me one of those pathetic 3 packs of Ferrero Rochers – like some kind of consolation prize for missing out on the privilege of his company. My friend and I grew apart after that, as you do…
I bumped into the guy a couple of months back at a work party with my current partner and couldn’t even place him until a couple of days after. That’s 15 years for you.
I recently attended a co-workers reunion for a now-defunct company. A woman I didn’t recognize told me she had worked for me and still resented my insisting she come to work on time every day. Neither did she like that I wore suits. Too bad she didn’t have any alcohol black-outs to spare herself that trauma.