Dear life's little changes...

I think Gary, Mark, Howard, Jason and Robbie (yes he was still there at this point) were right when they said “Everything Changes But You”. You never would have had them down as philosophers would you? But I hope I’m right in saying they hit the nail on the head.

I’m facing 30 and am realising that in my head I’m still the seven-year-old who wanted her mum when she fell over and grazed her knee, the 15-year-old geek who wanted to be so much cooler than she actually was, and the 21-year-old who thought she could dance so much better than she actually can after a few ‘cheeky milks’.

So when is it you change and feel your age?

I was told that when you get a ‘proper job’ you’ll grow up fast and “never be the same girl again’. Well my first ‘proper job’ as they put it (and by ‘they’ I mean my head of sixth form) came somewhat sooner than I had expected.

At 18 I was working as a journalist for a huge regional paper, spending most of my life either at my desk frantically typing copy for scary news editors, lost in the outskirts of Nottinghamshire in a pool car staring at an A to Z wondering where the hell I was, or sat in a bar after work waiting for the phone to ring and request my return.

As you can imagine this was a real shock to the system, and forced me to grow up in many ways very quickly. However, at every turn, I still felt like that same girl who used to be too nervous to pay for her own ticket on the bus, or even catch a bus in the first place.

The only difference now was, I was forced to knock on a stranger’s door and get them to speak to me. I had no choice but to sit in a council meeting and behave, not snigger when the funny words were used, or point and stare at the ageing councillor in the corner with a jaunty wig. I had to be an adult on the outside, even if I was a blithering wreck of a teenager on the inside.

So for me, the ‘proper job’ didn’t do it.

The next in line of big changes has to be leaving home, buying your first house and being independent - well as independent as you can be with the fourth emergency service (dad) five miles away on the end of a phone.

Lots of people said at this point that this would be ‘it’. The thing that changes you beyond comprehension - living on your own. Not having to shut the door gently and tiptoe up the stairs when you arrive back from a night out, not having to get up at the weekend cause your mum’s ramming the hoover against your bedroom door at 8am cause “you really should be getting up by now”. And of course there’s bills to pay and manage, food to cook without killing yourself, laundry and ironing to do, and not to mention a lawn to mow.

Surely. Surely this is the turning point. This is the point when it all changes and the girl becomes a woman. In this girl’s case, I’m afraid not.

The jobs of looking after myself, being on my own and organising my feeding, watering and clothing needs, seemed to come quite naturally. But I’m afraid while there’s still ‘cheeky milks’ in the world, I will still dance like a toddler on a sugar rush, believing I look like an extra from Fame.

So when does it feel ‘right’ to be an adult? Do you suddenly hit 35 and realise you’re grown up?

In the past six years I have met my now husband, moved in with him, got engaged, married, fallen pregnant and had a baby. However in my head I am still 19 years old and have no idea what I’m doing.

Recently I had a fantastic morning with two old friends in the house me and my husband now own – but which used to belong to my grandparents. As youngsters, me and my two friends had many after-school teas, lunches and school holiday visits in this house. Sat here altogether in the same room where we’d watch ‘The Box’ and try and learn the latest Steps or Backstreet Boys dance routine, we were sat with our collective six children, being on the face of it ‘adults’.

I sat there for a moment and couldn’t understand what had transpired over the past 14 years since we last all sat in this room, chatting together. Everything around us had changed, our lives and responsibilities are dramatically different, but essentially, despite being married, mothers, professionals and a whole decade and a half older, I couldn’t see anything different about us.

Maybe we are incredibly different, and the changes that happen are so subtle and prolonged, that we fail to notice. Maybe my memory has faded and altered history as it’s gone on, or maybe Take That was in fact right, that ‘Everything Changes But You’.

When I first started to think about this, I was a bit concerned that for some reason I was behind everyone else, and perhaps I should be now feeling like a near 30-year-old, grown-up and operating with a different mindset.

But then, in consultation with my 85-year-old grandmother-in-law last week - who said she still considers herself a glamorous 21-year-old, but every morning finds herself in the body of someone four times her age  - I came to realise that I’m not alone, and maybe I’ll never feel truly ‘grown up’. In fact, I hope I never do.

Don’t get me wrong, life throws things at us all that require us to be strong, make the ‘adult decision’ and be grown-up. But who says this has to come naturally? Why shouldn’t this scare us at first, throw up challenges and be difficult? That’s life, I (and Frank Sinatra) would say.

I just hope that while dealing with all these things, I can still snigger when someone says a rude word, jump up to dance like a lunatic every time the B52’s Love Shack is on and still be desperate to write in the sand on the beach, build a snowman and feel that excitement when I first see the Coca Cola advert with Santa’s lorry every Christmas.

What do you say readers? Are you with me? Shall we make sure everything changes but us? Oh, go on then!