It’s funny how one day you look at yourself and you realise you are actually a grown-up. Of course I know I’m not a teenager anymore, but often in my head I don’t feel like the responsible one who has a baby and has to do things like get up early, work, make meals and generally keep the house and family running every day.
And yet, there I am, somehow stumbling through parenthood without an idea what I am doing, while my baby son and husband look to me to solve everything as if I have some kind of sagely omnipotent sense of knowledge on all things.
But here’s the thing – I don’t!
In my head I’m thinking, okay my mum will know what to do in this situation… and then it dawns on me, no wait, I’m now ‘the mum!’
When you’re a teenager and even in your early and mid-twenties, you think you are so relevant and current, as if nothing and no one could possibly be more contemporary than you are at that precise point in time. You know everything. You are au fait with technology, you know every new song on the radio, fashion trends are second nature to you and you can roll off the names of every new hotspot in town.
Now though, I look at what teenagers are wearing and I cringe. I cringe partly because I remember wearing all of that gear in the 90s, but it’s also because I feel so disconnected from them. The haircuts, the trends, the music, it’s all of a sudden on the other side of the glass… and I’m here playing catch up like an old trout.
How the hell did that happen? How did I become the middle aged ‘lady’ instead of the girl I feel like inside my head?
It was on a lone trip to the cinema the other week really that gave me some solace though. Before I got married and became a mum, I wouldn’t have really gone to the cinema alone. It would have been something I’d of done with my boyfriend or friends. And as for when I was a teenager? No way would I have gone alone… in fact I would have been that really annoying teen, who secretly made fun of the middle aged person sitting in the cinema by all themselves.
Loner!
Yeah… never ever doubt that Karma exists people!
Anyway, these days a solo tip to the cinema is mana from heaven. My self-consciousness is a thing of the past, as I instead get to enjoy a couple of hours to look at the shops, eat something I didn’t have to cook, without being pawed at and then get to sit down and watch an entire movie in relative peace.
Like I said, bliss.
So there I was getting ready to watch A Quiet Place, which I highly recommend by the way, and I was sitting by myself, enjoying the sensation of sitting alone with a huge tub of popcorn and a coke waiting for the movie to start, when my ears pricked up.
A group of teenage girls were sitting a few seats down from me giggling and saying more ‘likes’ and ‘oh my gods’ than you’d hear at a Jedward concert (Jedward probably aren’t even a thing anymore are they?!) Anyway their conversation went a little something like this -
‘Oh my God no, a prolapse is like when your vagina falls out!’
Cue shocked laughter.
‘No Eimear your vag doesn’t fall like out, it’s like when the inside of your vag like falls out of it.’
‘Ewwwh!!!!’
‘Yeah it like hangs there, it’s so gross it happened to my Aunt who’s had like 3 kids.’
‘I can’t even, yeah I’m like never having kids.’
‘Me either, I’d have to be like totally knocked out.’
‘Yeah can they not like beam the kid out or something?’
I sat giggling to myself at their conversation for two very important reasons, firstly because as much as I feel out of touch with the ‘young people’ some days, their giggling could actually have been teenage me saying those exact things… phew I sighed, maybe I’m not as old as I thought.
And the second reason? Well I knew that one day, some of them would end up becoming mothers themselves and dear God would they have a whole new respect for their ‘Vag’ then!