Isn’t growing up weird.

When you were younger, growing up was the ultimate aim – unless you were in the rebellious teen phase, when being a grown-up is the least cool thing ever.

I have a few young kiddies in my life, and watching them turn into proper human people is the best thing. Seeing their personalities grow, and how they form thoughts and opinions. Wondering what they’ll be like once they are older. Catching myself thinking “Oh my GOD. She’s so BIG now” like some kind of bemused alien who doesn’t know how human development works.

So much about our lives is formative, in ways we can’t even begin to understand until years later. It’s only when you take the time to look back that you realise quite how instrumental parts of childhood are for the definition of character and self.

Thinking about how people must look at me now, I’m definitely “grown-up”. I have a flat, and a job, and Boyfriend. I have little pots of herbs, and I read the news, I go to bed at sensible times and I brush my teeth twice daily without any fuss at all. I also own a car, which I drive, to places like the supermarket. Very adult. Look at me adulting.

I own throw cushions.

Then I look at myself in the mirror, and I know that the person I see can’t be the person everyone else sees. I still see a person with ever so slightly squiffy eyes and frizzy hair, who took some of the best and most terrible school photos ever known. Also, one of 5 blonde girls at primary school who got type-cast in the nativity (not as angels though, as cheerleaders, because reasons). I also see teenage me, with an emo choppy haircut and baggy dungarees.

And that’s really nice, because even though I know that to some people I’m this grown-up woman who wears pencil skirts and takes notes at important meetings, or the theatre producer who fixes up last-minute costumes and bellows orders, I know that every now and then I can wake up, throw on my baggy jeans, t-shirt I bought from the internet, and satchel I’ve had since I was 15, and wander into town and just be the me I see every day.

How nice.