Off and On

My thirties have been awful so far.

To be fair, it has only been a couple of months. But those two months have contained more misery than the whole of my twenties. My twenties were great.

But, thinking about it, that seems to be the pattern of my life. I seem to be on a bad decade/good decade cycle. It's a convenient way of apportioning joy and despair. It makes for few surprises. It's the only sensible way to sort things out. It's like racial segregation: simple, sensible, and beneficial to everyone.

My first decade, from ages 0-10, was great. What's that decade called? My noughties? I never liked that. Let's call it my zeroes.

My zeroes were fantastic. There were a few years that I can't remember, but I assume they were fine. I spent most of the decade eating jam sandwiches cut into triangles, watching Puddle Lane, and wearing colourful pyjamas. It was a golden age. I think I even liked school at first.

All my laundry and shopping and sock purchases were taken care of by my parents. I lived like a prince.

In my teens, everything changed. Ages 10 to 20 were a dark time. My body began to develop into something strange and unwieldy. My neurosis developed along with it. School became painful. My peers were all cooler and swearier and more confident than me. My sandwiches were cut into authoritarian rectangles. My pyjamas became drab.  

My parents still took care of my laundry etc, but I was now of an age to feel guilty about it (and yet too lazy to take on any extra responsibility). Bleak, bleak times.

After the dark ages of my teens, my twenties were a renaissance. I'd survived my first year of university, and had developed many key skills (such as drinking and downloading mp3s). I had some friends. I even managed to ensnare a wonderful woman with my charms and actual snares.

The decade was a non-stop rollercoaster of fun, parties, satisfying creative endeavours and personal growth. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might think that I complained all the time during my twenties. But that wasn't real complaining. I was just experimenting with gripery, just as some people experiment with ecstasy or making your own sandals. I was happy all the time, throughout my twenties.

Even the parade of dull jobs, the lack of money, and the weary, bleary, feary, teary, smeary film of fatigue, were all exciting and fresh.

I was now able to cut my sandwiches into any shape I wanted! I could go back to the triangles! (I never did, but I theoretically could. That was the important thing.)

My twenties were certainly roaring. And that's not just because I lived in a lion sanctuary for the whole of 2005.

Almost instantly after turning thirty, things became bleak once again. I was ill, then I moved house, then... well, that's it. But there are a million micropain (that's French for small bread) crumbs in the cracks.

Once again, my pyjamas are drab. In fact, I don't even have pyjamas. Before bed, I just cover myself in grey paint. The brush tickles, and my sheets need changing constantly.

It's a difficult time. But hope is around the corner. If this good decade/bad decade pattern continues, my forties are going to be fantastic!

Life begins at forty, they say. And ends at fifty. Then it begins again at sixty. Then, if you're still alive, you'll have an eighties to remember (dementia notwithstanding).

The natural world has a way of making everything predictably fantastic and awful. God bless science. Without it, our lives would just be a meaningless soup of triumphs, tragedies and Terry Joneses.

But now, thanks to whoever discovered it, we can live in clearly delineated troughs: one of saltwater, one of fresh. The only things mixed are our metaphors.

I'm optimistic about the future. And pessimistic.

I can't wait until I'm 100.