‘Completely useless’

Upon self-reflection, I have deduced I may be the human equivalent of suede soled shoes in February. In other words, completely useless. For those of you who don’t know me, you might be wondering why I came to that conclusion, however, for those who do, I am aware this realisation is perhaps long overdue. The solidification of this evaluation occurred during a recent trip to Germany.

Over Halloween weekend, I ventured on my first solo flight to visit an old school friend, travelling from London to Paderborn, a ‘city’ about 2 hours from Dusseldorf. The subtle foreshadowing provided by the title can be parked momentarily, because the genesis of my German odyssey was beyond smooth sailing. I managed to skilfully juggle an appropriate number of ‘ummm’s’, ‘oh no’s’ to placate my misogynistic taxi driver.  His overarching sentiment throughout the 45-minute journey was that I must stay single for as long as possible because women are ‘not what they used to be’ (I am still unsure if I stumbled upon an accidental ally or whether I should no longer be slicking back my hair). Regardless, the flight departed on time, no small children, no one sitting next to me, no turbulence... 55 minutes of complete and utter bliss. I spent most of the journey nattering to the flight attendant and (tactfully ignoring the input of my pre-menstrual cleavage and completely putting the blame on my hysterical personality) he gave me a bottle of champagne as I left! By 4 am on Friday morning, 12 hours after landing, I had thrown up half a bottle of champagne, smoked one too many cigarettes and explored Paderborn’s singular bar and kebab shop. What a time. My innate ineptitude was subsequently highlighted upon quickly discovering that I had booked my trip over a religious bank holiday, so the whole city remained relatively dormant for the rest of my visit. As a result, I spent my German ‘adventure’ watching the Scream movies and wandering around cathedrals, my sparkly pink H&M corset sad and unloved in my suitcase. Curbing my disappointment, although the holiday was not what I expected, the weekend was wonderfully wholesome and, in my eyes, a great success! I believe Germany took this commendation as a challenge and decided to make my final 12 hours in the country a fucking nightmare.

4 hours before my flight there was a ’Katastrophial’ signal failure on the trains, leaving me stranded 2 hours from the airport. 8.00 am, no available Uber’s, no buses. After wrestling with google translate I decided that the only way around this was to travel further away from my destination, allowing me to travel back to Dusseldorf on a supposedly unaffected separate line. 12 am, flight boarding, now 3 hours from the airport, emptying platform, train cancelled, plan in disarray. I reckon it was the combination of my erect nipples chafing against my £1.50 Primark ribbed vest (because I had chosen to dress for fashion in freezing German weather), and the platforms intercom systems barking out announcements that I could not understand, that I was pushed over the edge and started crying.

So, what does a 21-year-old do when they are minutes away from missing their flight, are stuck 3 hours from the airport and are trying to navigate the German railway system as it crumbles around them? I called my dad. Logically this would make sense if my dad was German, spoke German, had ever been to this part of Germany or had some classified insider knowledge about the German railway.. He is/has none of the above. Nevertheless, like a toddler with a scraped knee I ran to my parents. It's hard to describe how utterly useless I felt. Without my dad calling the airline I wouldn’t have been able to change my flight (as in my two decades of living I didn’t know how to dial an international number), and without my friend sending me live train updates (as I had no data roaming) I wouldn’t have known how to rectify my very poorly executed plan.  It hit me retrospectively that, as I also don't have a driving licence, I failed all three of 1987 ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’.. Del Griffith would have fared better, what a dark day.

As a concept pure self-reliance is unachievable, but standing on that platform, I felt decidedly juvenile. I fear this experience epitomises my early twenties so far, a daily cosplay of adulthood, the costume snagging on any mild inconvenience, laying bare the clueless shivering girl underneath. Despite my expertly crafted persona of maturity, I am completely unfit for the wild. Perhaps foolishly I thought that with this new decade I would automatically receive a much-needed software update, but alas nothing, I feel no more prepared for the world than I did at sixteen. It has occurred to me that the only way of generating said ‘software update’ is to live it, experience the chaos life throws at you, then hopefully grow from it. But not only is this time consuming, like a protagonist without plot armour, it’s terrifying. This is the first time in my life I am without a solid plan. My future is completely on my shoulders and under the pressure of messing up the first hurdle, I don't know if I am brave enough for this baptism of fire. As a teenager I would list all these things I wanted to do when I reached my twenties… but now I’m here I feel trapped in a fearful inertia, unprepared to take the next steps and having no clue where to start. I feel too young and inexperienced to take agency over my own life and I find myself echoing Phoebe Waller-Bridges ‘Fleabag’, craving for someone to ‘please’ tell me what to do. Fawning at the vast unpredictability of my future, I feel an alarming pull to settle into the mundanity of my adolescent routine. As I anchor my roots back into my childhood bedroom, I itch with arrested development, and it frustrates me.

I need to throw myself back into life to grow into an adult but logistically this poses its challenges, as like many financially unstable recent graduates, I have had to move back home. My Friends are scattered, some still finishing university, others living far away. The thought of bringing someone back to the bed sheets I chose when I was seven is distasteful and as I still have no idea what I want to do, my career remains a nonstarter. All in all, this results in scheduled pub nights which end abruptly before the last train, a stale sex-life and a zero-hour contract. Hardly the holy trinity. Although I am grateful for my suburban upbringing, I find that my sleepy village highlights my injunction as I am surrounded by young families and pensioners. Opposite ends of the wheel, childhood and settled adulthood, and both completely outside my reach. It is from this purgatory that I fear I am stalling. Stuck for the foreseeable future until I can get a big girl job, move out, and live the twenties media promised. I pathologically crave the house share with my girlfriends in London, the fulfilling career and wild nights out. However, like the girl watching ‘Sex and the City’ on my portable DVD recorder, it feels just as unattainable. Waiting for your life to begin when your early twenties is so often fetishized, feels uniquely depressing. Consumed by my waiting the world seems to lack its normal saturation, my assumptions about this period of my life filming over like stagnant water. Tragic. 

I know I should be enjoying my time working meaningless seasonal jobs as I figure out what I want to do, basking under the limited expectations my minimum wage position provides. I should be taking full advantage of the flexibility hospitality gives me to travel, pull sickies and day drink. I certainly am in practice… when my looming introspection can be ignored. Perhaps I am catastrophizing. I think I am slowly accepting that I need to learn how to enjoy the unknown my future brings me. Considering this is completely unchartered territory, I estimate this mindset will have to be practised. I find this hypothesis very irritating as I’m a deeply impatient person, but alas I guess I'm going to have to start throwing it at the hypothetical mental wall until it sticks. I have my own unique life experiences that led me to this young adult limbo. Perhaps if I had a different one, I’d be living in a different more adult 20’s but there is no point pondering. Instead of beating myself up, I must allow myself to live slowly and at my own meandering pace. The tortoise won the race in the end anyway. I won’t have a Pinterest perfect early 20’s, but in this economy, I don’t think anyone will. I still have 8 years and 6 months until I'm 30, so I have time to do all the things younger me wanted to achieve in this decade. At the end of the day, I won't become a fully formed adult overnight and I’m pretty sure I will be useless for the foreseeable future, so I guess I'm going to have to try and roll with the punches. However, in the meantime I need to stop stalking my peers on linked-in because it's making me sad. 

Returning to our story, I reckon I will forever need to call my dad, but one thing we did learn from this experience is don’t get the trains in Germany and invest in good quality undergarments. So, 10 hours after my accidental trip to the bullseye of Germany, I whispered a silent victory to myself as I sat on my return flight. Slightly dissociated, I tried to drink a cheap glass of celebratory white wine while the small child seated behind me battered my kidneys. A quick jab, wine on my leggings, ‘please be gentle darling’’. Smudged mascara, greasy hair, rosacea flaring and blooming yellowheads around my chin... I was not given a free bottle of champagne.