Things Get Better
Entry by: AmyKO
9th July 2024
Things Get Better
2000
University life has been in full swing for a couple of years. Here I am now in our favourite pub, again, housemates and course mates filling all the space around the largest table in the place. Laughter and chatter reverberates. I love this. I am myself. My twenty year old self, blossoming into the full person I always knew I would become. This lifestyle of learning and discovering and sharing fills my soul to the brim.
Hungry now, it's getting late. Time for the usual chicken burger and chips 'special' - it's good and it's cheap. I wait for my housemates to collect their orders and we walk the seven minute stroll back to our house. From the outside our house looks solid and quite grand in its mid-terrace position. But there's no mistaking the student accommodation status once you ascend the deep steep steps to the front door. Peeling paint; cracked glass panes; stained thin carpet in the hallway. The heavy fire doors in the entryway to each room we're supposed to keep closed at all times. I smile to myself as I walk inside, jostling with my friends, bantering about ketchup or mayo. Life is such fun.
My room is the smallest and probably the messiest. I don't have much, but what I do have is usually strewn around the floor in disorganised piles of clean, worn a few times, and definitely dirty. It's gross - but it's my gross. My single bed sags in the middle where the slats under the mattress need sorting out, and I don't have proper curtains - just an old pashmina scarf I found abandoned in the pub one day. My shelves have always been wonky - could be the floor? And there's no knob on my little bedside cabinet drawer. This is my space, my home from home, my piece of the planet to rest and think and be. All I can feel is a wave of contentment - I am free to start my life any way that I like.
2005
After my university years I got a job - and a boyfriend. We moved into a flat together in the suburbs, away from the endless streets of brick terraces surrounding the city centre. I learned all sorts of new life skills such as putting away clean clothes, cooking from scratch, getting up hours before I need to leave the house to clean the bathroom, pay bills, plan meals for the week and unload the dishwasher.
At first I found this new lifestyle - and definite improvement to my bank balance, extremely exciting! I said goodbye to all my old cheapest of the cheap kitchen appliances - the dodgy kettle and even dodgier toaster; the broken but still usable corkscrew, and the sandwich toaster that had lost the clip to hold it together. We bought a new divan bed - kingsize! and shopped for bedding. Debts racked up on credit cards were paid off, and only agreed sensible necessary purchases were now put on credit or delayed payment schemes. I was now a proper grown up, with a weekly schedule, socialising only at the weekend, and an actual bedtime.
2030
After marriage we continued to work on our careers and decided to do the sensible thing and build a strong home and financial foundation before venturing into parenthood. The children are teens now.
I became mum to a son and daughter. We could afford all the things they say you should have for a baby - and more. Our detached house in a picturesque village could have been straight out of 'Home and Country' magazine. To the outsider looking in, we were living the dream. The perfect life.
Our amazing 'dream home' had the parquet floors and bespoke farmhouse kitchen - that traditional-yet-contemporary style that people go crazy for. Enormous TVs in the main living room, and the 'den' (for the kids); high-end appliances galore; en-suite bathrooms; loft conversion; solid oak doors - we were in the position that we could more or less mould the house to anything we set our desires upon.
And me? Well, I lived each day for everybody else. I loved my family more than anything and I appreciated my beautiful home and all the things I could fill my life with. But being 'mum' depletes your individuality. It is a heavy role laden with responsibility, sacrifice and expectations. I became a slave to my children - and my husband (as his career continued while mine declined). I felt my sense of 'me' slipping away, seeping into the walls.
2050
I'm an old lady now. My children have careers and families of their own and have moved abroad. My husband died suddenly two years ago.
Here I am, alone, in my perfect home, filled with a treasure trove of beautiful things - works of art; bespoke furniture; the gadgets and technology my children impose on me so I can keep in touch with them wherever they are in the world.
The cleaner comes more often than she needs to. I enjoy her company and we spend hours chatting. I also go to the hairdresser in the village for regular blow-dries and sets, just to have an excuse to socialise a little. I am often complimented on my beautiful home as though it is the bricks and mortar we live within and the contents inside that define our place in the world.
I think back to my younger days and remember the lightness and happiness of the freedom I had. A permanent sense of adventure prevailed with the excitement of what each day might bring. My daysDrinking warm beer and scrimping change together to be able to get something to eat on the walk home. Sharing cigarettes and eating the cheapest bread, picking off specks of mould. I had nothing back then. But I had everything. I smile to myself.
2000
University life has been in full swing for a couple of years. Here I am now in our favourite pub, again, housemates and course mates filling all the space around the largest table in the place. Laughter and chatter reverberates. I love this. I am myself. My twenty year old self, blossoming into the full person I always knew I would become. This lifestyle of learning and discovering and sharing fills my soul to the brim.
Hungry now, it's getting late. Time for the usual chicken burger and chips 'special' - it's good and it's cheap. I wait for my housemates to collect their orders and we walk the seven minute stroll back to our house. From the outside our house looks solid and quite grand in its mid-terrace position. But there's no mistaking the student accommodation status once you ascend the deep steep steps to the front door. Peeling paint; cracked glass panes; stained thin carpet in the hallway. The heavy fire doors in the entryway to each room we're supposed to keep closed at all times. I smile to myself as I walk inside, jostling with my friends, bantering about ketchup or mayo. Life is such fun.
My room is the smallest and probably the messiest. I don't have much, but what I do have is usually strewn around the floor in disorganised piles of clean, worn a few times, and definitely dirty. It's gross - but it's my gross. My single bed sags in the middle where the slats under the mattress need sorting out, and I don't have proper curtains - just an old pashmina scarf I found abandoned in the pub one day. My shelves have always been wonky - could be the floor? And there's no knob on my little bedside cabinet drawer. This is my space, my home from home, my piece of the planet to rest and think and be. All I can feel is a wave of contentment - I am free to start my life any way that I like.
2005
After my university years I got a job - and a boyfriend. We moved into a flat together in the suburbs, away from the endless streets of brick terraces surrounding the city centre. I learned all sorts of new life skills such as putting away clean clothes, cooking from scratch, getting up hours before I need to leave the house to clean the bathroom, pay bills, plan meals for the week and unload the dishwasher.
At first I found this new lifestyle - and definite improvement to my bank balance, extremely exciting! I said goodbye to all my old cheapest of the cheap kitchen appliances - the dodgy kettle and even dodgier toaster; the broken but still usable corkscrew, and the sandwich toaster that had lost the clip to hold it together. We bought a new divan bed - kingsize! and shopped for bedding. Debts racked up on credit cards were paid off, and only agreed sensible necessary purchases were now put on credit or delayed payment schemes. I was now a proper grown up, with a weekly schedule, socialising only at the weekend, and an actual bedtime.
2030
After marriage we continued to work on our careers and decided to do the sensible thing and build a strong home and financial foundation before venturing into parenthood. The children are teens now.
I became mum to a son and daughter. We could afford all the things they say you should have for a baby - and more. Our detached house in a picturesque village could have been straight out of 'Home and Country' magazine. To the outsider looking in, we were living the dream. The perfect life.
Our amazing 'dream home' had the parquet floors and bespoke farmhouse kitchen - that traditional-yet-contemporary style that people go crazy for. Enormous TVs in the main living room, and the 'den' (for the kids); high-end appliances galore; en-suite bathrooms; loft conversion; solid oak doors - we were in the position that we could more or less mould the house to anything we set our desires upon.
And me? Well, I lived each day for everybody else. I loved my family more than anything and I appreciated my beautiful home and all the things I could fill my life with. But being 'mum' depletes your individuality. It is a heavy role laden with responsibility, sacrifice and expectations. I became a slave to my children - and my husband (as his career continued while mine declined). I felt my sense of 'me' slipping away, seeping into the walls.
2050
I'm an old lady now. My children have careers and families of their own and have moved abroad. My husband died suddenly two years ago.
Here I am, alone, in my perfect home, filled with a treasure trove of beautiful things - works of art; bespoke furniture; the gadgets and technology my children impose on me so I can keep in touch with them wherever they are in the world.
The cleaner comes more often than she needs to. I enjoy her company and we spend hours chatting. I also go to the hairdresser in the village for regular blow-dries and sets, just to have an excuse to socialise a little. I am often complimented on my beautiful home as though it is the bricks and mortar we live within and the contents inside that define our place in the world.
I think back to my younger days and remember the lightness and happiness of the freedom I had. A permanent sense of adventure prevailed with the excitement of what each day might bring. My daysDrinking warm beer and scrimping change together to be able to get something to eat on the walk home. Sharing cigarettes and eating the cheapest bread, picking off specks of mould. I had nothing back then. But I had everything. I smile to myself.
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