Damn This Wild Young Heart

It's 3am and after having had just over half an hour of sleep, my stupid brain decided to wake me up and spin me around some more. So now I'm drawing up a draft tech spec to send bands when I book them - a document that does need to be done, but with no particular urgency, and definitely not at 3am on a Tuesday morning. Yet, here I am.

This is all because I'm so restless at the moment. Literally, as well as figuratively. I can't get to sleep for ages, then when I do I wake up a half hour later and immediately am flooded with racing flashes of things I have to do, things I should be doing, things I forgot to do, people I forgot to call, stuff that happened last night, stuff that happened last week, stupid things I've said this month, stupid things I've done this month, everyone in my life, Darcy, Rocket Boy, The Cats, Pickled Lily, my boss, the postman, eeeeeeeverything that my brain could possibly think of throughout the day just spills out into one giant overpowering thought which smacks me in the face out of nowhere, and I can't get back to sleep. Which is funny because the combination of these thoughts makes me want to put a pillow over my head and crawl under the covers and suck my thumb until everything goes away.

Besides that, everything is pretty okay. I'm still craving the dirty side of life at the moment, and have gotten satisfactorily grubby out on the town with the girls recently. Have also encountered a few appropriately inappropriate boys along the way, which has been fun (for the most part). But I'm still feeling restless. I'm itching for something, for I dunno, hedonism. And letting go, and being reckless and shameless and not giving a damn. I'm craving the life equivalent of a line of tequila slammers. Or maybe I'm just craving the slammers. Either way, I need to let loose.

I am also, and I know how ridiculous this sounds (as i do with most things I say. I may be ridiculous and mildly melodramatic, but I'm perfectly self-aware!) - but I'm freaking the fuck out about turning 23.

I never thought I had a 'scary age', and if I did I assumed it was something normal like 30, or 40. But for whatever reason, 23 I find fucking terrifying, and I had no idea until now. I've been talking with Pickled Lily about this, and have established that it's because 23 is officially the end of being a big kid/student/girl/layabout. I don't know why, because technically the whole teenager transition between youth and young manhood is at 21, but it's not. 22 is even still in that bracket. But when you hit 23, you're no longer in the bracket with the 18 yr olds and the youngsters, you're officially a 20-something. You are a young adult. And you can't get away with being as fucking ridiculous as you can be up til 22. And I'm suddenly terrified of wasting time. Of losing out on the opportunity to be ridiculous, and young and stupid and naive, because having spent my life being smart and mature and knowing better, and being (and feeling) older than my years, I think maybe I've missed out on naivety these last few years. I've spent my life being grown up, and now it's here I don't want to be a grownup! I've been one for so long now, and as ever I only ever notice what I've got when it's slipping away! See because when you're ridiculous when you're 19, it's endearing, you're young and foolish. But when you're ridiculous past 23, you're just a fool.

I want to do all the things I'll be too old to do when I'm hitting 30. Literally, everything. I can't randomly move in and out of my flat, or get silly about boys, or decide to drop my career and degree to piss around for a year, or dance in grotty clubs and not give a damn, and stay out drinking and drugging for days on end when I'm hitting 30.Well, I could, but it would be tragic. Because these sort of things would be perfectly acceptable at say 22, but not at 29.

I know, it's stupid, and I never really have given a damn about society's expectations, never have even considered them to be honest, and I don't actually apply these insane standards to anyone but myself - but I do hold them for myself. And the only person whose standards I'm terrified of not meeting are my own.

So as such, I'm terrified of 23. Because it's the end of an era, and I'm terrified of looking back on it and knowing I didn't be everything I should have been, everything I could have been.

But even this is fucking pointless, because I'm not 29, I'm 22. I am still young enough to be whoever I want to be, yet I'm not actually doing anything about it, I'm wasting being 22. By worrying about being 29 and looking back and regretting wasting being 22.

Anyway, these are all stupid 3am thoughts that will evaporate in the morning with the first sip of coffee and drag of a cigarette.

..and will resurface come midnight tomorrow night, but I shall continue to push them all away until the next morning coffee and a cigarette and so forth until one day, I push them so far back in my head that I get a brain tumour.

I really want to go out right now. I could do with a line of shots and a thumping bassline.