Grafting

In December of last year, my work mum, Linda, said she had a feeling that 2017 was going to be my year. Spurred on by this comment, I got caught up in the midst of the hype and let myself believe it. For the first time in years, I was very content with my love life and as a result, everything else seemed to tick by quite happily. A classic case of the rose tinted glasses. 

I should've known better. Things went from perfect to crap to "is this real life?"

Why is it when you hit the age of twenty seven suddenly everything seems to be falling apart? I’m not the only one. I know I’m not. I know because I’ve asked out of sheer desperation and concern for my life which, from the moment the ball dropped on my twenty seventh birthday, spontaneously and unexpectedly turned to shit. I’m not exaggerating either. This spontaneous and unexpected whirlwind of shit led to me being a familiar face in Warrington Hospital a grand total of seventeen times in eight weeks.

I was off work, very poorly, for weeks on end and with each day that I stayed in bed (gaining weight), I could feel a little bit of my usual sparkle dwindling away.

I won’t bore you with the dramas that unfolded from 9^th April 2017 onwards (my friend/bodyguard/life coach Jade always says “God, there’s never a dull moment with you, is there”), but it was four months ago to this very day and only in the last week or so have things started to improve somewhat. Or that was what I thought, until I went round for my weekly cup of tea with my grandma and Frank.

As usual, the conversation turned to how I still live at home with my mum and our menagerie of pets. Immediately, I sighed. The question every singleton loathes the most. "When are you moving out? Will you be living on your own?" 

This never bothered me until very recently. I’ve mentioned this before but I get on with my mum more than other people get on with theirs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the vast majority of people you could survey would immediately say that they love their mum more than anything. But I’m very fortunate that my mother was blessed with the same sick and sarcastic sense of humour as me, and she’s as besotted with the aforementioned menagerie of pets as I am. Ever since my dad walked out three years ago, it’s just been the two of us and it’s fine.

I’m lazy and she’s crazy and we both love watching the same TV shows and so it just works.

So why am I itching to move out, you ask? Well, I don’t think that I am. I remember posting a blog entry when I turned twenty four, talking about what a strange age it was. Half my friends were married and actually trying for a baby and the other half were still nursing a hangover in the box room at their mum and dad’s. If I thought that was hard to swallow, I had a rude awakening when turning twenty seven. In every single one of my birthday cards, there was some reference to me being old and past it. 

I laughed it off, but then I thought am I?

Surely not, I thought. Twenty seven is nothing. I mean, okay, it is closer to thirty than I’d like to be and okay, I’ve not achieved some of the things that I would’ve liked to by now and fine, maybe I'd always pictured that by twenty seven, I'd be married and setting up camp with two point four kids. But is it really old? As in, should I have my shit together by now?

Apparently I should. My grandma laughed when I told her I’ve been saving every last penny for my deposit for a mortgage. “You won’t be able to live on your own,” she said, chortling. She didn’t mean it in a bad way. She was quite literally telling the truth.

I can see what she’s saying, don’t get me wrong. I’ve only ever lived with my mum (with the exception of university, where I surrounded myself with people who could take care of me). But aside from the odd relationship here and there, I’ve been pretty much on my own for the last four years and it hasn’t done me any harm. In fact, being in those relationships made me see just how important it is not to settle. 

A while back, I was with someone for two years and it was one hundred percent settling. I’m sure he won’t mind me saying this if he was ever to read this but we were just two mates who hung out and had sex. It should’ve ended after about a year of being together but it didn’t, out of fear of the scary transition from university to full time employment, and rather than growing some balls and saying “you know what, this isn’t working”, we tried to cling on to what we had left. Pretending that it’s okay to just see your partner as a friend. Convincing yourself that you do get butterflies around them still. I remember genuinely panicking once, thinking is this it? Is this all I’m going to get? As fond of him as I was, I didn’t particularly want to be with him but the fear of being without him was all consuming. So I settled. We both did.

And with this in mind, I've cast my beady eye around so many of the Insta-relationships. For those of you unaware of this term, it's used to describe the picture perfect lives of those more fortunate than ourselves. Good looking, great jobs, nice houses and adorable children all splashed out on social media for mere mortals such as myself to ogle whilst crying into our tube of Pringles or Tesco's Meal for One.

Are they all they're cracked up to be? Maybe. But - and I've learned this more and more lately - the mega Insta-relationships, where every move is anecdotally displayed for us to lap up, can sometimes be based on a lie. What I have to ask myself is this: if someone is genuinely happy with their life, would they be spending two to three hours a day seeking approval from strangers on the internet? Maybe, but probably not. 

Maybe the people who seem like they've got their shit together haven't. I slept easier when I realised that. 

Since turning twenty seven, I’ve listened to everyone’s comments and judgements and opinions on why I’m still single and why I’m still living in my family home and why I’ve done nothing with my degree in the six years since I’ve graduated. And while I’ve smiled and nodded and agreed and held my tongue, a small part of me has genuinely started to think: what if this is it?

Six years ago, when I graduated from university, if you’d have said to me: “where will you be in six years’ time?”, I certainly wouldn’t have said anything other than working on the stage or on TV. It was incomprehensible to me that I wasn’t going to “make it”. I wanted to be on the front cover of every newspaper and every magazine, giving interview after interview about my latest starring role. 

In fact, here's an embarrassing confession for you (one I'm sure I'll regret saying publicly at some point). In 2010, a naive twenty year old me auditioned for a brand new ITV show. It was The Only Way is Essex. I know what you're thinking. This bird's from Warrington. Well, you'd be right, but the initial audition was just a question and answer session on a video link. Some of the questions were pretty racy but I managed to put a funny spin on them, so I got through. 

Plus, even though I'm a northerner, I've always been really good at accents and putting on different voices (three years at uni not totally lost on me) so I sounded spot on and no one knew any wiser. Please don't ever ask me to do an impression. 

I had no idea what the programme would entail. In fact, The Only Way is Essex was probably one of the very first reality TV shows of its time. Nowadays, you can't switch your TV on without seeing someone who got through the judges' houses on the X Factor presenting a piece on This Morning about a group of people who've tried to find love in a Spanish villa, who then go onto present a piece on This Morning about... you catch my drift. But The Only Way is Essex really was unique. In fact, the advert for auditions was very vague, asking if you were funny and confrontational and up for a laugh. 

Before I knew what was what, I was being filmed in Essex in a nightclub called Faces and being asked the most revolting intrusive questions about my personal life. 

Here are some photos from the second round of auditions. I'm the little one with a brown top and black jeans on. Kudos if you can spot Charlotte Crosby's latest beau, Bear.

The more outrageous characters (including the guy dressed as Snow White) got through to the next stage. I didn't. I wasn't disappointed. I was actually relieved as I grabbed my coat and ran to the car to begin the five hour journey home with my dear friend, Sensible Katie. It was just another witty anecdote to report back with. Another string to my bow. Plus, it was the very first work I'd ever done in front of a camera, so I put it down to experience.

It took about two years and a big wake up call to make me realise that that isn’t what I wanted anyway. I didn't care about reality TV. I never have. I was going along with it, feeling increasingly uncomfortable with each question I was being asked in front of the camera and the room full of people, purely because I was desperate for anything that would get me recognised. Known. Put me on a platform so that when I was ready to release a book or write a play or whatever it is I wanted to do, I already had some exposure. 

I might've only been twenty but I think I had a good head on my shoulders. In fact, what I thought back then regarding building my own platform, is spookily accurate to how the majority of "today's celebrities" became household names. 

As time has passed, I think I’ve naturally retreated into my shell too much to ever be comfortable in the spotlight anymore. When I'm at my happiest, I spend the least time glued to my phone. I’ve even put less and less on social media as time has gone on. In fact, I had a notification from Facebook earlier this year telling me that I'd not posted for exactly a year. I used to be obsessed with social media, so this really took me by surprise.

The bottom line is, I feel I've changed so much as a person in the last few years. Even this blog itself started out describing my bid to crack the acting industry and organically developed into me reviewing things I've seen on stage and screen. Funny how things turn out, isn't it?

If you were to ask me now what I think I'd be doing in six years time, I'd have to say "I really don't know". History has taught me that you can't predict anything. I actually had a bit of a weird spell of going to see psychics over and over again, hoping one of them would give me the news I craved. They didn't. 

I just want to write, be good at it and get paid for it. 

So how do I go about that? 

Option number one: I can settle, and just accept that it isn’t likely to happen so I’ll spend my time moaning about it. Like the grandma in Billy Elliott: “I could’ve been a professional dancer”. I can focus my energy on something completely different and try not to dwell on the fact that I was once a talented, keen writer with a good eye for characters. 

Option number two: I can keep at it, even when some months are particularly dry, and never ever settle. That sits well with me. Although it’s a daunting process and almost scary that I’ve accepted being rejected over and over again. It’s sad but I expect nothing from anyone and anticipate the worst in every situation. I have developed into the most cynical old witch, but it keeps my feet on the ground. I can work and work and work again until one day, everything miraculously falls into place.

Option number three: I can attempt to crack the world of the Millennials. I utterly despise that word. We aren't Millennials. We're adults. We're people in our twenties who've grown up in a world where everything is completely overshadowed by social media and Apple gadgets. If I were to pull a Montana Brown, I could apply for a ton of reality TV shows to get some exposure, build a reliable platform and fan base, then drop my latest book. Look at Marcel from Blazing Squad. He's just released his first book. I'll eat my hat if he's actually sat and written it. 

Annoyingly, option number three seems the easiest and most acceptable way of building any sort of platform. Seeing the immediate success and wealth of the Love Island contestants once they’d left the villa was astounding. I was speechless when I found out that Jess (who was booted out by her fellow islanders only a couple of weeks into the show) charges up to £10,000 per sponsored post on Instagram. She earns more than I earn in one year by posting three pictures a day. And for what? What did she do to deserve such financial success? She went on a popular TV show, had sex and is now approaching her first million pound paycheck. Say what you like about her but she's not daft.

And she isn't the first and she won't be the last. I saw it all when I first watched The Only Way is Essex. Joey Essex, who couldn't read or write properly, was buying his first home for £300,000 outright. Then he bought another. And another. Now he's a millionaire. Amy Childs opened her own salon. Then she bought a house for £1.2 million. Then another.

It seems, sadly, that unless you plump for option number three, you're unlikely to be successful in this day and age. But - and maybe this is the cynical old witch in me - I can't help thinking that what you gain in exposure, you lose in credibility. 

So, I have to plump for option number two and hope that slow and steady wins the race. I'll keep writing and applying for writing opportunities and keeping my eyes peeled and my ears to the ground. It's bound to pay off eventually, isn't it? Because good things happen to good people, right? Right?

Ah well, I'd better wrap this up pretty sharpish. I've got a numb bum from sitting at my desk for so long and besides, I've got a Love Island application to send off......