The Adventure of the Reflective Journey

In which I reflect on a train...

My 30th birthday is rapidly approaching, a fact I'm not entirely comfortable with. There's a feeling that I should have done more by this point- I'm single, the idea of having children seems a world away and my career has yet to really go anywhere. I'm not especially maudlin about any one of these things but together they combine to leave me feeling somewhat insignificant. I recently took a train ride between Bournemouth and Winchester, the literal journey making me reflect on the journey of my life up to this point. 

Before long I'm in the New Forest, essentially where I grew up. I've increasingly realised how sheltered growing up in a small town with no transport links was. This was probably a mixed blessing. I was protected from so much in that environment yet at the same time I felt stifled there and I had no experience of the wider world. 

Eventually the train pulls into Winchester and I have a lovely day with my friend from uni and her ever expanding family. I have a little time in the city before my return train and I revisit a few old haunts. Winchester holds a very special place in my heart and somehow still feels more like home than anywhere else I've ever lived despite spending relatively little of my life there. It was the city where I first found my freedom and the world opened up for me. I loved being a student, having something to focus on whilst also having plenty of time to have fun. 

It was also pretty tough at times too. I'd always felt a sense of not feeling completely normal, not like everyone else and there were moments at uni when I felt so desperately alone and separate from the rest of the human race. I also hate that it ended so badly when I failed my teaching placement and my whole life fell apart overnight. It feels dramatic to say I had a quarter-life crisis but it's an apt description of what I went through and Winchester will always retain those memories too. 

I get back on the train and within a few minutes we've stopped at Southampton. It was in this city that I had that nightmare teaching placement and the feeling of dread every day for months of pulling up at that station has never left me. It feels all the more poignant now as in the coming months I'm finally going to have another attempt to complete my teacher training. As the train pulls off once more I feel like I can leave the feelings of failure and lack of self-worth at the concourse to be trampled down by the sea of travellers. 

Eventually the train arrives back in Bournemouth again which has really been the centre of the last few year of my life. I've worked in the town all that time and now live here. It still feels like a town full of possibility for me. It lacks the stifling nature of my childhood home but equally doesn't contain the two extremes of trauma and ecstasy that Winchester retains. Bournemouth remains the setting for my story and I have no idea how the tale will unfold in the coming weeks, months and years.

In Lord of the Rings Tolkien wrote that Hobbits don't become adults until they reach the age of thirty and I think perhaps the same can be said of humans. Everything up until now has been a lesson of one kind or another. I've come to except that maybe I'm not entirely normal, if such a concept really has any meaning, but that's fine and I am still a valid person. It's hard not to think about the things I haven't achieved before my thirtieth birthday but there's another way of looking at it- there's still so much more for me to do. 

The phrase "life begins at thirty" feels like a cliché but there's a reason it's well-known. In some ways turning thirty feels like being re-born into the world but with a decent load of knowledge stored in the internal database. It's a new dawn and I'm ready to step into the sunlight.