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Have you ever seen one of those creepy infographics laying out exactly how many weeks you have left to live (well, figuring an average age of eighteen and death at like, eighty)?

If I'm seventeen, that means I've already ticked off about a fifth of my life. And God how I've wasted it - doing stupid things like using my phone, sucking a pacifier, and not investing in the housing market. Totally in chronological order, by the way.

"I spent the summer wasting
The sky was blue beyond compare
A photograph of myself
Is all I have to show for
Seven weeks of river walkways
Seven weeks of staying up all night"

 

That's from Belle and Sebastian - a band with six members, none of whom are named Belle or Sebastian. Damn those hippie 'artists'. But they've got a point - I do waste all my time without much to show for it.

 

Here's a question: would you agree to go on an all-expenses paid month long holiday, with the condition you can't remember any of it afterwards? 

 

I'd say yes, my mother says no. She says the only point of a holiday is to reminisce on it afterwards, and she'd rather not erase a month of her life from her memory. 

 

But if I could erase all of August 2024 from my life, I probably would. I can't say I spend much of any time reminiscing on that month - or if I do, only negatively. 

 

Anyway - I have this one memory from when I was eight. I wasn't doing anything particularly special at the time, but I thought to myself, with such conviction, that I would remember this moment when I was twenty. Only three years to go and I still remember. 

 

I was just as alive and conscious then as I am now. And now, I'll say things like "God, I loved Year 10" - but looking back at old diary entries, it seems that might not be true. Maybe my brain's edited my memories to be more positive. Like how women give birth again because their brain blocks the memory of the pain. 

 

So how accurately will I remember this year? Will I love it or hate it in my memory - compared to actuality?

 

I think that if you believe something enough, and never have it disproven before you die, it might as well be true. Like how if a tree falls in a forest, and no one hears or sees it, it basically never happened. 

 

So maybe I'll hate this year with a fervour I can't feel at the moment. Or love it till the day I die. And the truth won't matter - except to me, right now, today. 

 

I'll finish with a lovely 'Naomi's Mother' quote, which you all seem to love. My mother once told me, following a particularly lengthy rant of mine, sighing and melodramatically; 

 

"Listen Naomi... if I had to relive my teenage years to end world hunger... 

 

I'd have to think about it."