Today is my last day of being 24. 24 is a good number I think. Nice easy even numbers.
24 hours in a day. (Then of course there is that beer carton joke that goes along with that) I am a fan of this age for simpler reasons though. At 24, I am still closer to 20 than 30. Obvious.
Tomorrow I am entering a whole new world. A whole new quarter century. I’m not all that psyched.
I’m going to be quite honest in this post. So parents, step-parents, aunts, uncles, or whoever knows me better as the little girl in double denim telling you all about my pet pig, rather than the woman-girl in cut-off demin mini’s kissing a steady stream of human pigs, block your ears. Click away. Make like a tree and leave!
So.
Anyone who has received a text from me recently, or has been included in a wine-induced conversation, knows that I am all about laying it on the table. (No Mum. I did not say ‘lying on the table’. And yes. I know you are still reading.)
My motto is “better to put yourself in the firing line than not be yourself at all”. Honesty. All for it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still all about little white fibs. For example. “Yes, I am wearing sunscreen.” Or. “No, I didn’t steal the last chocolate easter egg from your desk.” So on and so forth.
But when it comes to the big stuff, I don’t mind people knowing what’s really going down. It’s just a story after all. So on the eve of my real adult-hood, I want to be declare my little fear. Something that has been plaguing my little mind. I am scared that the older I get, I am not in fact becoming a woman.
Instead. I am becoming a man.
Before you all get horrible visuals, I would like to remind you that my nick-name is MATITTIES, so I mean this purely psychologically, not physically. (Still got it poppin’.)
There are a few things of late that have put this fear in my head. A few comments that point in this weird direction. Not to mention, the other night I was walking behind a lady on the dark Bondi street and she must have caught a glimpse of me out the corner of her eye. She proceeded to scream and run to the other side of the road because she thought I was predator. Not cool.
So as we already know, I don’t mind divulging a few juices titbits from nights out (or nights in). I have also recently developed a very nonchalant approach to relationships. Or lack thereof. I can now successfully not expect nor want nor chase nor care for longstanding “friendships” with boys. Or that thing that happens when you slap those two words together and spin them the other way around. Somewhere along the line, I stopped overthinking the morning texts. And I stopped remembering to write back. Because come on. By 24, we have been to the rodeo. Chances are, the wonderfully hilarious and attentive man from the midnight bar buying all the tequila shots is a totally different guy when daylight rolls round. In the daytime he probably has a girlfriend. Or isn’t over his old one. Or has three on the side. Or even worse. Has never even had one ever. So I at 24. I avoid all this woo-haa.
This mentality (which psychologists affectionately call being emotional ‘unavailable’ or ‘retarded’) has somehow slapped with the ‘man’ label. When introduced to some people the other day, a guy friend of mine said “oh don’t worry. Matisse thinks like a guy. She doesn’t care. She’s never in it for the long haul.”
At first I thought “saaa-weeeeet. I’m in the cool club.” Then I thought. No wait a minute. Maybe I’m in the mean club.
I have always agreed that girls are cray-cray. We are clingy and full-on and confusing and change our minds more than we change our knickers. We are hard to handle. We are a handful. We are great at some things. But being rational is not one of them. I have clearly taken this on board recently and decided to jump ship. So now at almost 25, I may not being growing arm hair, but I am definitely keeping things at arms length.
Moreover. One of the more serious ‘chats’ I have had recently has been with a female. Despite explicitly explaining that I like strong shoulder blades, a lovely young girl in Fiji decided over a few nights that I was the bees’ knees. She cried and lied and tried to trick me into coming back to her room. And in true girl fashion… apologized in the morning. And cried again. Hectic-town. Luckily I recognised the pattern perfectly. Tactics I have used time and time again. So I patiently waited for her to try and make me jealous and pretend like I didn’t exist. Then I knew I was in the clear.
At this point I am destined to a life of sitting on the deck with my dad and brother sipping beers checking out bikini bods on the beach. (Not so bad I guess.)
But no seriously. Let’s be serious. I don’t really want to frighten poor innocent girls on the street. Or break backpackers hearts. (Well. Not the ones that wear lycra skirts anyway). I also don’t really want to have the mind of a man. I mean, I went to wolf whistle the other day. Seriously. At a surfer coming out of the water. Luckily I quickly remembered I couldn’t whistle.
The last time I had tried to whistle it had been at another surfer. To tell him I was outside his house. Back then I had well and truly been a girl. I just unfortunately hadn’t been his only one.
So here we are.
Wait a second! You know what. I’m okay with being a bit guarded these days. Because I just realised I am definitely becoming a woman! Not a man after all! I just wrote one and half pages about how something in my life isn’t quite right. Then successfully in 40 words, packed with passive aggression, blamed it all on some random guy!
Winning. Bring on 25. I got this.
Now got to run. The hot mailman is here.
MATISSE WB 