I'm a big kid now...

I don't know about you but whenever I type that title anywhere my mind sings it like the Huggies Pull-Ups ad. I don't know why, perhaps at 28 I'm still a big kid. It would certainly explain a few things about my personality.


Yesterday afternoon after B and I had seen his neurosurgeon we moozied over to Domayne to look at some beds and mattresses as we both thought well if we're going to have a future together we really ought to be on the same page bed wise even if I won't be sleeping on it for a while. Plus I have the design creds *cheeky grin*. Buying a bed frame was easy, it was a matter of grabbing his arm, looking like a desperate lunatic and saying that one and nothing but that one. It always helps when the said bed frame is 20% its asking price. That makes many a happy camper. Mattresses however are different.


With mattresses you are encouraged to jump on them, sleep on them (which was odd as I've never even showed B really how I sleep privately let alone in this big store which is kind of exposed), lift them up and down and every way around. It's quite an indepth process. Our sales consultant actively encouraged us to be like kids and of course we wasted no time in giggling like a bunch of cheeky children. After trying five mattresses we eventually found one which at the risk of opening myself up to some really bad Goldilocks jokes - it was juuuuust right. Bonus points for it being called Tennyson even. So we packaged the frame and the mattress and got a whopping 60% the total price and suffice to say although poorer B will be getting a new bed in about two months time.


When I was little and my Dad would schlep me around to furniture stores there was always this rigid formality about it. I guess as children your parents are afraid you will, well, act like a child, but as you get older it's encouraged within reason. You can be a little bit crazy, have a chortle even - oh yes I went there with chortle. So much of what we do after we leave our teen years is so inherently bogged down with responsibility it's so easy to overlook all the little pleasures of life and just get stuck in the proverbial mud of life at times. When we do get to be absolute dorks then that's just a liberation party. Getting drunk, partying all night and then waking up the next day with streamers in your hair and smelling like an off-licence doesn't really appeal to me. Nor has it if I'm honest. That's not the childlike innocence I'm talking about in case anyone is confused.


A few months ago in my developmental psych class my lecturer threw this video up for us to watch. He explained that babies (and toddlers) are brilliant mimics as it is part of their way of acquiring cognition skills amongst other essential developmental factors. That's the big kid behaviour I'm talking about. The gaggles, the naive cute stupidity and the sheer hilarity of being just ridiculously innocent without worry. Buying a bed and a mattress is in an adult domain without a doubt but the act of bouncing up and down on this mattress like it was a jumping castle (and no, in the end that mattress didn't make it) was fun. I think we all need fun in whatever form - I think we all need to have moments where we are going to say "I'm a big kid now".

What makes you a big kid?! 

Give me a sign...

I remember the first time I believed God was looking after me.


It came when driving home a fortnight after I was the victim of an attempted car-jacking. I had reached bottom. I hit it hard and while I always promised I would never give in I was absolutely exhausted. There was nothing in the tank. I existed on autopilot and didn't really want to do this thing called life but I did because I knew if I chucked in the towel I would have been inherently selfish to my housemate who is my best friend, my family and my friends.


If I am absolutely honest I wanted out. I was so lost. I knew life was hard. I knew it was a challenge and it was those instances that made us so beautifully aware of the good moments, how important it is to hold on to hope and love I kept repeating to myself like some praying mantra, but it wasn't working. I was dark and morbid - it was disgusting.


I was coming round this bend and this truck pulled out taking up two lanes as opposed to one. I had two choices. I couldn't stop in time and as I had someone behind me braking hard wasn't an option. I could continue my speed and drive right into the side of the truck presumably I would have died or lest be severely injured, or I could mount the median strip still going 80km/h and hope my car would slow down on the grass with my superior right foot driving skills.


I picked the second option.


There wasn't much time to think about anything, I didn't have control of my actions. I just did what I was instructed to do from some higher force. Call it my belief system, my subconscious, my fight or flight response - who knows?! Are they the same thing?


I stayed on that median strip for about five minutes. I hyperventilated, I was shaking all over, I wanted to throw up and drink the Nile. Here I was - so close to ending what I couldn't finish on my own - and it wouldn't have been my fault and I couldn't get over the line. I was so tired - and it wasn't just a physical tiredness, it was all over muscular and joint fatigue. It was pain on another level. My body was radiating fire. When I was sick four years earlier and on the days where the pain was so severe it left me unable to walk this is the crippling pain I was now experiencing.


I pulled into a side street and without thinking of the pain I stopped my car, pulled the seat back and just slammed my two fists onto my steering wheel and screamed out in such a manner I barely recognised my own voice. "I can't do this, what do you want from me?" And suddenly the tears I had built up for months and months just flowed. I couldn't breathe through the tears and I felt my stomach ache from the force of the emotion I was spewing forth. It was raw, passionate and uncensored. It didn't feel good but it was a necessary act. Then the clouds parted in the sky and the sun shone through down onto my car and maybe you may call it by-chance or coincidental timing, but I strongly believe it was God saying, "please trust me, now." That was my sign, that was when I believed...


As humans we are inexplicably drawn to making the unknown known through signs. What are the signs he likes me? What are the signs of a faulty exhaust system? What are the signs you've over-boiled an egg? What are the signs that you're losing your mind? When confronted with something that is intangible we like to make sense in ways we can identify with. But how much of it should we take as gospel and how much should we dismiss?


Equally, why do we subconsciously disregard the signs that don't gel with what we want to believe in? One of my crazy habits is whenever I have pain I fire up my WebMD app on my iPhone and input all my symptoms and wait for it to diagnose me with cancer or something just as deadly. For the past week and a half I was convinced one of my wisdom teeth had decided to finally come through as my jaw was shooting stars around my head. I read the signs, I knew the signs, but I proceeded to ignore the action behind them because the end result would not have been pretty (and I hate pain - dentist pain is something evil).


Maybe signs are really just hope in disguise. Checklists of hope with no real significance for anyone but for the person who wants to believe. I don't see anything wrong in that but I do raise an eyebrow of worry if you use it to justify or to avoid parts of your life but again subjectivity is everything. Totally aware of the irony given the last paragraph. Does hope keep us alive as Jay-Z and Kayne West propagated a few years back? Or does hope destroy us because by definition hope is the general feeling that some desire will be fulfilled.


Or for the cynics are signs just nothing but empty happenstance? We are ultimately in control of our existence and therefore if we yield such power we can in turn shift how things happen as they do. Signs are more symptoms of our own desires and if we really wanted to we could achieve it through controlled action. The universe therefore amounts to nothing and all those little butterfly in the tummy fluttering moments are pure crazy talk. Crazy talk isn't good for cynics. Nice little packages work much nicer. Cynics for the most part also dismiss the idea of hope because it taps into that area of the brain that deals with abstract concepts. Abstract thoughts leave cynical people confused, annoyed and wanting to pull out their hair. I know several and I'm seeing receding hair line. Give them a few years and they'll have a head so bald I'll be able to lick it like a postage stamp. Not that I would.


I think I'm a healthy combination of the two. My faith calls to believe in thoughts to some people would seem quite abstract but to me it's perfectly logical. I admit there are times I struggle with some concepts but then I am by nature a person who questions a lot. Yet there is a quiet cynic in me from being bruised and battered in my past. When do you believe in signs?