Hello everyone, today we are very fortunate to have budding author Francesca Dineen join us to share some of her wisdom. Finding our way at all ages of being a woman can be challenging, when we are young our first steps can often determine the rest of our lives. Her words are both honest and insightful.
Enjoy.....
The many faces of me by Francesca Dineen
Living in your 20’s is hard. Nobody prepares you for
it; you are brought up through school, college and university to believe that
your 20’s will be the best years of your life. You almost knock over hurdles
trying to get there in such a hurry that your childhood passes you by, when in
actual fact, when you get to your 20’s, it’s not all it’s cracked up to me.
I’ll tell you why; a word creeps in to your vocabulary, one that you’ve never
had to use before now. It’s called responsibility. It’s also the first time you
haven’t been in a classroom being told what to do, what to say and what to
think. So you are now on your own having to be responsible and also get to
grips with whom you are. This is the scary part. Learning things about yourself
you never realized until your 20s. I feel as though I spent most of my
adolescent years, not only pretending to be something or someone I was not, but
also never taking the time to truly get to know myself either. At school I was
just a naïve girl, at college I was an indie pop loving lesbian look alike, at
University I was an art student, then I was a 'no hoper', now I’m a waitress. There
are many people in my life whom I am a different person around. I like to call
these my shadows.
I expressed an interest in tattoos at a fairly young
age and always knew I was going to have a few. I also knew my grandparents,
whom I currently live with, would not approve. Moving in with them was going to
be a challenge in its self, but hiding my wonderfully beautiful and intricate
tattoo of the hand of Fatima I have placed on my back, from my ridiculously
nosy and slightly tactless 81-year-old grandmother, would really be difficult.
Nonetheless a month after I moved in it was discovered. I was sure she was not
a huge fan, but at that point I decided I was no longer going to hide something
I was so proud of in my own home. That night, I went out in a backless top.
I work in hospitality, it’s a hard industry, it’s drain
on your mental and physical energy levels and can often hand out little
rewards. I am fortunate enough to be working for a company whom I adore, as
well as my team. But at work, I have on my poker face. Working in the industry
as long as I have, I have learnt to grow a thick skin and not take on board any
difficult customers remarks. They cannot knock through my barrier because
essentially, I do not care for them. Once they walk out of that door, I will
never see them again (unless they come in every Friday at 7:30 and book out the
same table…) Sometimes, I will get a complaint or a difficult customer who will
bring me close to walking out the door, but as long as I have my poker face on.
I’m untouchable.
When I go out with my friends I am always the life and
soul. I usually have too much to drink, let my feet lead me to the sound of
music and dance like nobody is watching, quite literally. To some this seems
attention seeking. It may look that way. I don’t really care, but it does seem
to be the persona I have always put out to others, for some reason.
You see, all of these occasions, all of these people I
am around, these people I become, they are my shadows, my many faces, the
people who have followed me through my adolescent and in to my 20’s and I can’t
seem to shake them off.
But what I have learned is after a heavy night out, or
an awkward conversation about why I decided to get my nose pierced, or dye my
hair ginger with my aged grandparents. Or even after a night of horror at work,
at the end of a long day, I can come home, crawl in to my bed, switch my lights
off, and my shadows disappear. Then it’s just me, and only me I am in the
company of. Knowing that I have that time, and that head space to remember who I
am and re ground myself, I think I might just allow a few more years of fun. At
least until I reach 30.
