What would your younger self think

Have you ever stopped to wonder what your younger self would make of the person you’ve become and the life you’ve created?

I was confronted with this question when I came to Liverpool this week to hole up in a hotel and finish writing a book.

Liverpool is one of my favourite places in the UK and it has been ever since I ran away from home here back when I was 18.

Now, before I go any further I ought to clarify that I didn’t run away from home in the traditional sense i.e., without telling anyone. Everyone in my family knew I was going to Liverpool but nevertheless it felt like running away to me.

Let me explain…

When I was 14 my parents split up and without getting into the nitty gritty of it, I suddenly had a LOT of freedom.

Freedom to hang out with older people. Freedom to go to London pubs and clubs. Freedom to drink and do drugs.

By the time I was 15 I was regularly skiving off school to go and smoke dope, listen to records and chat music, life and politics at my friend’s flat.

I was hanging out with a really interesting and eclectic crowd, and in many ways I feel like I learned a lot more from them than I ever could have done in school, but obviously my education suffered.

When a woman from the council came round to my house to find out why I'd been absent from school for at least one day every week that term I blamed it on my parents’ break up and she didn’t take things any further. I somehow can’t imagine this happening today but what can I say? It was the 1980s. The Gen X way.

I did my O levels (exams taken at 16 to determine whether you could go on to sixth form) high on pills one of my older friends had given me when I freaked out about not having done any revision.

I have no clue what the pills were, all I know is that I didn’t sleep for days and revised like a maniac.

Somehow I managed to scrape through with the results I needed to go to sixth form college. But then everything went wrong. Or right, depending on how you look at it.

One of the friends I’d been hanging out with ended up nearly dying on heroin and everything kind of imploded.

I lost my friendship group and although I got on OK with my fellow students, I’d stopped hanging out socially with anyone my own age two years previously so I found myself on the outside looking in on my peer group.

It was a really low moment for me and now that I wasn’t going out all the time, the aftermath of my parents’ break-up really hit me. 

Everything came to a head one night, when a gang on the council estate where I lived set fire to a car right outside my bedroom window.

I remember staring out of the window and thinking to myself that I had to escape, but how and where to…?

The ‘where’ came to me instantly - I would run away to Liverpool! I’d never been there before but I loved the music and the writing and the acting coming out of the city. I also loved the football team. Liverpool seemed to be a city full of passion and creativity - not to mention wit! I can’t really explain why, but I felt such a strong affinity.

The only way I could think of ‘how’ I would get there was by going to university. But I hadn’t made an effort at school for so long, surely it wouldn’t be possible to get the grades I needed…

This was the first time I learned what a great motivator rock bottom can be. 

For the next two years I swapped going to pubs and clubs at the weekend for going to the library, where I spent all day Saturday studying (and listening to the Liverpool game and the Beatles on my Sony walkman!)

When I wasn’t studying I was avidly watching Brookside (a Liverpool soap) and reading books and plays by the likes of Willy Russell.

And when the time came to apply to universities naturally Liverpool was my first choice, despite it not being the best rated for the course I wanted to do (Film Studies and Screenwriting).

When I went for my interview, a Canadian professor asked me why I wanted to study there.

Without thinking, I blurted out, ‘I support Liverpool football club and I want to go to the games.’

After a terrible tumbleweed moment he looked at me and laughed and said, ‘That’s exactly why I applied to teach here!’

I got the grades I needed and got the place. And I will never, ever forget my feelings of terror and elation when I rocked up on my own at Lime Street station with my suitcase that first day of term.

I’d done it - I’d run away!

I spent two really happy years in Liverpool before dropping out of uni and returning to London. As predicted, I loved Liverpool but ended up hating uni (but that’s a whole other story).

Fast forward 35 years (gulp!) to last Friday when I rocked up in Lime Street again with a much nicer suitcase - whoever invented suitcase wheels should be given a medal! And I couldn’t help feeling an echo from the past as I realised that I’ve ‘run away’ again - but this time to travel the world as a digital / writer nomad.

While I was up here I made plans to meet up with my Scouse ex and dear friend, Steve, and he suggested we meet in a well-known Liverpool haunt, a pub named Flanagan’s Apple, which is right by the Cavern Club, where the Beatles used to play way back in the day.

Flanagan’s was one of my favourite places to go back when I lived in the city. My friends and I would go most Friday nights, and the evening would always end with a rousing singalong of Hey Jude down in the basement bar. 

When I arrived at the pub last Sunday lunchtime to meet Steve I nipped downstairs to the toilets and as soon as I stepped into the empty basement bar my breath caught in my throat. 

It was as exactly as I remembered it being 35 years ago and I could see the ghost of myself at 18, sitting at one of the tables, waving my hands in the air as I sang along.

I’d been so frickin’ happy in those moments, singing along to the Beatles in the city I’d fallen in love with before ever setting foot there.

my 18-year-old Liverpool-loving self

Looking back now I can see that it was the first time I’d manifested a long held and frequently visualised dream.

I’d hit a rock bottom at 16 but I’d dared to dream of a better life for myself and I’d worked my butt off to make that dream a reality.

Despite being given a lot of freedom at age 14, Liverpool was where I took my first real steps into independent adulthood at 18.

I arrived here on my own, knowing no-one, and I carved out a new life for myself. When I walk around these streets now I’m infused with memories of fun, freedom and independence. The memories of a teenager finally getting to know her true self.

And as I stood looking around the basement bar in Flanagans on Sunday I wondered what my 18 year old self would make of the woman I’ve become and the life I’ve created since first ‘running away’ here.

Given that she ended up dropping out of university because she didn’t think she was posh enough to be a writer I think she’d be gobsmacked by my 23 year writing career! I think she’d probably laugh and shake her head at some of my early relationship choices but I also think she’d love the way in which I chose to single parent my wonderful son.

I pictured my 18-year-old self smiling at me in that dimly lit basement bar, before raising her glass and singing another rousing chorus of Hey Jude, happy in the knowledge that although it was going to get messy at times, ultimately her life was going to be truly magical.

Until next week, stay wonderstruck!

Siobhan