CHESSIE HENRY On exiting her 20s
Now that the early-adult phase of your life has passed, how do you feel?
I recently caught up with a really old friend of mine. She was on the way to the wedding of an old friend and I hadn't seen her for ages
and we were both feeling really wobbly about it. We were both grappling with that feeling that you have changed in some fundamental way, that you have moved away from the person you were; and you struggle to reconnect with the things that felt really important to you. So we started talking about it: Have I changed? What does that mean? Have I lost all this stuff that really mattered to me?
I had read this article by Leandra Medine, of Man Repeller. She was talking about her style - how it hasn't changed, it has matured. Our conversation reminded me of that, so I read my friend this little quote from the article which had us both in tears - which was really unnecessary because it was about fashion, it wasn't even about what we were talking about. [But the point was that[] when something changes it is fundamentally different; when something matures it is more expansive and has more perspective. It was a relief for us.
What made you think you may have completely changed?
Reading back over stuff I've written in the past and feeling like, "Man, I couldn't even hear my voice in that now." I wrote something when I was at university about the importance of feminism but now I feel like, "Oh my God, how embarrassing." I have grown in my opinions and I have a much more nuanced understanding of feminism now and I wouldn't have put it as basically as I did then. It doesn't feel true of me any more.
What worries you about ageing?
Part of that is you have officially left all of those structures that kept you in line with all of the people you have grown up with. You are suddenly left quite adrift in the world. We have all left uni and formal training and everyone is out there doing their own thing and suddenly you go three years without seeing someone you were really close to and think, "We are really different now." It is quite unsettling. I have felt a lot of anxiety about losing friendships or feeling like you can't connect in the way you used to. It feels like a real loss. At the weekend I was at my friend's hen's do - she is getting married in a month; we all lived together in a flat in Dunedin for a year and it was a really classic university experience, where we spent so much time hungover and talking. Everybody felt so close and so involved in everyone's lives and as you go on people slip off, and they have partners, and they get married. It is bittersweet - we are past that now, we are never again going to all live in the same house or have that easy closeness.
