Neverland — Suzey Ingold

Do you remember your first taste of freedom? I think I remember mine, although I would struggle to pinpoint the exact moment. They were recurring visits, a weekend here or there, spent out in a countryside manor house. While our parents stayed tucked up in rooms of the house discussing cultural phenomena (as I understand now) or eating all the scones (as I suspected then), the grounds were our Neverland. The little abandoned cabin that we made into our house, the sweeping trees alongside. The stream we paddled in until we staggered up to the house, tired and hungry and full of tales of our adventures.

There, perhaps, or maybe in Finland. Although the forest was not somewhere I was allowed alone – bears, as my mother would warn with a menacing amount of drama – the dirt track down to the lakeside I might just traverse myself. Or, at least, a few steps out of the yard to hunt wild strawberries from the overgrown bushes or daisies that grew haphazardly where the crickets chirped. In years to come, my nephew, three or four at the time, would run that same dirt track from one cottage to the other, to wake me for that day’s adventure. I wonder if he remembers that track as I do.

Taking off on my own… With a broom, for good measure.

It’s a funny thing. I always craved that freedom, for all the anxious tendencies that I’ve harboured since I was a child. Certainly by the time I was in my later years at high school, I was more than ready for the next stage and the freedom it would allow. It was never a question that I would move away for university: perhaps because of the kind of personality I am; perhaps because of my family’s academic background; perhaps a little of both.

But despite the months of longing for the step out of the confines of who I could be trapped under that blazer and tie, when the day came to move, that was scary, too. I didn’t eat all morning, practically silent on the train ride to Edinburgh with my mother, pillows stuffed into the luggage rack above our heads. She stayed long enough to see me settled, long enough to help me do my first grocery shop. And she was gone.

There I was. My tiny room, in a city I barely knew. What now? I thought. It reminds me now of my first day in Canada, although that level of uncertainty and unknown would have been far too much for the eighteen year old.

Freedom, in the sense of independence. I’d wanted it, and now I had it. A step into adulthood. Like many eighteen year olds, I didn’t handle it particularly well. The novelty of never having to eat fish again wore off rather fast. (Fish, like classical music, would become one of those things that I resented from my parents for so many years, only to come back to as an adult very willingly).

Facing up to Edinburgh, and the responsibilities ahead.

The reality of being a grown-up, beyond choice of menu and sleeping in, was a lot more challenging than I’d anticipated. Two weeks after I went to university, my parents, finally free of the last child in the house after forty years of a full house, went to South America for a month. I ran out of money two days after they left and lived on a diet of bagels with hummus and lettuce for a week until I nearly fainted so many times that my best friend, who thankfully lived down the road, hurriedly shoved a plate of pasta in front of me.

The first year was learning to cook (fairly well), budget (very poorly), and navigate Edinburgh’s steep hills without getting out of breath (it took a while). The second year brought with it flat hunting and rent and bills. Broken washing machines and dragging drunk flatmates into their beds and remembering I was supposed to move to Italy at the end of the year.

The third year was not moving to Italy because – a revelation! – I was capable of making decisions for myself. Decision-making became a huge part of my freedom, no more so than in that moment when I sat in the airport and said no. I’d never been more broken down: I hadn’t slept or eaten properly in days, I couldn’t think straight, could barely talk to anyone without snapping at them. I said no. And I realised that I had the freedom to make decisions for myself and my well-being. Decisions where I would know what was best for me, more than anyone else would. More so than even my parents. Because only I knew how I felt.

Decisions can be difficult, too. Perhaps that is what makes being an adult so groan-inducingly, eye-rollingly rubbish: for every positive, for every freedom, there is the weight of the responsibility it brings with it. If only I can make those kinds of decisions for myself, then I have to make them, without being able to rely on anyone else to do it for me.

The third, fourth, and fifth years brought with it such growth and, I was sure, a focused understanding of who I was and what I wanted from life. By the time I made the decision to move to Toronto, I did it knowing better than anyone who I am, that much I am certain of, even now. As for what I want? That one, I’m still figuring out, just a little bit.

I spent a couple of weeks at home with my family for Christmas and the New Year. And when I got on the plane to return to Toronto, it was the first time I hadn’t felt excited to return. What was confusing, however, was that I wasn’t excited to the idea of staying there, either. I had a real unsettled feeling as to where it was I wanted to be, or what I wanted to be doing. I put it down to a combination of seasonal depression and having the flu at the time, and shrugged it off.

Returning to Toronto, to the steady routine of commuting and working and cooking and doing laundry and taking out the bins and everything that makes up being an adult, I realised what it was I was craving. I wanted someone to take my freedom from me, just for a little while.

I watched my niece and nephew, guided by the schedules and decisions set forth by their parents, however willingly or not, and I longed for that. I longed to spend just a week or two longer with my parents, following their whims and lifestyle. Not having to decide what to cook or what to do or having to take responsibility for anything. Just for a little while – just long enough for me to get utterly frustrated with the two of them and wish to be back in my own life once again.

It’s been a very adult kind of week, I suppose. I got up early one morning to go to the government office to apply for healthcare; I worked through a backlog of emails; I paid my rent and my credit card bill. I also commiserated with my friends about how tedious adult life is, I ordered a pizza, and I fell asleep on the sofa cuddling our soft toy panda.

It’s a Friday evening now, and I’m drinking a lukewarm cider with a candle burning on the coffee table while I write. If you were to go back ten years, I suspect that’s about what fifteen year old me would have hoped for.

Freedom is a privilege, and not one I take for granted. I am privileged to live such a life where I am allowed to make decisions for myself, to go and do as I please. But it carries with it a burden of care: if you are responsible for yourself, you have to look after the person for which you are responsible. Through no fault of those around me, I feel like I’ve been pouring an extraordinary amount of energy into everyone and everything else of late, with the tap running dry when it comes time to care for my own well-being. I end each day drained and spent, I wake each morning with the weight of all that I should be doing before me, but for which there never seems the time.

Figuring out what I want from life is still a bit of a work in progress. There are parts of it that are starting to come together, particularly through the people I’ve met and the conversations I’ve had with such persons, and now comes the terrifyingly adult part of trying to turn that into a solid path for me to tread.

In all of that, I suppose I just have to remember to take care. And that my parents are always just a phone call away, if it comes to it. Neverland may be a far off place to me now, but that doesn’t mean I’m alone in the real world. Far from it.