The In-Between

We are all inbetweeners, from the moment we are born. Sometimes it's beneficial, sometimes not.

The best time to be an inbetweener is when you no longer look like a child and don't yet look like your dad! You look young and fresh and people may actually find you attractive without the use of alcohol or desperation. This is a time to be carefree; after all you know that you are immortal and will look this good for the rest of your life. Then the years of self-abuse and gravity set in, to remind you that nothing is for ever.

The next in-between lasts from when you get married to when you realise just what you have done! You love everything about each other, the way he opens his mouth when eating or the way she reminds you to pick up your clothes that you left in a pile on the bathroom floor. She asks you if you had a good night when you come home drunk after a night out with the lads, while you understand that she has to sit up all night with her friend who has been dumped by that ignorant idiot who she should have never gone out with in the first place. Then something happens. No one can explain this phenomenon, but suddenly he seems to have started eating like a pig! While she has become a nag, always going on at you for leaving your clothes on the bathroom floor and coming home drunk after a night out with 'those losers!' Then you find yourself going out for a drink with that ignorant idiot so his ex can go round to yours and sob all night to your wife!

The next in-between is from the happiness of having a child until the realisation that you can't afford one! When you find out the happy news that you are both soon to hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet, you are over the moon, sitting up until the early hours discussing what to call the bundle of joy, or who it will look most like? After three months of parenthood you wish that the pitter-patter of tiny feet had been a mouse infestation! Your disposable income has now become disposable nappies, and you both have a strong odour of milky vomit! The man is jealous because the child is getting his share of booby time while the woman is irritable because the child was born with one tooth and she says it's like trying to breast-feed a beaver!

The next in-between is when your child finally leaves home. Your phone bills become minuscule after years of keeping an international communications company afloat. You find that one loaf of bread actually lasts three days and not just a matter of hours. You can lie in bed together at the weekend without a voice constantly coming from the other bedroom asking what is for breakfast. Your car has once more become just for your own personal use and you realise that when someone says, “can I borrow twenty pounds?” they actually give it you back to you later! Then he/she has children of their own, and suddenly your spare time has become timeshare! They think that you have a desperate longing to see them and their family at the weekend! All those Sunday lunches they couldn't be bothered to come home for when they actually lived with you seem to be very appealing to them now!

Then they learn to be totally independent of you and you are now in-between finding out who you both are and the inevitable! All these years have been taken up with stuff! This stuff has always been so important, that you have never stopped to smell the flowers. You now appreciate things you didn't care for before. Quiet times together or alone, catching up with old friends, when the realisation hits home that some are no longer with us. Your grandchildren become a source of pride and you laugh at your children as they seem to be turning to younger versions of yourself. Things that were once so important to you now seem insignificant while the things that seemed insignificant now seem so important.

Life is always changing: when you are young, it is changing at such a fast pace you are trying to get somewhere but never know where the destination is. While when you are older, you know where the destination, is but you prefer the journey. Wherever you are in life, take time to stop and appreciate the people who matter, the people who care about you and who you also care about. Don't take anything or anyone for granted, nothing is forever!