My Mess is a Bit of a Life by Georgia Pritchett
When I started reading My Mess is a Bit of a Life, I realized how much I related to Georgia and her adventures in anxiety.
Georgia brought me back with her vivid memories in school, reminding me of my early years, where I used to get so anxious in class that I laughed, something referred to as an incongruous emotion, a way to regulate emotions when feeling vulnerable or anxious.
I laughed nervously so much in fact that I was moved to a table at the back of the classroom to sit alone. I still laughed though, anxiously, sitting at my little island, removed from the rest of my peers.
In the book, we follow Georgia through all of her firsts; her first days at school, her first time traveling alone, her first miscarriage, and her first baby.
The story is told in short, and mostly humourous increments, diary style. One adventure highlights a birthday party she attended, which she referred to as a good time, much to her parent's shock, only a good time though because she "had cake and didn't join in any of the games", very much her approach to life.
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Courtesy of Georgia's Twitter |
At times, reading through Georgia's adventures in anxiety, I felt myself thinking holy crap, there's so much in life to think about and here's poor Georgie, carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Example being, when she was seven, she'd go to school with 4p for the bus and 5p for emergencies - the bus driver wouldn't take her money, instead he'd give her 2p so she would end up with 11p. She'd either spend the whole 11p on sweets like jelly foam mushrooms or Spangles (yum) or if it'd been a rough morning she'd take off and buy a cigarette!
That reminds me of the times I used to use whatever lunch money I had to buy a single or two from the corner store that sold to kids in uniform. That was until the day I was caught and brought to my mother's office to be reprimanded. My mother, the school nurse, told me not to smoke in my uniform again. And I'm pretty she also gave me a lovely digestive biscuit that she kept in a tin for the diabetic kids.
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Courtesy of Jo Unwin Literary Agency |