No jo mo ayisishiyagalombili in Hot town, summery in the city - 2017

Epic milestones. Achievements of greatness. What would be one in my life?

Lives are linear in that they start at zero and count up; each birthday, each anniversary, each Christmas. Counting up and ticking off.

Let me tell you a secret. When I was sixteen I had some exams looming. These are the most important exams in a young persons life. Now (and since 1988) they have been GCSEs (general certificate of secondary education) but when they were looming for me they were (higher) O Level GCEs (ordinary level general certificate of education) or (lower) CSEs (certificate of secondary education). The results in these exams determine what you will do next: A levels and university or a specific course to learn a job, or just leaving education.

At sixteen, I decided that exams shouldn’t make a difference to my life; that a two hour period of my life, writing on a booklet of paper should not be the be all and end all of life.

I passed my English Language O Level - not sure I could have failed if I tried - but the rest? I just didn’t try. I got low CSE results.

And this stopped the linear movement of my life. My siblings all went to university and still work in the arenas in which they qualified but I didn’t and don’t. As I said yesterday, I qualified in art. I also have qualifications in basic counselling, paralegal, and childcare (which I only got to keep ofsted happy). I now have an A* GCSE and an A Level in Spanish. I have continuously learned throughout my adult life. My education is forever ongoing. I like to think of my lifeline as one that zings about in a zig zag through the space time continuum by my own choosing.

And I couldn’t bear to think that the job I was doing (whatever it was) would be my career for life. How dull would that be? I love constant change, I love to jump in the deep end and out of my comfort zone is a place I thoroughly enjoy being, even when I’m cacking myself about it! And I have never been educationally qualified to do a job I have just started to do.

And so, my life doesn’t have those milestones as we think of them. The linear path through. But I do have a ‘before’ and ‘after’ moment. I have BA and PA which stand for Before America and Post America.

At the age of 23 I left a marriage which was borderline emotionally abusive (after gaining a maths qualification, although not a GCSE). I then moved to Jacksonville FLA to be an au pair. It was while being away from my small hometown that I began to grow and to know myself. When I came back at age 25, I moved to London then (at age 29) here, where my husband lived (and still does, he’s downstairs at the moment). I came back as a stronger, more self assured person and so I guess I could say that being in the USA was a major milestone for me.