This June marks my 10-year high school reunion – which is haunting, harrowing and depressing for a whole multitude of reasons that I’m sure you already understand. After the initial thoughts, ‘Oh my God... has it really been 10 years since my velour tracksuit was considered the pinnacle of elegance? Since I had the nickname ‘fat Barbie’? Since we all confessed ‘secrets’ in MSN conversations only to have said conversations printed off and brought in for public viewings?' came a new wave of depressing realisations.
On the last day of high school, my fellow students and I all participated in the horrific tradition of voting for our peers in a series of ill-advised ‘most likely to...’ categories. I (proudly) won ‘most likely to become a millionaire’, before earning a place in the final three nominations for ‘chav of the year’. I did not let the fact that my peers deemed being ‘a chav’ worthy of an award diminish the honour of their expressed faith in my future earning potential.
I collected my laminated certificate with pride – my peers believed in me, they believed that I had what it takes to succeed, and I was raring to go out in the big, wide world and prove them right. Any fantasies of far off reunions were embellished with me dripping in gold, wiping my arse on bank notes and rocking up in an aeroplane.
Through the eyes of all my ‘Facebook friends’ (ie people who don’t know the day to day realities of my life), then I’m sure I seem every inch as successful as they predicted. In the last four years I have written three plays which have been performed in London, I adapted my first play into a film (Powder Room), which was released in cinemas in December, am a columnist for this beauty of a website, occasionally write about my own life for wanting newspapers and am currently in the process of writing my next film, awaiting the July airing of my sit-com pilot, Vodka Diaries. I genuinely never thought I had the ability or the means to have done half of this, and am thankful everyday that I have. If I met someone with a similar CV, would I think they were successful? Yes I would and I do. I would assume she had it all, she would probably eat at the Ritz and restaurants I’d never heard of and couldn’t pronounce the names of, own a floor in the Corinthia Hotel and brush her teeth with cocaine.
If I met someone with a similar CV, would I think they were successful? Yes.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve received a handful of well-intentioned Facebook messages from old school friends, and even a couple of teachers, with a, ‘Congratulations on all of your success,’ or, ‘See, told you you’d be a millionaire one day!’-type commendation. Which I’m all for, but I can’t help but feel fraudulent.
For the last nine years I have lived, slept, worked and pissed about in London, over 350 miles from these school friends. In these nine years I have done many things, some that I’m proud of and others that keep me awake at night believing I need psychological help. I’ve decided that this is pretty normal. One thing that I have not done, though, is become a millionaire. In fact, and thanks to my overdraft, student loan and other outstanding debts, I am about £1,048,500 away from being that.
Last month, my housemates and I received a letter from the estate agents informing us our rent is going up by £120 per month. I live with four other people so this works out as an extra £24 each. As we are all aged between 25 and 30 and have full time jobs (a teacher, a screenwriter, a company formation agent, a film producer and a personal trainer), at this point in our lives an extra £24 a month should be – at the very least – manageable. Well, it’s not. For any of us, it turned out.
As we all sat around swearing, threatening to move out, furiously banging buttons on calculators and drinking bargain wine while drafting up misguided angry letters to estate agents, I felt a strange sense of comfort. I was obviously not alone in being absolutely broke, still, in spite of how much ‘perceived success’ I may have.
This week, it emerged that my generation is being saddled with soaring tuition fees and student debt, whilst earnings have plummeted 11% in real terms between 2007 and 2012. Average starting salaries have fallen from £24,293 to £21,702 in real terms. It’s perfectly possible to work your arse off, get the job of your dreams, write a hit play or qualify as a lawyer – and still struggle to pay the rent.
It’s perfectly possible to work your arse off, get the job of your dreams, write a hit play or qualify as a lawyer – and still struggle to pay the rent
Professional success comes in a number of forms: how many clients you have, how happy you are with the quality of your work and variations thereof depending on your particular field. But professional success and financial gain are inexorably linked. And if I am to judge myself on that account, then I am far from successful.
I’m at that age where each day announces another school friend’s wedding, baby, holiday or house renovation. Thank you, Facebook. Where are these people getting their money from? I can barely afford a pot of paint, let alone a house to douse with it.
I live mainly off coffee shop loyalty card points, my hair colour (more often than not) depends on what is on offer when my roots are six inches long and the majority of the clothes in my wardrobe have been there since 2001. I genuinely still have that velour track suit from my time spent ‘being easy’ in high school. Granted, this particular piece has been demoted to ‘pyjama wear’, but that isn’t out of some nostalgia, attachment to velour or nonchalance on my behalf, this is out of my inability to afford pyjamas – aims such as ‘staying alive’ always taking precedence over life’s little luxuries. This is hardly the sort of ‘success’ I had in mind for myself.
But while I sit here, scowling at my Facebook feed, each status of friends proposing another conundrum as to how I have managed to successfully evade money my life thus far and feeling increasing like a failure, I can’t help but wonder whether it is my perception of success that is holding me back.
OK, so I’ll arrive at this reunion sans aeroplane. I won’t be dripping in gold and I won’t wipe my arse on a bank note. Not again, anyway. I won’t be among the ‘highest earners’ in the room, but does that really make me unsuccessful? Rather than constantly searching for that one thing in our life that’s lacking and judging ourselves on that (I know one woman who is an incredibly successful actor, well-paid, well liked, yet admits she feels her life is a mess because she doesn’t have a partner), shouldn’t we be praising ourselves on what we have achieved, whether that be a family, great friends, work we enjoy or even just being awarded a laminated certificate denoting misplaced faith in your ability?
So, no, I haven’t yet lived up to their expectation of becoming a millionaire, but every night when I pull on that velour I know, by God, I made it as ‘chav of my year’. And that, my friends, is a success of sorts.
Follow Rachel on Twitter @MsRachelHirons
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.