Exit Interview

New Zealand author Chessie Henry tells Eleanor Black about leaving her 20s

Now that the early-adult phase of your life has passed, how do you feel?

I recently caught up with a really old friend of mine. She was on the way to the wedding of an old friend and I hadn’t seen her for ages and we were both feeling really wobbly about it. We were both grappling with that feeling that you have changed in some fundamental way, that you have moved away from the person you were and you struggle to reconnect with the things that felt really important to you. So we started talking about it: Have I changed? What does that mean? Have I lost all this stuff that really mattered to me?

I had read this article by Leandra Medine, of Man Repeller. She was talking about her style — how it hasn’t changed, it has matured. Our conversation reminded me of that, so I read my friend this little quote from the article which had us both in tears — that when something changes it is fundamentally different; when something matures it is more expansive and has more perspective. It was a relief for us.

What made you think you may have completely changed?

Reading back over stuff I’ve written in the past and feeling like, “Man, I couldn’t even hear my voice in that now.” I wrote something when I was at university about the importance of feminism but now I feel like, “Oh my God, how embarrassing.” I have grown in my opinions and I have a much more nuanced understanding of feminism now and I wouldn’t have put it as basically as I did then. It doesn’t feel true of me any more.

What worries you about ageing?

Part of that is you have officially left all of those structures that kept you in line with all of the people you have grown up with. You are suddenly left quite adrift in the world. We have all left uni and formal training and everyone is out there doing their own thing and suddenly you go three years without seeing someone you were really close to and think, “We are really different now.” It is quite unsettling. I have felt a lot of anxiety about losing friendships or feeling like you can’t connect in the way you used to. It feels like a real loss. At the weekend I was at my friend’s hen’s do — she is getting married in a month; we all lived together in a flat in Dunedin for a year and it was a really classic university experience, where we spent so much time hungover and talking. Everybody felt so close and so involved in everyone’s lives and as you go on people slip off, and they have partners, and they get married. It is bittersweet — we are past that now, we are never again going to all live in the same house or have that easy closeness.

Simultaneously, it can feel really good. We were saying how now is such a good age, because we feel like we have all found our way. My friend who’s getting married is the best version of herself I have ever seen — she is so happy.

Are you the best version of yourself now?

I am more sure about the things that matter to me. Equally, I feel unsettled. I feel really old and really young at the same time. Body image issues that plagued me in my 20s or things that I used to obsess over, I’m now like, “I’m fine.” I am more confident in my skills. On the other hand, there are all these different experiences that I have accumulated over time and I’m not sure which ones are most true of me. Maybe that’s something that we are always navigating. What do you want to be doing and feeling in your 30s? It’s so easy to feel incredibly anxious about your choices; I want to continue to have confidence in my core values that I trust are true. I have friends who have bought houses. I have been writing and travelling and have had amazing experiences but I haven’t saved at all. I can logically see that you can’t do everything. At the hen’s do we were talking about our mad, crazy 20s. Man, we were so silly and I can’t believe we did all that stuff. I wouldn’t want to do it now.

Chessie Henry is the author of We Can Make a Life, the first selection of the Womad Book Club. She appears at Womad today.