Aug/Sep 2020 Aspire Magazine FULL Issue Aug/Sep 2020 Aspire Magazine FULL Issue | Page 52

Don’t Underestimate Your
COMPETENCE
BY SUSIE MOORE
I had to shake myself for the first time
as an adult around the age of twenty. I was
making independent life choices at that
stage, and so any blame for my mistakes
was squarely on me. I moved to Sydney on a
gap year between high school and college (a
common thing for UK teenagers to do). I met
a boy the second night after I arrived, and
as you’re now aware, we got married eight
months later, on that beautiful Australian
beach. Wise, right? Get married at nineteen,
kids!
I hadn’t been looking to get married at that
age, but we wanted to stay together in one
country, and marriage seemed like the only
way to make it happen. It felt oddly practical.
He was twenty-three and I was nineteen.
I’d found a kind, caring, good-looking man,
and that was positive, right? I thought I
knew everything because I felt I had years
of suffering already in the can. I thought I’d
had my full portion of hard stuff already. But
in just a short period of time, I realized that I
knew nothing.
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