First Love.

I don’t think it’s ever truly possible to forget your first love. It’s like a scar that you get when you’re a child, one that you look back on and remember the situation that caused it. First love is sort of similar. You notice little things about yourself that you don’t like throughout life. When we see something we don’t like about ourselves, we have a tendency to try and explain it away; put the blame on someone else. Little things about not trusting others, or not liking the way you look, those nagging thoughts that never seem to go away, the ones that repeat “If only I was smarter, if only I was funnier, if only I was prettier…”. It comes back every now and then - the hurt, the pain. Even after you’ve had your heart broken one time too many by the person you always forgave no matter what, even after you’ve moved on and haven’t wished for them to dump whoever they’re going out with and get together with you; sweep you off your feet and carry you to a land of far away, even after…you’ll read a book, you’ll see a movie, you’ll listen to a song and it all comes rushing back. You’ll see the image of yourself reflected in this character pining after their best friend. You’ll see them giving everything they have to their friend, how their friend seems to cherish it, how they get hopeful, before their friend tells them about their most recent beau, and they’re crushed.

You could be happily in love with someone else, happily married, happily partnered, yet you’ll still sink down to the lows of knowing that somewhere out there, someone else has suffered the pain that you have, that they’re writing about it, that they’re directing about it, that they’re singing about it. And you don’t really know what to do with those feelings when they come. You have a life outside of this person, you’ve moved on, you don’t love them anymore.

But you do. Oh, how you do. You still make allowances for them. You still get hurt by them constantly. You still get upset when they say they’ll meet up with you but never arrive. You still see them as cute. You still spoil them rotten. And the worst part is, you don’t want them anymore. You have no attraction to them, you don’t want them to be yours, you don’t want to kiss them or cuddle them, fall asleep at night with them and wake up in the morning in their arms. You don’t want to hold hands and have them stroke your hair, you don’t want them to be possessive of you, you don’t want them to love you. But still you’re feeling the same things you did way back when, only dulled and muted.

And you’re confused. You’re so, incredibly confused, you don’t quite know how to handle the situation. You don’t love them anymore, but you still have all these feelings. And it’s so weird, and so new, and you feel like crying but you don’t know why because there’s nothing to cry about. You’re over them. You’ve detached yourself, at last. But still you feel utterly depressed. And there’s nothing you can do.

The damage is done. You’ve been broken and molded into a shape so different to how you were. 5 years since the start of the tunnel and you’re finally out the other end, but you’ve changed. You’ve become the person who they should have loved. You’ve become the person who you hate. You’re needy. You’re clingy. Then one person sympathises with you, one person says you deserve better, one person gives you the slightest bit of attention, and they become the new centre of your world and bam. You’re in another tunnel again. Apart from this one won’t be as long. This one won’t be as twisting and turning. It won’t be so uneven. You don’t have to fear what’s in the darkness, what’s lurking to hurt you, because you’ve already seen it. You’ve already been as damaged as you can be, so there’s nothing to fear.

Because really, you’ll never love as hard, as strong, as breathtakingly painfully and as heartwrenchingly dangerously as you did with that first person. You’ll love longer, you’ll love happier, you’ll love sweeter, but you’ll never have a love like that first love that broke your heart. Never.

‘Cos, y’know, first love…it can really fuck you up.

“I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.” - Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca

Jealousy.

“Jealousy is an emotion and typically refers to the negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something that the person values, such as a relationship, friendship, or love.” - Wikipedia

It’s irrational. We all know this. In an ideal world, everyone would feel happy, confident and content enough with their life and what they have, to never feel jealous over something. We would all love and live in perfect harmony and happiness. Religion and Science could live side by side. Everyone would be equal. There would be no racism, no sexism, no homophobia.

But we’re not living in an ideal world; we’re very, very far from it. And in this less-than-ideal world we live in, we have to put up with certain emotions. Emotions such as anger, hate, fear, apathy, sadness, self-loathing, discomfort, boredom with everything and jealousy. And they’re near impossible to control.

Jealousy is…well, jealousy just is. It’s that feeling you get when the person you have a crush on, the person you like, the person you love, is happily talking about their boyfriend or girlfriend. It’s the feeling you get when someone is seemingly taking away one of your closest friends. It’s the feeling you get when that close friend is all chummy with your person of romantic interest. And you’re stuck there seething, not being able to function, forcing a smile while you watch them get all cuddly and all you can think is that you want to go over there and rip them apart and scream at them. They’re my friend. They’re my love. Get the fuck away from each other! But you can’t do that. So you’re sitting there wishing that it was you your friend was talking to, that it was you wrapped up in your love’s arms. Wishing, wishing, wishing, whilst pretending that everything’s okay. Whilst smiling and laughing extra hard, trying to get them interested in your conversation so they’ll be less absorbed in each other, so they’ll notice, maybe get jealous themselves and want to join in; you want them to pay more attention to you and less to each other. You know that nothing would ever happen between the two, but you can’t stand it anyway, you’re possessive of both of them and right then, right now, they’re all over each other and you can’t fucking watch.

The feeling makes you sick to your stomach with self-hate at wanting them to be less happy than they are, but at the same time you can’t bring yourself to blame yourself because they’re the ones causing it, it’s their fault, not yours, right?

Wrong.

Truth is it’s no one’s faults. Without some sort of medicinal help, we can’t control our feelings. That includes those of love, friendship, possessiveness and jealousy. It’s all out of our control, and it’s not anything personal; you just want to be as happy as you can be because that’s everyone’s one true goal; to be happy. To feel so happy and content that you couldn’t possibly wish for more. To never have to settle with second, third, fourth best. We all just want to live nice and old, happy, safe, content, loving ourselves and the world around us. There’s always something more to want out there and we want to be at the top of that chain. We want to be the something that everyone else wants to be. And it’s a horrifically selfish thought, but face it. It’s true. It’s human nature. If you are reading this now then it applies to you, too. Think about how nice it feels when someone close to you genuinely compliments you. Maybe you yourself can’t accept it; but you would feel better having received a compliment compared to if you never had. We all want to get there; get to the ultimate goal. The aim of life is to preserve it. Our biological need is to live long enough to pass on our genes and procreate; furthering the race and bettering its chance of survival.

We’re all striving towards this same unconscious goal that half of us don’t even realise is there.

And on our way we feel irrational things like jealousy. Jealousy that makes you have to get up and leave the room in anger because you can’t take seeing them all happy and cosy together when you yourself can’t be there. It fucking hurts. It fucking sucks. But it’s an emotion you can’t control and you have to accept that. It’s been inbuilt into our very chemical makeup; we see our best chance of survival and when that is compromised we get controlling, possessive, manipulative, angry, envious. I honestly don’t know what to do other than to grit your teeth and bear it. I haven’t found a foolproof solution to it myself. I’m not sure if there is one. Everything is so complex when it comes to human emotion.

I guess, in the end, all we’re all ever doing is stumbling on backwards through the dark trying to find the tiny glimmer of light that holds all the promise we’ve ever wished for.

Hope.

Another sad post ahead. Be warned.

If there was one thing I had to choose in life that hurt me the most, it would be hope.

Hope that they’ll love me back, hope that I’ll get the position, hope that I’ll pass the exam, hope that they’ll stick around for once.

A number of things have happened in the past six months, details of which I won’t go through now, all that made my hope soar high before crashing down. Some through fault of my own. Some not. And it’s those that I couldn’t have changed no matter what I did that hurt the most. Those ones which convince you that there must be something wrong with you because otherwise it would have gone your way. There had to be something that you did wrong and could have changed to succeed.

But there isn’t.

And for people who are the type to automatically blame themselves before other people, that’s a tough blow. You’re left going crazy on your own because you think there has to be something you could have done, even when there isn’t, but you can’t accept that there was nothing to be done about it. You did wrong somewhere. You took the left turn when you should have gone right. You went up when you should have gone down. Something, anything.

But there’s nothing.

And it’s worse when it comes to loving someone. When it comes down to the very deepest and most vulnerable feeling that exists. When it comes down to giving someone else the tools to slaughter you with a word. You give it away, you smile, you laugh, you hope it will be returned. You wait. Your hopes build to a crescendo. Then, at that peak of hope that you’ve hidden all along whilst trying to convince yourself that they won’t love you back, you get the truth. And it’s the truth you expected but never wanted.

Rejection.

And then you’re spiraling, spiraling, spiraling down. You go numb for a bit, then angry, then so incredibly depressed. You throw around your feelings because you spite love, you spite commitment, you spite the thing that hurt you so. You lose control of your emotions. Then you’re grounded. You’re slapped in the face by reality. And you retract your feelings. You cut all ties. You become scared, shakey, vulnerable, unconfident. “You went wrong somewhere.” you tell yourself. “They never loved you back because of you. They’re beautiful. They’re wonderful. You love them. Loved them. They’re perfection. You’re the defect. You’re the thing that was wrong.”

You.

And you get more scared, shakier, more vulnerable, more unconfident. You hold your heart in your chest, protected by your bones, sure that nothing else will ever touch it again. You get protective over it. You’ll never hurt it as badly as you did before. You develop another kind of hope. The hope to not be hurt again.

And of course you are. Your hopes are broken another time. Just when you tentatively tried again, just when they seemed to reciprocate, just, just, just…

They change. They stop talking to you. They stop seeking you out. All those secretive little glances; gone. And the only thing you can think is, “What have I done? What did I do? Why is this happening again? I thought I was doing everything right, I thought I was actually in for a fighting chance. I thought I could try.” You question why you deserve it, but you know why you do. It’s because you always mess everything up. Somehow, you always make a mistake. Failure is a cause of your own lack of action or deed of wrong action. You can only blame yourself.

And then along comes your all-time friend. The one to always help you escape during these times.

Apathy.

I wonder how long it will stay this time.

Best Friend.

I have a friend. We’ve been best friends since we were 7, so for 10 years now, and we’re still going strong. My family takes her on holiday every summer. We have massive DMC’s every night when we’re out there, sitting on our balcony and staring at the night’s sky. She’s had a boyfriend for the past 3 months.

A few weeks ago he told her he loved her. She told him she loved him back. Two days later he dumped her through text. It’s her birthday party today and he was meant to be there to meet all her friends. Now he obviously won’t.

I just wanted to make this post in her honour seeing as I never really talk about her enough when I should.

She’s strong. Possibly one of the strongest people I know; not just because when life throws shit at her she struggles on through, but she struggles on through with a smile on her face and never asks for comfort or help from anyone. Ever. Even now I’m one of the few people she’ll talk to about her problems; and that’s taken 10 years to get to.

Her reasoning is that she doesn’t like being sad, which makes her even stronger in a way. When all this happened she was down for one measly day, then she was back at school smiling and rearing to go. She was upset and confused and didn’t know what was up and what was down, but she sat there and smiled and joked and laughed despite everything that was going on.

And I think that is real strength. Never letting life get you down, shrugging off the small things because you know they’re just that; small. They won’t matter in the long run. She’s got such a clear perspective on what’s important in life, it never fails to amaze me. She has so much for people to be jealous of, I know I am, but she doesn’t see it herself. She’s modest, she’s kind, she gives good advice, she doesn’t care if you wake her up at 2 in the morning to complain about your life, she doesn’t like burdening people, she refuses to be sad.

I tried to tell her that she’s allowed to be sad; that she shouldn’t hold it all inside because one day that much pressure will get dangerous and she’ll break. I think she heard me, because she thanked me for saying something no one else ever had, but at the same time she was smiling away, thinking of what tomorrow will bring rather than what yesterday killed. And that just amazed me so much.

Lot’s of people think that she’s just not emotionally attached enough to show her negative feelings, but that’s bullshit. She’s so attached to so many things that if something was wrong with one of them she’d drop everything for them. She’d put herself after anyone, she prioritises things perfectly; knowing when what should be put first. The only thing she never puts on that priority list is herself.

Not enough people see her for the amazing person she is; more as the one who sits there and laughs a lot. They don’t know what’s underneath that exterior, the thoughts and questions that zip through her brain a mile a minute, the deep and philosophical ideas that burst forth at random moments on late nights in Italy by the sea. And it saddens me that she doesn’t even mind; that she’s perfectly happy with life when it should be so much better for someone like her.

I guess I wish that I could take all her pain and burdens and just shove them in a fire and watch them melt away.

She’s my best friend, and I don’t tell her it often enough, but I care about her more than anyone in the world. She deserves so much more than what she gets.

So Ellie, despite the fact that you’ll probably never see this, I love you and I care for you and I hope you find someone better than your last 3 ex’s because no one in the world deserves you, but I’m sure there’s someone out there who’s close enough.

“Friendship isn’t a big thing - it’s a million little things.” - Author Unknown

Failure.

Hey there everyone! I haven’t updated in a while for reasons said in my last post, but I thought that I should just to remind you all that I’m here. I’m mainly on my day-to-day blog (See side bar) but it’s been a while since I last got philosophical, and my school has given me the perfect opportunity to.

So this week is “failure” week at my school. Fun, right? On Friday we were given a taster when asked to pick our favourite colour smartie. I naturally picked green. Our teacher then told us that if we picked blue then none of us would ever fail at anything again in our lives. He then told us to close our eyes and vote again. One person changed to blue, but the rest of us stuck with our original colour. He seemed surprised, but I thought that was about right actually. Let me explain.

It would be amazing to never fail at anything; to never have to worry about being a bad person or failing school. You could find the cure to cancer and reverse global warming and get rid of poverty. It would be wonderful. But when you have a perfect world, what do you do with it then? You eventually die out and your kids take over, and then they die and their kids take over, until after a few generations, the people that remembered the old world are all dead. Then what are we left with? A whole group of people that don’t know what true success is because they’ve never known failure.

It’s part of being alive; failure. Not just for humans, but for every living creature. A bird trying to learn to fly, a bear learning to hunt, an ant trying to carry a leaf too big for it. They fail, they pause, they try again. Everything does it; and it makes the feeling of triumph you get when you finally reach your goal that much greater. If life was given to you on a silver platter, if one thing ever went wrong, you would be stranded.

I’ve always stuck by my principle that without comparison there can be no conclusion. Without badness, how can we know goodness? Without suffering, how can we know comfort? Without failure, how can we know success? 

I would stick with my green smartie. I wouldn’t change to blue. I think the whole point of evolving as people is to learn from our mistakes and try hard not to repeat them. It would be great to not fail, but it would be hollow. Something like that would change you; it would turn you arrogant and ugly.

Failure hurts. It shatters our pride and confidence. But we learn from it. We get over it. We grow. Time doesn’t stop ticking for you to pick yourself back up, you have to keep on struggling through till you reach the clear-zone. It’s tough, it’s strenuous, but we get there.

And getting there yourself, without the help of some magical chocolate, makes it all the more worth while.

Please, Just Stop.

I’ve had a bad, bad day today at school. I injured myself three times before I even left the house and from then on things just got progressively worse, until I found out that an Indonesian girl has been copying all of my cyber accounts on various websites.

She copied my posts on this blog.

She was found out.

She changed her URL.

She was found out.

She’s changed it again.

She’s copied my “about me” on my tumblr and twitter.

She’s copied my “interests” and my avatar on deviantART. I know this because one of her “favourite authors” is John Humphries. My darling grandfather who’s published one book that sold 3 copies to family only.

I know that having accounts like these puts my information at a risk from the get-go, but honestly, who could expect all of this when you’re a nobody; some school girl with no money or reputation to her name.

I’m flattered that people like my blog, that they like me enough to reblog my writing, but when they copy and paste it as their own, adding in paragraphs to make it “theirs” I find this is going beyond flattery.

Truly I am sad for this girl, as she obviously doesn’t have confidence enough to try and be her own person even on somewhere as anonymous as the internet, but I still feel that going behind someone’s back and taking their identity is fraudulent and many steps too far.

I post rarely on this blog purely due to the fact that I don’t want to post half-assed posts that aren’t helpful or entertaining in any way. Therefore I wait and wait until inspiration strikes me, then I sit down, find a photo, play some music and type.

I put so, so much effort into my writings and this blog; nothing comes easily or naturally, half the time I’m sitting on thesaurus.com trying to get better vocabulary. It takes time, and effort and so much emotion, that when someone thinks that it’s fair and alright and legal to just take that, and say they wrote it, just because I don’t have copyright stamped all over it, or passwords to protect every post, it breaks my heart and reduces me to tears.

I’m just…so saddened by all of this that’s happened. I put these posts here for people to read, so that if they feel they need some reassurance that there are other people out there that feel the same as them, they can find that here, and carry on with life. I don’t want to privatise every post, every picture, every word; I want people to be able to read them. But now there’s a girl who’s pretending to be me in every respect other than my face and name.

I hope you read this and you realise that it’s not okay. That you have really, truly and deeply upset me. I put so much work into these posts, my innermost feelings have been spilled here, bared out for people to see, whether they laugh at them or not, and it hurts to have them shamelessly stolen from me like they have been.

I’m sad, tired and hurt, and I’m not in the mood for posting anything else in a long while if I know that it’s just going to be copied and pasted somewhere else under a URL that I don’t know.

I’ll keep up with my picture blog, but for now this is goodbye.

Puspita, I hope you’re happy and that you’ve achieved what you set out to achieve.

<3

So I’m ill and I’m bored and my friend recently made a picture blog, so I thought “why the hell not?” and made one as well last night. It’s basically just a collection of pictures I like from weheartit including some of the ones I’ve put up here. So if you like the style of pictures I post, but can never be bothered to read the actual post, take a look at the link in my “About:” column on the side and click at will.

The updates on that one will be a lot more frequent than the updates on this one as there won’t be any writing on it, at all.

Hope to see you there =]

<3

Perceptions.

It suddenly struck me last night when I was waiting for sleep to take me, that the entire world that we live in is made up purely of perceptions and concepts. I guess it sounds a little bit stupid for me to say that as it’s glaringly obvious, when you think of it, but hear me out. I was thinking of zooming in and out on a computer and thought how weird it would be if, to zoom in, you had to scroll down and to zoom out you had to scroll up. Even on Google Maps the + and - signs on the maps are the former above the latter. I guess it makes sense, scrolling up means you’re ‘adding’, so you’d get closer, and vice versa for scrolling down…but at the same time, make that scroll bar 3D and stick it on the Earth like a high rise building and suddenly only the opposite makes sense. Why would you go up for ‘in’? Surely that would take you further out, way up into the sky. Going down would only make you closer rather than further away. We know from common sense that the closer we are to something, the clearer it is. So why would you move away from it to get closer? It doesn’t make sense. I mean, they obviously weren’t thinking of some massive 3D scroll bar-con-building when they made the standard zoom, but I think this example is quite good for my point about perceptions.

We’re brought up in a world that existed before us. Our world is born with us, but the one we live on is one that has long since out-dated any age of any human. This means that ideas and concepts are going to have been formed, social rules and etiquette will exist before you; we’re born into this world thinking that right is right and left is left. It’s all just words and labels. Without them, we’d be lost, we wouldn’t be able to communicate. But they’re still just words. Not facts. Someone named them, some human just like you and me, someone who had no more power over the universe than we do.

There’s a label for everything now; from what direction we move in, to whom we love. Labels help us understand things better. It makes us feel happier to know that we can clump things together under this or that label and if something new crops up then we’ll just come up with another label for it. 

My point is, is that these perceptions can be overcome and these labels can’t always be used. We don’t live in a regimented world where everything is ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Unexpected things happen when we think we finally have it all figured out. Hopes and dreams can come crashing down in a matter of seconds because of one unexpected action. How can we possibly place things in groups as if they won’t ever change? It’s fair enough to say, “That’s a rock, it may shrink, but it will still be a rock.” but putting things, living things, into categories just won’t work. Fundamentally we may all be the same; made up of elements, atoms, hadrons and leptons, but chemically we react differently. We have different genes, we have different feelings, different perceptions, different ideas of what’s right and what’s wrong; of what’s right and what’s left.

Everyone is different, nothing is ever truly constant. Things can change in the blink of an eye. For someone like me, who doesn’t like change, who likes their routine, it’s not a comforting thought. But the whole point to life is to live it without knowing what’s around the corner. It’s a maze; a battle, it’s not easy or straight forward. We try to make it easier by labelling, by making a structured order out of things, trying to guess probabilities and statistics so we can be prepared. But we never can be prepared. Nature is above us. Just like how previous people have lived before we were born, nature lived before the planet was born.

We were born to take risks, if we don’t then we’ll never be happy. We can overpower these perceptions, no one can be made to believe anything. Don’t waste your life worrying about one small thing; in the bigger picture it truly doesn’t matter.

I said something to a friend last night about happiness. I told her that if she leaves her regrets behind then she can concentrate on the smaller enjoyments that come with everyday life. That, in the end, the accumulation of these little moments will be enough for her to look back and know she had a happy life. Because true happiness is something that we don’t know. If we don’t have anything to compare to, we can be content with what we have. So to her and anyone else who may read this; don’t sweat the small stuff. Do what you think is right. Live your own life. And when the end comes, you’ll be happy. Maybe not as happy as you could be; but that’s an unknown; you’ll be happy enough. There’s no law that says we have to be the best. Sometimes, being ‘enough’ is all we need.

“There is no truth, there is only perception.” - Gustave Flaubert

Mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes. This is a simple fact of life. They happen. Done. It’s funny how such a tiny, inconsequential moment in time can change the way you feel or see things forever. Some mistakes are for the better, some are for the worse, some seem like they’re for the worse but really they open your eyes to what needs to be done for things to be better. Having a clean slate everyday is a lovely concept, but in reality it’s never going to work out. You may be able to forgive and forget yourself, but the memories of other’s are different to your own. You can’t say that your slate is clean when, in other’s eyes, it’s not. Mistakes and the guilt that comes with them is something that you have to deal with and get over by yourself. No one is perfect, no one can move through life making no wrong turns. The more mistakes we make the more we grow. The more guilt we feel, the less likely we are to repeat the action in the future.

The key to mistakes is to not let them overpower you. It’s incredibly easy to get lost in the repetitive motions of “it’s my fault, it’s my fault, it’s my fault,” just as it is as easy to get lost in the repetitive motions of “it’s not my fault, it’s not my fault, it’s not my fault.” The fact is, is that it’s human nature to want to offload the blame to someone else; anything to lessen the guilt that you feel. But you have to face up to what you yourself created. There’s not always a way to avoid making a mistake, and you can’t go around thinking that it’s your fault because you couldn’t do anything, but you equally can’t go around pushing all the blame on someone else so you can feel burden free. It’s a delicate balance that’s hard to find and depends highly on the situation. It’s not always easy to do, as you have to be able to see yourself as a third person in order to judge fairly if the mistake was entirely yours; you have to be comfortable enough with yourself to pick out the bits you couldn’t have changed, and the bits you could. It’s not a skill that’s quickly acquired; to judge yourself without being overly-critical.

The one thing that helps is that, generally, in a complicated situation, if you look at it in very simple layman’s terms, the answer arises by itself a lot more easily. Laying the facts out in front of you and just viewing them from an outsider’s perspective is more useful than words can describe. This is why I feel that everyone has to have someone to talk to about their problems. If you only had yourself, you would only see the situation from your own perspective, which could leave you caring too little or caring too much. With someone on the outside to talk to, you can hear their view on the matter and see things that you couldn’t before. We need other people in our lives because it’s difficult to detach a part of yourself within your mind to be your own outsider to talk to.

Mistakes aren’t meant to be pleasant things, and the guilt that we feel when we make them is immense, but then you have to remember that the world is bigger than just you. It’s not going to blow up the planet if you make one little mistake, it might ruin your world, but that’s something you have to take courage to fix yourself. Speaking to people about things you’d rather not even think about is something that has never looked appealing; but once it’s out there, it’s out there. Speaking is a tool that we can use to our advantage to alleviate our emotions, our feelings, and, in this case, our guilt. It only takes that one person that you hurt to say that they forgive you and then the guilt is almost immediately lifted, it’s not gone; it may never be completely gone, but it’s been lifted significantly enough that you can move on In life and be as happy as you can be.

Because the fact is, if you’re not happy with yourself, you’ll never be truly happy with someone else. Very few people are happy with themselves, so very few people ever find this “true happiness” that seems to be life’s one real goal, but everyone can get close. And it’s not a failing either; to find fault in oneself is normal; a defence mechanism to fall back on when a situation turns rough. A defence mechanism so that you can never truly be disappointed; because putting your feelings out there on the line is a brave and courageous thing to do, and too often people are hurt because of it. But you can never feel like you’re not good enough, because then that gives you a reason to hate yourself and take the easy way out; it gives you a clear route through the forest to run away to safety and self-pity. The other route is lined with brambles and stinging nettles; the ground is uneven and layered in shards of glass and burrs; it’s longer than the first path, it doesn’t even have a definite end. But the possible ending it does have is better than you could ever imagine if you took the first path. It’s a risk. But so is life. Living is a risk; anything can happen at any time to hurt you. The point of living is to overcome these risks and realise how amazing it feels when you’re finally living how you’ve always wanted to. It takes hard work, it takes courage, it takes honesty; but it’s a possibility. Not a definite one, but it’s there. Mistakes are made along the way, but they don’t impede you. Maybe you take a wrong turn; maybe your clothes get snagged on a bramble bush; or maybe you get a piece of glass stuck in your foot. But nothing is irreversible.

Don’t let one stupid mistake made in a moment of confusion tie you down. A clean slate every day is fantastical. A clean slate every year…not much more feasible. But it is more feasible. Let go of the pain you’ve been feeling; now is your chance to set everything right so you can begin the new year a happier and more burden free person.

Merry Christmas!

The month has gone quickly, with school and end of term celebrations, mad rushes to buy presents, bitten nails from awaiting deliveries; and it all boils down to today. Christmas.

Over here in London, it may not be snowing, the streets may not be a blanket of white, we may not have carolers knocking on the door every 5 minutes; but we do have a lit fire, stockings outside our bedroom doors, a tree filled with decorations, and presents stacked up underneath it. We’re too old for Father Christmas, but there’s a carrot and a mince pie out with a glass of milk, and the excitement is still too much for us to sleep properly. We still leap out our beds at the ungodly hour of 6 to wake up our parents so we can open presents, tipping the contents of our stockings out all over their bedroom floor and tearing at the wrapping. Then we’re rushing, preparing for the family lunch, then driving off for the other family’s dinner, before going back home and watching Christmas specials on the telly with hot chocolates cradled in our hands.

They say it’s more about the giving than the receiving, and I can honestly say that I’ve never experienced that feeling before this year. It’s always been about getting presents for me; I’ve always been a child, and I’ve had my parents supply the presents I gave to others. But this year, I’ve drained my bank account of what little money it had, and I’ve bought my family their presents themselves, and I am so so excited about giving them what I’ve so painstakingly searched for and thought about.

Christmas for me is a little bit different every year; this year my Gran won’t be joining us for Christmas Lunch as she’s bedridden with severe emphysema, and it’s going to be weird, and strange and downright odd…but Christmas is still Christmas, and whether you’re Christian or not, it’s a time for togetherness where everyone can forget their troubles for a day and drown themselves in the love of their family and friends and smother themselves in turkey and roasted veggies.

So Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you have a wonderful one, and I’ll leave you with a quote from my most favourite Christmas song.

“May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white.”