What is wrong with me?

The title is pretty self-explanatory. As you can guess I am in the latter part of those stages a girl goes through in regards to boys: where you’re torn between acting like a bad ass diva who don’t need no man and being a whiny teenage girl wondering why nobody is obsessing over you like in the Hollywood movies. I guess all of the boys around me have realised I am certifiably insane and are currently running for the hills. however, despite the fact that I am 16 and have never had any sort of romantic encounter with anyone (people even ran away from me in kiss chase at aged 7), I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the whole being a single pringle thing. Until I see a cute couple and I have to restrain myself from throwing my shoe at them (some things never change). I mean, I'm 16 for goodness sake, the world is my oyster and all that jazz, and right now, I can do whatever I want, whenever I want…how exciting is that??!! (note – I can’t actually do whatever I want. School/coursework/lack of money/parental controls are still restraining factors in my life atm). However my excitement is quickly diminished when I go into school and are hammered with the mantra “everything you do now is going to affect your future” (which, of course I'm supposed to know). I thought it was just teachers at sixth form who had this idea, until I realise everyone seems to have this idea that I should actually already have figured out what I'm going to be doing with my life, which degree to choose, have numerous hobbies, a job, an active social life, a healthy relationship, a fitness regime/healthy eating plan and have a 10 year plan for my life complete with a chart stuck on my wall, which will obviously aid me with achieving a perfect balance of all of these things. The number of times I have been asked “so what do you want to do with your life” is definitely nearing on the triple digits mark, my initial responses to “what do you want to be in 10 years’ time” are no longer acceptable (in case you were wondering, my personal favourites were “beyoncé”, “the queen” and “happy” – so basically just beyoncé) to me, it feels like it’s almost unheard of for someone to really not have a clue what they are doing or want to do in the future and it’s true, I've been asked what my life plan is in at least one class every year since primary school, with the numbers increasing like my to do list which is gathering dust beside me. I can’t be the only one who thinks that this is ridiculous (the whole knowing-what-you’re-going-to-do-thing, not the abandoned list of jobs to do – I know I'm silly for doing that, but I'm clearing my head so shush). I mean, I definitely cannot decide right now where I want to be in 50 years. I need to make some mistakes, try different jobs, travel on a whim and generally bob around and not give a damn about the details. So I'm putting my foot down, and as shocking as it seems I'm perfectly happy not knowing where I'm going at the moment, because I don’t want to waste my time now worrying about something that may not happen in the future, or as my grandma would say “don’t put your eggs all in one basket” (I think this is an appropriate example of a time to say this…I never quite understood the quote). Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent, although it does sort of link. Is it a crime to not be with someone? Where has this desperate need to be tied to someone come from? So no, it doesn't matter if you’re still deciding between becoming a yoga teacher or an astronaut because there is a huge world outside of the little bubble we live in and it is our job to go and explore it. Find someone along the way to share these amazing experiences with, take lots of pictures, find yourself, and find what you love to do – and go and do it.

Pringles are always spooning anyway.

Sorry for going off on a bit of a whim, I wrote this post in about ten minutes just trying to clear my head and vent my ramblings.
Thank you for reading, and sorry for burdening you with my emotions and teenage whining.

❤

Update

No - I haven't found the end of the world and managed to fall off it - I'm still here.

I've been super mega busy since my last blog post (which was three months ago, sorry!!), and in that time I have:

• attended 3 funerals
• got 2 jobs
• lost 1 job
• graduated from ncs, and become a mentor for future participants
• dug a pond
• read the fault in our stars 4 times
• attended an audition for star wars (I know, what was I thinking?)

Anyway, a combination of all of these seemingly unrelated things have taught me just how valuable life is and how lucky we are to be alive on this planet. These are only a few of the things I've done since I last spoke to you on this little space on the internet, and I've had a lot of other brilliant highs and soul-crushing lows, and if I ever want you to hear about any of them I'm pretty sure I'll write a 1000 word essay or something on here for you! (You're very welcome in advance).

Seriously though guys, I lost a friend in January and the response was overwhelming. She was one of the loveliest, bubbliest and friendliest people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, and the day after she died, the whole school was a totally different atmosphere. People she didn't know were crying and mourning her loss and joined us in wearing brightly coloured nail varnish in remembrance. I wasn't even one of her closest friends, but I was affected in ways I didn't think would be possible.

I don't really know where I'm going with this post, I'm just really letting you know I'm alive and well (I'm just slightly buried under a mountain of coursework that I've let pile up), and one day I will go back to posting regularly, I'm just a tad busy at the moment.

Update: I feel like this post is lacking in content, and so here are three songs I am obsessing over at the moment. The first being my friend's favourite songs which was played at her funeral, the second being one I heard on the vampire diaries and have loved ever since and the third, a highly cheesy one which I fell in love with after hearing on Easy A (one of my favourite films EVER).

1. Ron Pope - A Drop In The Ocean

2. Christina Aguilera ft. A Great Big World - Say Something

3. Natasha Bedingfield - Pocketful of Sunshine

Thank you. I love you.

❤

Loss.

You know how people always say you should find the positives in everything and ignore the negatives? I try to do this as much as possible, but, like everything, this isn’t always possible.

I don’t mean to put a downer on your day by talking about death, but the reason why I started this blog was to be able to put down my feelings and hopefully in some way sort my mess of a mind out, and so this is what I’m going to try to do now. I hope I don’t offend anyone in this post, as I realise it’s a subject which you have to try and skirt around and just not talk about it, as it’s almost a taboo subject.

A friend of mine lost a family member very recently, which was the trigger for me to start thinking about loss, and it made me reminisce on the people I’d lost and how this affected and shaped me as a person. Probably my earliest experience of loss was my much loved dog dying when I was four years old, and I can remember sitting on the bottom stair and being told by my mum that he hadn’t been very well and had gone to heaven. I think it’s strange that I can remember being told this but I can’t remember being told that my Grandad had died (which was around the same time). It almost makes me wonder if I had been told or not, or if I’d worked it out for myself. I don’t know.

The death, however, which probably had the greatest impact on me was the when my friend had died when I was eight years old. He was nine and to this day I can remember the exact words my mum said to me and where I was when I was told about his passing. I was sat on my bed making a Easter card as it was Maundy Thursday, and when my mum came in I tried to sit on my card because it was a surprise for her. I can remember the words she said to me, and I can remember how when she left, she came back into the room and asked how close I was to him. I can remember going back to school and how everyone avoided talking about him, except in assembly when we had a silence for him and all of his friends brought in daffodils to put in a peace garden we made for him, and how each year on April 13^th whilst we were at that school we would each place a single daffodil there, until it was just a few of us who still remembered. I remember the talks our teacher gave us, the talk by the head teacher and the time my friend completely lost it because he missed him so much and he just started throwing chairs and turning over tables. It’s hard to find a positive in that, don’t you think?

The first day back at school after my friend died, we were all given a piece of paper in which we had to draw a picture which reminded us of him and write something about him to give to his mum. I drew a picture of him holding a daffodil (even though it just looked like a stickman holding a torch with a coloured orange mess for hair) and wrote “he’s always smiling”. I remember being laughed at by other girls who told me I must be stupid because “no one can always be smiling” and I can remember the teachers reply “it’s something nice his mum will like to read”. I can then remember her asking me to redraw it and change it to “he was”. I didn’t because I told her that he is probably still smiling in heaven with all of the other angels. I don’t even know if my picture got put in the collage for his mum because of my grammatical error.

Can you find a positive in losses as strong as this? I lost a friend who had had a huge impact on my life in a positive way. He let me sit and talk to him when I was bullied at lunch times, and let me play Rose in his Doctor Who game (I had never even seen it, but he made me feel like I knew everything). He told me how he wanted to be someone who helped a lot of people when he was older, or go to the moon. It’s a cruel world which never allowed him to go to the moon, or let him “get older”. He did help people though. He helped me. I only knew him for four years, but in the last year or so, when the bullying I went through was starting to get pretty bad, he noticed when nobody else did and sometimes didn’t play with his friends and came and spoke to me when I was crying in the corner of the playground, or hiding in a bush (I was a great believer of the idea if I couldn’t see them, nobody would see me). I am eternally grateful to him for this, and I guess before writing this post I never really realised how important he was in my life.

This blog post started with me saying how I was wondering if you could find positives in everything. I don’t think this is true in situations such as this. Another saying is how you don’t know and appreciate what you’ve got until you’ve lost it and this is true. I’m never going to stop thinking about what my friend could have grown up to be or where he would be now, and I wonder if I would still be friends with him, if he would still have the same dreams and ambitions, or silly little things like would he have done well in his gcse’s or be looking forward to the 50 year Doctor Who episode next Saturday. He never had the chance to “get older” or to fulfil what he wanted to be when he “grew up”, because he never did.

I’m sorry, this post was going to be a whole long philosophical post about how in some ways loss could be considered important, but I just put down every single thing that was running through my head, and I ended up with this mess.

RIP to all those who were taken away so soon. I love and miss you more than you will ever know. Thank you for everything you did for me in your short life, I wish you were still here today.

❤

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