To me, From me.

Catfish and the Bottlemen – The Balcony

Next month I will be home an entire year, 365 days and it doesn’t feel like I’ve achieved very much in 12 months. I’m still living at home (yippie its just so fun, she says sarcastically), I’m still in a job that isn’t what I want as a career, I’m still a single independent woman (this one I’m not too bothered out tbf, women are from venus men are from mars and all that) and most importantly I still have no clue what I want for myself in life. I am constantly being told that my 20s are supposed to be like this, about “finding myself”, spending time really trying to figure out what I want from life and who I want to be. What an utter pile of shite! The people that say these things are usually in their late 30s still trying to “find themselves” or they’re my age and completely set up in life and feel pity for me and my wayward ways resulting in them spouting complete bullshit that they think will make me feel better when in reality it causes the opposite effect. I can see the look in their eyes, weeping with unwanted sympathy and slight disdain with a curtained veined interest in what I have to say. My seemingly failed existence seems to put a bit of a downer on everyone else’s success. However I have some uplifting and sincere news for everyone, I’m alright, honestly it may seem like I have no future but trust me I do. I just don’t 100% know what it is yet but thats ok with me, so it should be ok with you too.

Another wonderful occurrence that starts to happen in your 20s is, if you’re single get used to all your paired off mates really wanting to set you up with all of their eligible male friends that are just perfect for you but for some reason they never actually went their themselves. I may complain about being single and dying alone but its just a bit, I am your novelty of a friend, that special attraction that can be brought out to make everyone laugh and feel better about themselves, I can poke fun at myself and deliver you some wonderful anecdotes about all my nightmare tinder experiences and about that time I was on a date without realising it but I don’t need you to “fix” me I’m good, really. Besides I don’t think I would know how to deal with being in a relationship, how do you look after a boyfriend? How often to they need to be walked and fed? Men baffle me, they really do. I’m not sure I would even know how to be a girlfriend, Jesus I don’t even know how to be an individual person never mind having to look after someone else.

Something that has  become most apparent this year is that I’ve lost a few friends, people that I thought cared about me but quickly became clear that some people just have their own self interest at heart and no matter how much I think that I’m helping I can’t stop the selfish acts of others and maybe I should be a little selfish myself sometimes. Life is too quick and fleeting to spend most of it trying to fit in with others and allowing for negativity to cloud your life experience. I try my best to surround myself with positivity and good people, in turn I am a happier person and this is all I could wish for.

My family also suffered a terrible loss this year, sort of my first real experience with grief in my adult life. Death is a strange thing, I’d never really consciously gone through the stages of grief before. Of course my family have been through some truly terrible losses but I have always been that little but too young to fully understand what was happening. However with this one everything was different, my emotions where well and truly up the left, I didn’t cry for two days then when I did everything just exploded one night and it was awful but strangely liberating and at the same time I was so unbelievably sad. A weight of heavy denial had been sitting on my chest and this sudden outburst of emotion lifted it. Of course I’m still sad, I try not to think about it too much because that bundle of sadness and grief is still there and it doesn’t take much for it to be opened up again but it gets better. I’m still trying to get over the guilt though, that I wasn’t there, that I didn’t get to say goodbye and a strange feeling that I don’t deserve to feel like this, as in I shouldn’t be this sad. It took me some time but Ive realised that only I know how I feel and most importantly I’m allowed to feel whatever way I want and that’s ok.

I have a message to myself this year, onwards and upwards my friend. Keep doing exactly what you’re doing, don’t let anyone tell you don’t look good in dungarees, eat that extra slice of pizza and spend that 20 quid on the perfect matte lipstick, fuck everyone else. You do you.

What do you want to do when you’re older?

Album- Troye Sivan “Blue Neighbourhood (Deluxe)”

I have been home for about six months now and I have been a graduate for nearly two years. I make coffee five days a week to pay the bills, it is not a career I want to have for the rest of my life although I have only respect and bear no judgement on those who do. For me, I want to be a writer, someone once told me to stop saying that I “want” to be one and to start saying that I am. This is true in ways, I write almost everyday; poetry, blog posts, plays and short stories. I want this to be my life, however the same person also told me that if I want to write as a means of making money I should give up now and stop trying. I don’t agree with this view, for some reason I was being judged for wanting to earn a living as a writer, somehow this made me less of a creative and it was an unrealistic ambition to have. What’s wrong with that? I went to university and studied literature and film making, two of my greatest loves. Why should I not dream of doing this as a career? Is it not everyone’s dream to go to work doing something they love everyday?

Unfortunately this is proving very difficult to achieve. I have said before that I do not know what I want to do in life however this is not exactly true. I do want to be a writer but I feel like this is a stupid answer to give when people ask. At least twice a week my parents and I have the same conversation:-

Dad: “So, what is it exactly that you want to do?”

Me: “I told you before I’m not sure.”

Dad: “Well, you’re going to have to figure it out.”

Me: “Yes, I know.”

Mum: “You didn’t go to university and put yourself in debt for nothing.”

Me: “Yes, I know.”

Mum: “Why don’t you be a teacher?”

Me: “I told you, I don’t want to be a teacher and even if I did I would have to go away to university again which means more debt. I would also have to move away somewhere else because there aren’t many places in teaching degrees here.”

Mum: “I think you should, theres good money in it.”

Me: “Yes, but again I would probably have to move away because there aren’t many teaching jobs here.”

Dad: “Okay then what else are you going to do?”

Me: “I want to be a writer.”

Dad: “Write what?”

Me: *Silence*

Dad: “How’re you going to make money from that?”

Me: *Silence*

Mum: “Well, you’re going to have to sit down and have a serious think about your future.”

This is a recurring conversation and popular topic in my house. My parents love me, I know this and they only want the best for me, I also know this. They believe that i’m not thinking about my future and that I don’t know what I want for my life but they’re wrong. I think about this constantly, it is the only thing on my mind most days. The problem is, how am I supposed to have any answers for them when I don’t have any answers for myself? I honestly have no clue. I know that I want to write,I don’t know how to make a living out of it just yet, so I’ll keep writing. This is not an answer that my parents want to hear, I know this for a fact.

Who knows what’s going to happen in the next few months or even years? All I know is that I am done with having the same mundane conversation over and over, I am done with feeling stressed because I can’t see into the future. I am through with feeling guilty and pathetic because I want to earn money doing something that I love. So I’m just going to write and make coffee maybe something good will come form it. I hope.

Then and now.

Below is a post I wrote a few weeks ago.

Wednesday 23rd March 2016

Album- Cage the Elephant “Tell me I’m pretty”

I feel a little overwhelmed this week and it’s only wednesday. This is my last week in a job that I have been working in for three and a half years. It is such a strange feeling, it’s not that I’m sad to leave it is more that I’m apprehensive about leaving the comfort of a job that I know I’m good at. I’m heading to a new job in a few weeks and it’s something completely new to me, I’m going to be the “new girl” again, the one that doesn’t know how to do anything and makes a complete mess of the simplest of tasks. I am so nervous, clearly, but I’m also really excited as well. There are no opportunities available where I am now to progress further and if truth be told I’m bored here, I’ve gone as far as i possibly can. It’s time for the unknown, I’m choosing to look at this change of circumstance as an adventure. I’ll hate it for a while because it will be difficult and I will be frustrated at my own inability to do anything but I seriously need to stir up my life, I’m bored, complacent and demotivated. New start, new me and all that bant.

I completely forgot that I wrote the above post and only found it today which is interesting because I am currently on day two of my new job and I absolutely love it. The people are so nice, the management actually care about you and I am never bored. A little background on where I have begun my new job, so I work in a cafe in the airport at arrivals. It can get busy at times but I strive when working under pressure. The best part of where I am right now is seeing family and friends reuniting, for some reason it makes me so emotional. I actually nearly cried when I saw an elderly man run to the arms of his daughter who lives in France, I literally stopped my supervisor training me so that I could fully experience what was happening in front of me, apologised to him for interrupting and then proceeded to choke back tears while he explained the log in book to me. I think I get so attached to these scenes because I have so many people that I care about in other countries, one of my best friends has been in New Zealand for about 6 months now, I miss her a lot and seeing these people reuniting just makes me excited to see her again.

There has also been some strange developments with Simon, more to follow soon.

Thursday, 25th February 2016

What’s next?

When I came home after just over a year away I made a list of objectives that I had hoped would be completed or at least on their way to completion within a year.

The list:

1. Get my driving license.
2. Buy a car.
3. Get a better/full time job.
4. Decide on my future career and become what I want to be.
5. Move towards owning my own home.
6. Be an adult.

Almost five months later (just shy of half a year) I haven’t achieved any of the above. I am 23 years old and I still live at home and not in a quiet one. I am stuck in retail which is depressing to say the least. Working in retail is fine, if you’re working full time or plan on making a career out of it but I’m not doing either of those things and it is depressing as fuck, it is probably one of the worst places to work. People are horrible to you, managers and customers alike and you never even get so much as a thank you for the work you do. I am extremely de-motivated after applying for about fifty jobs, that I have no job prospects from, not even a rejection email, nothing. I’m living in my family home, being treated like a fifteen year old which makes me feel so happy and warm inside…

I feel like everyone around me is on some sort of hyper speed mode, having incredible carreers, getting engaged, buying their first homes and I’m just here not even able to get a text back from some random guy I met on a night out. It’s proving harder and harder not to look at my life and see the word pathetic in big bold letters flashing before me. It is too easy to find all of the negative parts of life and putting all of your energy and focus on what’s wrong with your life, missing all of the good parts. My life isn’t all bad, I just think it is right now but i’m sure I’ll look back and think these were my golden years (I hope).

There is one thing in life that is and always will be depressing; Tinder. It is literally the worst app ever invented but it is also strangely and annoyingly addictive. I will admit that I have yet to go on a real life tinder date, I have been asked and agreed a few times, decided on the time, the place and the outfit but for some reason I always chicken out a few days before, then go on a panic fuelled clear out of the guy on every form of social media I just straight out delete them from my life. I have two problems with tinder, the first is that for me its completely pointless because I will never meet anyone from it, I’m too shitty. The second problem is that the majority of the men that match with me and talk to me are the crème de la crème of creepy. Like seriously I had no idea these men even existed, they are pure filth. Now I would be a liar if I said that I didn’t (at times) enjoy the dirty talk and also (at times) would spur them on a little but at no point did I indicate that I wanted a video sent to me of a dick being wanked. That is a flat NO. It just isn’t attractive and I can almost definitively say that no woman wants to see that. However if you do thats fine, no judgment. To say I have been traumatised by tinder encounters a few times would be a serious understatement but what exactly is my alternative? Being a single woman in the 21st Century int easy. There are very few options for meeting new people, tinder or on a night out seem to be the most accessible routes. With both it seems that the majority of people are just looking for a forgetful bang and aren’t necessarily interested in anything more substantial.

I did leave one thing off of my list of objectives for life; to fall in love. Mainly this was left out because I didn’t want to sound pathetic and I didn’t want to sound like a sad fourteen year old girl with aspirations of becoming a vampire and marrying Edward Cullen (my actual dream as a fourteen year old). I do want to be in love at some point, I think it would be nice if someone loved me for everything that I am and for everything that I’m not. However that is a heavy topic for another day, I will leave it with this; life is like watching Pretty Little Liars, there is no going backwards only forwards.

Sunday, 10th January 2016

Its 15.10 on a sunday afternoon and i just finished having a standard scroll down my newsfeed only to find that a girl, or more young woman from my form class in school recently got engaged. This is incredible to me for numerous reasons, they go as follows;

1. We are the same age and I am no where near a tidy life that she is so easily moving towards. Mainly because I have no romantic interest at all right now like not even that late night tinder booty call. I have literally no one unless you count that guy from Switzerland that I met on tinder and chatted to for a couple days, but I don’t think you could count that.
2. If I did somehow meet someone that would even consider putting up with my weirdness for a length of time that exceeded the morning after I don’t know if I would want to get married, I’m not sure if that is the area in which I want to take my life.

Although I have given the reasons above, as to why a person I actually know getting engaged, at my age is strange to me I also find myself being very jealous. I want my life to be sorted, I do want to have someone in my life that loves me and wants to take care of me forever, but I also want to skip all of the bullshit that you have to go through to get to this stage of your life, however this is impossible. The saying goes “you cant cheat death” but this works both ways, you can’t cheat life either.

There are so many people that I knew when I was younger, in school or in university that (thanks to Facebook) I see with a very put together life or at least have found something that drives them through it. I have seen this through many different things, a new job, running their own business, getting engaged or becoming a parent. Each if these things are incredible to me, i find myself looking at pictures or seeing status updates and I think “wow when did this happen? when did everyone grow up and become adults and not tell me?” I left home after university and travelled a lot of countries I have seen things and gained experiences that I know a lot of people would love to do themselves but for some reason I have come back after a year and I find myself wanting what everyone else has. Never has the phrase “the grass is always greener on the other side” ever made more sense to me than in this instant, when I was in uni I wanted to be away, when I was away I wanted to be settled with a career, now that I’m home I want to be away again, this goes on and on. When I ask myself the hard questions it always comes down to the same answer, I have no fucking clue what I want. When I try and think of a career I should aim for or if I should go back to uni I always draw a blank.

While away I came up with this theory (well at least I think I did) that decades ago everyone got their shit together and knew what they wanted in their late teens but here and now in 2016 it seems that there is a common syndrome amongst twenty somethings that we have all hit a wall, that this is our coming of age story. We don’t know what we want and even if we do we don’t know where to start. Well this only counts for a percentage of twenty somethings as so many of my peers have proven that this in fact is very do able if you have the motivation to do so. Maybe that’s it maybe i just don’t have the motivation to move forward, maybe I don’t want to grow up. In reality I am an adult and I want the benefits of being one without the responsibilities that follow, but you can’t have one without the other. I need to actually work towards having a life, and not just sit about doing nothing, expecting life to just show up at my doorstep.