Friday 30 October 2015

I must always have my writing.

I use this blog to express ideas that come into my head each week so that I can share them with whoever cares to take notice. Every post that I have written is about something I genuinely feel concerned or passionate about. This is all real. But I have a problem. Sometimes, more recently in fact, I feel as if my posts do not adequately express what I wished to convey. They lack something. They do not fully articulate what I feel. And sometimes I know this before I press 'Publish' and still it does not deter me. I 'Publish' half finished work. I half say what I had to say.

Even if when I conceive an idea, and I write it down, I feel very positive and energised by what I have to say yet by the time it comes to actually writing out the post I feel deflated and the content becomes haphazard.

At the moment I am in my last year of school and in the midst of heavy workload and impending, life changing exams. I am waiting for universities to accept my application, and preparing for interviews, and I have landed myself an important role in the school play which I have offered my full commitment to. I am angsty and nervous and exhausted and stressed all the time but I cannot let this go, this blog, because to me that would be doing myself a great form of injustice. I must always have my writing.

However, my 'writing' becomes a little skewed in amongst these great distractions and I force out ideas I care about but am too tired to bring full attention to. There is not a question of pausing, but I worry that I cannot express myself fully at this moment in time. I have a very busy mind and inside of it I shout about all manner of interesting things and often this does not make it to the page. I cannot always summon it. I do not finish what I have to say.

So what does one do when their most important means of expression starts to deteriorate? Or, the expression is not quite fully complete?

I think that answer is far away from my understanding but I do know this: if I keep writing and sharing and generating my views and ideas they will not fall dormant in the wake of other distractions. Even if I cannot always fully express what it is that I wish to come across I know that a little seedling of my thinking has been released out into the world and I am not going to sleep. School work does not inspire me, but contemplating the outside world and figuring it out on here is what keeps me going. And so, I will keep going. I will keep writing, writing, writing and eventually I will feel at peace with what I continue to share. I will have expressed myself; fully and completely.

Saturday 24 October 2015

Naked face.


Sometimes I wake up in the morning and go to my mirror only to find that it looks as if I have been run over by a lorry and dragged through a bush backwards. Twice. When this happens it feels as if the person looking out from behind the skull should not be inside this suit of skin but somewhere else. Or, at least, it regrets its own image. Sometimes when somebody takes a picture of me I can't bear to look because I know that I will detest the outcome. I have never knowingly taken a magnificent photograph of myself. Only in crap quality and a heavy filter will it be okay. For some reason that makes a ginormous difference. 

And so to fix the problem of my own physical loathing I reach beside my mirror into a small pouch filled with liquids and creams to disguise my original bodily mask. For a few years now my signature style with these coloured, cosmetic fluids has been to paint on dramatic, over done winged eyeliner so that the shape of my eye is changed and I always look like I'm about to go to a party. I've done it for so long now that when people say that they love how I've done it I wonder why; it's just a part of my face. 

When this ridiculous eyeliner is wiped off at bedtime my face does change. It becomes plainer; boring. I don't like how small my eyes seem when they're not enclosed by big sweeping doses of black liquid. I don't like the way I really look. 

It was about two years ago that I felt that this mask I put on my face each morning was a lie. Why was I pretending? Surely this is dishonest? I am not actually a girl who finds it enormously difficult to go out without any makeup on. I do not cement my face with foundation and powder, the eyeliner is mostly my sole cosmetic friend, but I feel much more confident when I appeal to this social construct and paint it on my skin. 

But it was a lie, it is a lie, and not liking your face is pretty big deal - teen angst or not. So, in a weird act of self-exposure, when I feel that my face is not my own, or that I don't want to wear it, I buck it up and bear my naked visage to the world all day. 

Sometimes the experiment doesn't work. I go into the toilets at school and realise what a terrible mistake I've made when the lighting highlights the bags under my eyes and my skin looks a little pasty. But the lighting's a lie, or I just need to accept reality and move on to something more pressing, because I must not hate my face. 

Sometimes I go one step further and take a picture of my naked face to share with literally the whole world (if they wanted to look) just to prove to myself that I don't have to rely on the slightly corrupt idea of the cosmetic industry to make myself feel good. This actually works; I feel much more confident once I know that everyone else is accepting the way that I look so I must be doing the same. 

Going a day, or a week, or a month without makeup is an extremely healthy thing to do. You are not lying to yourself, or covering up what is completely natural and lovely for the sake of a culture that can't bear to look at women's naked faces. And it means that when I do choose to put on makeup it is a fashion statement and not a signifier of my own low self esteem. 

I will continue to teach myself to enjoy my own face because, for crying out loud, who taught me to hate the very skin I was born in? 

Saturday 17 October 2015

Ch-ch-changes.

Usually I have a very strong sense of what I believe. When I was younger I used to attach myself to a wave of feeling about a particular belief or argument and hold onto to it with all my strength of passion. I didn't consider that anything would change the way I thought, I was adamant. I was so sure of my sense of injustice, I was so sure I would be joining a crusade to fight all the baddies. I was so naive. 

I have been feeling a little different recently. A little less definite. A little less - naive? Perhaps it's because I've read more and I am even more aware of the world around me so I have been given a much wider sense of what is wrong. And what is right. And sometimes when it isn't clear whether something is right or wrong. And that's where it gets a little blurry. 

Actually, recently I have completely changed some of the beliefs I held before when I was a naive little social justice warrior because I just haven't been sure about what to think. There are some issues that I contemplate daily but I can't come to a conclusion about them. Sometimes I have been unable to decide who I could discuss the issues with, some are not always suitable to discuss out in the open over this easily misconstrued medium, so I harbour them inside and get anxious instead. That wasn't supposed to happen either. 

Sometimes, even within my feminist beliefs, I get a bit shy about sharing them. Or, sadly, I can't be bothered to be confronted about them anymore. I consider the significance of arguing with someone else so set in their beliefs they will never listen to me. I just laugh and move on. I might not be right anyway, I don't know what I'm talking about. 

I think this is a reaction to having watched some of my most firmly held beliefs disintegrate to nothing and having a new one erected in its place. But the new one is not built on what I thought was a solid substance, it's built on sand now. 

There is nothing wrong with changing what you believe. In fact, it's exciting. It means I get to learn and understand things in a new way and it will always be happening. They don't always change drastically but they do emphasise the fact that as a person I am not constant. I just need to come to terms with the fact that my beliefs are not permanent.  And that is scary, but also really good. 

Saturday 3 October 2015

Don't blink.

This life - Blink and you are here. It is like a very fast ride: you're only barely aware of it happening and only when it's over can you reconstruct the events to look back through like a photo album in your head.
I know at 17 I have barely touched on the meaning of 'where did it all go?' But I passed my driving test on Thursday and I think the last thing I remember before that is starting as a pupil at secondary school. I blinked and now am here. I will blink again and then I'll be there. At the moment of everything happening it feels as if there cannot be anything else. This life now is all there can ever be. And  time passes over and that life then is a faint memory you can only just conjure up to the forefront of your mind.
I think I mention this now because this is the age where I am coming to terms with this time hopping head of mine. I live today and nothing else exists. Does anyone ever get used to that?