~Music~

It fascinates me how music can bring out certain moods.
It can make you cry.
It can make you laugh.
It can make you want to sing or hum as loud as you can just to feel the joy of expression.
It can do so many things and what is it really?
A bunch of notes and words that combine to somehow form a melody.  Something so simple affects us in such a huge way. Why are human emotions so influencable? *Is that even a word?*

Sometimes, I hate how quickly emotions can be changed by something so... I can't think of the word but it's like an elephant being dented by a fly landing on its head.  That sounds weird but I know what I mean.

#Read between the lines

And thus it was. A fourth age of middle-earth began. And the fellowship of the ring... though eternally bound by friendship and love... was ended. Thirteen months to the day since Gandalf sent us on our long journey... we found ourselves looking upon a familiar sight. We were home. How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on... when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend... some hurts that go too deep... that have taken hold. Bilbo once told me his part in this tale would end... that each of us must come and go in the telling. Bilbo's story was now over. There would be no more journeys for him... save one. My dear Sam. You cannot always be torn in two. You will have to be one and whole for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be and to do. Your part in the story will go on.

I miss my grandad a lot more than I should.
I barely knew him.
But every time it comes round to Rememberance, I can't help but wonder what he went through, what he did, what he never told us.

~Quotes.~

What it is about quotes that makes us want to share them? The funny ones, the nice ones, the deep and meaningful ones.

Sometimes, I think people share stuff because they want you to find that episode, or that song, listen to it, hear that quote in context, and realise what they're feeling.

Like drawing a parallel to their life in invisble ink and throwing you the UV light.  You choose whether to catch it or not.

~The Butterfly Effect~

"Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?"

Yeah, if you haven't seen the film then watch it.
Seriously.
In a way it's like Shutter Island in that it really makes you question how your mind works and consequences of your actions and stuff.
But basically it was making me think and if you had the opportunity to go back into your childhood memories and change a bad experience into something positive, would you do it? And what would you do if you came back to the present and found out that your life might be better but someone else's was much, much worse?

If you had the chance would you make yourself unhappy so that others could be happy? Or would you be more concerned with fixing your own life first?

And most of all, would you sacrifice it all so that every single person in your life bar you had a better life?

I think I had a better point than that but I've forgotten what it was...

The idea in itself is pretty interesting though - something small leading to something huge. I wonder if life really works that way...

~Determinism~

Determinism - the theory that all choices are pre-determined by circumstance.  Knowledge of the paticular circumstance would change the outcome of your "choice".


So, basically, if we believed this idea then we, as humans, would have no real control over what happened in our lives, merely an illusion of choice.  In essence, it could support the idea of destiny - inevitable choices that lead us to an inevitable outcome, an inevitable path that we must follow. 


To be honest, I'm not sure if I like this idea or not really.  It's certainly impossible to say for definite that it is false, but then there's no real proof that it's true either.  I mean, the thought of just following a set path in life has it's attractive points - you could never really make a 'wrong choice' because you were meant to do what you did and it's comforting to think that everyone is going somewhere in life.


But then, how is it decided who gets what destiny?  How is the choice made that gives one person fame and fortune and another poverty and misery?  I suppose life can never be fair but I find it hard to believe that some people are unable to work their way out of a bad situation simply because some higher power has determined that they can't.


I guess, I'm still a fan of choosing your own way in the world - although, that too could be a choice in itself.  Can you choose to make your own choices?  And if that's the case, then was that choice pre-determined and so you're still not really acting independently?


I can just tell, two years of Philosophy and TOK is gonna make my head hurt....

The official end of term wasn't so bad - I knew we still had a few weeks of summer left to enjoy after exams.
Exams came and went and in all the stress I forgot what was really going to happen.
Summer arrived and all those worries went out the window - this was a time for enjoyment and celebration.
The leaving day came and I felt strange, unconnected. I don't think I believed what these actions were telling me.
Suddenly it's a new term. 
Only now do I truly realise how much I miss you guys. All day I had to stop myself from waiting behind so you could catch up, because in my mind you were only round the corner, just about to come into view. 
This is why the night time is so special - the blanket of darkness makes it safe to say this before we're exposed again by the harsh reality of the Sun. 


<3

~Ambition~

Everyone has dreams - of what they want to be in life, not the creations of your brain's playtime. Trouble with dreams is they're often ambitious- no, scratch that.  They ARE ambitious.  They have to be, otherwise what seperates dreams from just plain goals?  They're idealistic and they're usually unattainable.
Reaching your dreams must give such a sense of... euphoria.  Trouble is you can spend your whole life chasing them and collapse from exhaustion before you get there.  It takes guts to keep going, push yourslef that little bit harder and stretch that tiny bit further to get there.

So the question is, do you risk the fall and chase a dream or play it safe and gradually lose momentum, roll to a halt?

I want to say that I'd never give up on my dream, but I know I've already abandoned one and I doubt I have the balls to stick with another.

~Hoarding~

So I just spent the majority of this week clearing out my bedroom. Not just tidying it, moving all the crap into the new extension. I can't say I wasn't happy that I was getting a bigger room and I had the chance to decorate it all by myself ie. I could have whatever I wanted in it furniture and decorationwise as long as it was cheap enough :p But when I was faced with the task of emptying my old room... it was a bit daunting.

I'm a hoarder, I'll admit it. I keep things that I might use again or that I might play with. Now came the time to get rid of all of that. My mum was supposedly helping me but needless to say she just ended up being really irritating, for a number of reasons. Although actually, she did help, I just couldn't see that at the time :p

So anyway, there's this one cupboard in my room that hardly ever gets opened because it's just filled with junk and I did keep postponing until eventually it was the only thing left to empty. So yesterday afternoon I sat down to sort through years of forgotten presents and projects. I was already kinda angry at my mum so I was taking out the more indestructible items first and just chucking them behind me. That just led to me and my mum having another argument where I ended up telling her that half of it was probably broken anyway to which she replied "Why the hell have you still got it then?" "...I don't know."

Today I'm off to work for a week in my uncle's pub in Worcester and I am absolutely sheeiting myself. Last night I was trying to work out why the hell I'm so scared - it's an opportunity to work, get money, that's good right? And I realised, I kept that stuff because I didn't want to let go. Getting rid of it meant I was finally growing up and I think everyone wants to stay a child forever - it's simple and you still have so much freedom in what you want to do. This new bedroom means a step into a more grown up life, even if act immature :p And it's the same with this coming week - I'm earning money for myself and losing some of the dependency I have on my parents - I'm growing up.

And it's making me realise that after this summer, everything changes.

#It made me smile :)

"...It's all wrong.
By rights we shouldn't even be here.
But we are.
It's like in the great stories. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why..."


<3

#The "Cure".

Scarlet flash across aqua stripe

Offset by porcelain skin -

All it takes is a silver swipe

To break through the canvas stretched thin.

Emotion and secret are laid out to bear

In a code of insufferable pain.

Alone and feeling unable to share

It pours out in crystal salt rain.

There is no prevention, no permanent cure

For the dark cloud that seeps through the mind

Until we begin to remove the obscure -

To listen, and see what we find.

~Pressure~

So at the moment everyone's stessing about revision and exams and what to do with the rest of their lives and there's just so much pressure to do the right thing. You know:

high grades = good thing
passed exams = good thing
loads of revision = good thing
do well at uni = good thing
get a good job = good thing
have a family = good thing

And it's like everyone is constantly under all this pressure to have this perfect life where it's all good things and any bad decision is, like, worthy of eternal damnation or something. It basically made me wonder about how we'd ever get through all the pressure without people beside us step by step - friends or whatever, you need someone with you that you can relate to.

And with all this pressure, I don't want to disappoint my parents, especially my dad. However much he lets me down at weekends or doesn't turn up for things, he's still my dad and I love him no matter what. I'm not gonna lie - he is effin intelligent, like a proper maths genius and sometimes it feels like I need to be as good as him to kind of uphold his reputation.
He was always clever so he was pushed into doing things even before the Scottish equivalent of GCSE's. At Uni as well, he was signed up for extra subjects and throughout his whole life he'd always done well at it all. But my dad's an introvert: he didn't socialise that much and had barely any good friends. After all the pressure from how well he was expected to do, in his final year of uni he stopped trying. Kind of like an "Eff you." moment. In just one year he went from getting a First to a 2;2.

I don't want to let down my dad by doing the same thing - giving up because I can't take the pressure anymore. So I have to do well for my dad. Simple as.

It's that kind of pressure that makes life such a struggle sometimes. I guess all we can really do is give it all we got and then even if it doesn't end up as great as we wanted or planned, at least we know that we tried our best. I think though, that the most important thing when you're under pressure is to find some way of getting away from it all. Preferably with company: being able to joke about all the stress and know that there's someone going through it with you can make it a whole lot more bearable.



*apologies for all the above cheesiness*

~Judgement.~

The judging looks and hidden smiles

As I walk down a path stretched miles

By the humiliation I always feel -

My identity I attempt to conceal.

Once, I was there, in that other group’s place,

Trying to hide the growing grin on my face

As a girl in a kilt, with a blazer to match,

Had the courage to walk through our prided patch.

All I saw then was smugness and a look of disgust

When she strutted past us like we were part of the dust.

But now I know how that girl must have felt

Outcast, embarrassed, by the judgement we dealt.

More than anything I long to utter the words-

To turn, and say “Sorry, but haven’t you heard?

“I’m not rich, I’m not posh, I live right round there

“And, this might be shocking, but it’s not all that rare

“For someone like me to have been someone like you

“Free, independent, always speaking the truth.

“Just because I wear this and go to school here

“Doesn’t mean I meet up to go hunting each year,

“Or drink champagne in buckets and eat caviar for tea -

“All it means is my stupid gay school has a fee.

“I’m no different to you, and I don’t think I’m better -

“For Christ’s sake we even have identical sweaters!”

But I can’t and you think

That I look like a prick

So as I walk past I must gather my pride

And hold my head high as I strut past your side.

#Yeah, that would be nice :)

I may have been expecting it but I still didn't know I was going to say yes until you asked.

And now...

Yes.
If I can trust my memory spending an evening with you will be nice indeed. :)

~Fight~

"You know what makes us so British? Spunk, spirit and tea." :)

Spunk perhaps not so relevant but no matter who you are, everyone has a natural fighting spirit. *The tea of course comes once the fight is settled and everyone needs to relax in front of the old telly box.*
Even if you're a pacifist you need something to keep you going when you're spurned for not being patriotic or mocked for being a 'wuss'. There's a fire inside all of us that gets us through the hard days, the mind-numbingly boring weeks and the troubling hours. Fair enough, it's closer to the surface in some but even it's buried beneath layers of emotion or defences it's still there to keep us strong and to stop us giving up.

When you look back at your life there will always be decision you regret making. But giving up is one mistake we don't always have to repeat. Of course there are times when letting things go is hard but necessary but sometimes it just takes that one last, exhausting, final push and you can end up in a much better situation.

Don't give up: listen to that fight within you and keep going until you know there's nothing else you can do. Even if it doesn't work you'll know you did all you could.

:) x

~Wishes~

If only they'd come true.

Why must we constantly dream of things that are unattainable?
It isn't joyous.
It isn't fun.
It never leads to happiness.

Wish on this, wish on that... why?
To retain hope of a better future - hope is all we have.

~Change~

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But, because I knew you
I have been changed
For Good.

Change cannot be avoided and to think that we can remain the same for our entire lives would be beyond the far realms of naivety. Besides the natural change we must go through on the journey from infant to adult, would it ever be realistically possible to never alter your behaviour, your personality or your morals?

Children have an innocence that is very easily lost, but in losing it we mature and grow. It could be said that we need to lose that defined sense of right and wrong in order to understand the ways of the world.
Relationships, of every kind, are so much more intricate as we age: and if we look, the difference between friendships at childhood, teenage-hood (is that a word?), adulthood and elder-hood (I really am making up words now) is extensive. Whilst they lose their simplicity they become deeper, more personal and ultimately richer. My point is they change.

Yes, change can be bad. It can be horrendous. But sometimes we have to look beyond what is happening during said change and instead focus on the result. If the result is worse then the change can be altered - perhaps, just slowed to begin with, but change is not permanent - things that can go wrong can eventually be fixed with hard work and love but at the same time good things can fall apart if we take them for granted.

~The Rhythm.~

Your legs start to move
Step
Step
One foot
Overtaken by the other
The race begins.
Chasing each other
Your feet move faster.
Round a corner, one slips inside
Regains control
The race goes on.

A hop.
A skip.
Acting like a turbo, the pace gets ever faster.
Quickly now.
Pistons pumping to fuel your feet
Flashing by -
Left.
Right.
Left.

Now the arms, extra power
Here comes the wind
Blowing cool against your face -
Grabs your breath and hurls it behind you.
Just a memory now.

Right.
Left.
Right.

Pounding feet on the ground,
In time with your pulse
Beating just behind your ear -
Da-dun. Left.
Da-dun. Right.

Nothing matters now except the beat -
Stay in time -
Don't slow down.
No thinking
Just acceptance.

Running to be free.

Running to escape.

#Shockerrr :)

Well, I never actually expected this but I got my first blog award. ^_^ yayy. Seriously, I was like o_O what now? Butt I have finally got round to passing it on :) and sorry I didn't pick 6 peoples but y'know I don't think I'm actually following that many :p.



This is "for bloggers who put their heart on display as they write from the depths of their soul." You write 10 honest things about yourself that are not common knowledge and then you pass it on to 6 fellow bloggers that touch your heart by the honesty and sincerity they give with each post.

Right so here goes, ten honest things:

1) Most people know this by now but I am freekin terrified of birds. Of all kinds. Well, maybe not ducks so much because they don't look so vicious but chickens, normal birds, ostriches, emus... all that lot scare the bejeesus out of me. Andn it's not silly because they have these beady eyes that staaaare at you and sharp pointy beaks that could quite easily kill you and then they start chasing you and you can't go faster because they can FLY. And attack you from ABOVE. O_O eek.

2) I find guys attractive. And I also find a lot of girls attractive. Am I bi-sexual? Not sure. Quite probably.

3) I have all these amazing story ideas in my head that I start and never ever finish because I get too distracted by making it all perfect the first time round. It's the same with most things I do - if it isn't perfect now, go and fix it before you move on otherwise it bugs me the whole time I'm trying to finish it.

4) I'm a bit obsessive when it comes to fire (that's not really a secret :p) but a lot of the time I prefer water. I love the sensation of being weightless and free while you're swimming, I love the sounds all water makes when it laps against an edge and I love the smell whether it's saltwater or chlorinated - although I have to say the sea rules all. :) But watching fire is beautiful. And I want both. :)

5) At my first school I didn't have many friends. In fact most breaks I was excluded from my yeargroup, which was like a mix of our year and the year above, by people who would force me to do their work for them. I never told anyone because I didn't want to stress out my mum and I still had really good friends outside of school but that's why I don't really like exposing myself because I had five years of being rejected and I know what it feels like to be Piggy.

6) I do know what I want to be when I grow up - an author, a script writer or an actress. But I know how hard it is to support yourself if you have something like that as a career which is why I also want to be a forensic scientist - and that's not based on what I've seen on tv. :p

7) It bugs me all the time that my parents are divorced because I get tired of being passed around whenever one of them is too busy. But I know full well that if my parents did live together then I'd hate it even more.

8) A lot of the time I have the need to have something in my mouth - to chew or to suck but not to swallow. So if I get bored I'll find a pen or a ruler or grab my thumb and shove it in my mouth because it keeps me occupied. And I love the taste of metal :) like safety pins and scissors. :)

9) I hold on to things "just in case". I have piles of crap in my room that I might do when it's rainy or might have time to do with my mum. I also enjoy looking back through my cupboards and reliving memories of building things or playing with toys I thought I'd lost and it takes me about fifteen minutes to decided whether or nor I should probably get rid of it. I'm great at coming up with 'But...'s.

10) >> Over there I said I have voices in my head. They're less in my head and more part of my conscience - they each have a personality trait that I portray at certain times, rarely at the same time. Some of them are more outwardly present than others but they always fight and tell me off for not doing what they want me to. That's a really bad explanation but kind of the gist of it. :p

By jove, that was hard but now comes the fun part :D
My *six* awardees are:
LLG at Idiosyncratic. :) she says what's on her mind, even if it's controversial and everything comes from the heart. <3
Jessica at Unrelated Incidents. - it's all truth and a lot of the time it's entertaining too which makes it so much awsummer :) <3
Adi at oddviously - she be wonderful and what she says is often quite profound. either that or it's pretty :) <3
Davies at Thoughts and Emotions. it amazes me how open this girl can be, as in truly wow :) <3>

~Beauty and Love~

What is beauty?

People often compare the feeling of being in love to "the beauty of nature and its simplicity".
To prevent depression people are told to look at "the beauty surrounding them, the wonder of everyday life".
Pretty much a similar idea.
But then you have the media's version of beauty that causes serious drops in self esteem.

Evidently, these terms are completely different.
And of course language is filled with words that change meaning relative to their context.

But how can beauty be good if its hiding dark secrets behind it?

Nature may be calm on the surface but looking closer is when you see the cruelty needed for an animal's survival. Sacrifice, cold-heartedness, brutality...
Yeah, alright, it's only expected but...
Well, how can love be compared to that? Is that all love is?
A beautiful facade that hides a blanket of pain and emotion behind it?
Being in love may be wonderful but does it lead you to decisions you would rather not make, as nature leads animals to life-or-death situations? Why then is it so necessary to constantly go through that to feel the joy and wonder of life?

Ahh, no I'm just being too cynical. I should stop.
Stop writing, but I can't help thinking it.

Why has it become so important to be in love when humans rarely remain with the ones they "love"?

Is it something wrong with me then that I don't understand the need? Or perhaps, I've lost the need. Why do I even care? Shush.

#Just a bit more...

I don't have best friends. I don't like setting the people I know apart by who I might like best. Obviously, I have friends I'm closer to than others but I have no-one in particular who I love above everyone else.


Except...


Well, I love all my friends. As friends. But there's this one friend, she's just... a bit of a different kind of love.

You're funny, even if sometimes it's for very wrong reasons, and you never fail to make me smile somehow. You're not my best friend, like I said no-one is, but I love you as more than a friend. You have this amazing ability to see good in people, even if sometimes we don't agree that it's there. Most of all though, you aren't scared to face the world and say "SO FUCKING WHAT?!" And yes, my Caps Lock button did just break. You have the guts to be who you really are and everyone admires that - perhaps a little jealousy creeps in there too :p

<3>

~Love~

There's a whole lotta love flying around at the moment. Is it the start of a new season that's caused it? Or just a dawning realisation of maturity of ourselves and our feelings? Who knows?
And really, who wants to know? We analyse so much throughout our lives - music, stories, poems *shudders at thought of poetry essays*, people - that there is little left in the world that's pure. I reckon love is one of those things - it doesn't have to be explained and picked apart for people to understand what it is, it's just there, making things seem good.
And love is always confusing - is it right? is it real? will it last?
But that's the point of it. By not knowing what it actually means, we understand how it is to feel it - something analysis will never truly accomplish.

And everyone is in love, in some form or another. Love comes in many ways.
Take for instance my friends:


I love them to fucking pieces.



They make me laugh when I need to get out.



They're an all round crazy bunch. :)

So here goes...
<3 Jess Wells, Mary Leslie, Allie Hill, Lilla To, Kirstie Stewart, E.J. De Wit, Tiff Idle, Maddie Nyatsanza, Emily Chase, Patty Ruiz De Villa, Shannon King, Jess Logan, Emma Woodman, Ellie Sharrock, Esther Pyle, Clare Greenwood, Nicky Jordan, Lamorna Geach <3
You're my closest. Forever guys. :)

#Oh Crap...

So this morning, when I woke up, my first thought? YAY! It's the end of term! I was ecstatic until I rembered that I needed to write out my English essay - what a good idea, I managed to pick the longest one. But no worries, I could do it on the bus, problem solved.
Wrong.
It never occured to me how many flipping country roads my bus actually goes along and country roads = bumps, potholes and ditches. : Damn it. But still I managed it eventually by, erm, not paying attention in house singing... *awkward cough* ... and lying to my english teacher...
But that's not the point. It was while I was doing it that the wave of realisation hit me. We have GCSE's in about two months. Less than that, I have three weeks to prepare for two orals, the absolute bane of my life. Even less than that, I'll be sixteen in just a week and for me that means responsibility, maturity and knowing what the hell I'm going to do with my life. Like I can decide that by next Friday.
And now begins the parental nagging to "make your revision plan", "stop being lazy, revise" and, in the case of my mother, "do some fucking revision!"
Woo. Hoo.
:|

#Drama...

Oh. My. Gosh.
That really is all I can say about today. The hysterics over nothing, followed by the attempts at being depressed, all the time worrying about where props were, how we were going to do make up and general what-not.
For all the fun we have in drama it's foooookin scary when we have to go out and perform. Wait, no, scratch that. It's scary before. When you have to wait backstage for the applause that means you're next. That's when the butterflies are going like crazy. Then you're up on stage and everything just flies by - somehow you remember what you're supposed to be doing, where you're going, what to say.
Obviously things go wrong. Like tech stuff.....*grr* but even then you're still running on adrenaline and everything seems to fall into place.
Yes, we had a drama exam today. A moderated one at that. For our GCSEs. Now it's over, I want to go back and do it all again. All of it. I hate the pre-performance panic but the nerves actually help because they stop you from over-thinking while you're doing it.
But yeah, all of it gave me such good memories. Devising, "practicing", performing, watching, teching - everything about it makes me more and more certain that I will never ever stop doing drama. Somehow, one way or another, I want to be in a theatre, working, performing, watching, I don't care but the whole atmosphere - I just fall in love with it.

Our group - well, I think it's fair to say our piece was not what you'd call normal - but it was amazing. It worked, and what's more my reliable source said it worked well. ^_^ YAY. I actually love you guys so much for filling the past three months with the most fun drama lessons I've ever had.
And god, everyone else who performed - you were immense. It's so nice just to sit and watch my closest friends get up and show off their amazing acting skills and then be able to watch more good friends do the same thing and more and more...
This whole day, despite all the stresses about dying friends and tomatoes, has truly been one of the best days of my life.
And I wanted to say - thanks guys :) only you could make it that great.
<3

~Fact~

Everyone lies.
I guess it's just part of being human.
I don't really mind when people lie.
If I can't tell then obviously I have no problem with it.
But I lie quite a lot so I know when other people are.
There's certain....twitches....people have.
They're uncomfortable.
Why?
Because they're not telling the truth.

I don't press it.
There's a reason they're lying.
If they want to, they'll tell me.
If not, well, why should I force them into admitting something they're trying to hide?
You might think that's uncaring. A good friend would want to know.
Would they?
Or would the good friend wait until they were ready to say?
I don't know.

But anyway.
Like I said, I know when people lie.
Especially my parents.
After all, my twitch had to come from somewhere. I can recognise it in them.

That's why it hurts so much when my mum lies to me.
Most of the time, she's one of my best friends.
I don't care if that sounds gay. It's true.
So when she can't trust me.... all I can think of is why?
What did I do wrong?

And if my mum can't trust me, can anybody?

Can anyone trust anyone, if everyone lies?

~Libraries~

I'm finally past the big one-zero of posts!
*yayy* ^_^
Anyway, moment over.

So, I was in the library the other day and I just realised how peaceful they actually are. I mean, sure, if you're with friends trying to have a laugh and you get shushed at by some old man with horn-rimmed glasses it can be just slightly annoying.
But go in on your own and the quietness makes it calm - you're in a good mood and it's just nice and calm, you're in a bad mood and it's so peaceful you can take time to think and reflect in a space where no-one's going to judge you.
No-one's going to laugh at you, or do stupid things to try and cheer you up.
And it's an escape.
Ina lirary you can take on any personality you want just through opening a book. The old ones are the best, right at the back of the shelves, covered in dust with cracked bindings - the smell of the pages, the feel of them in your hands as you gently turn them over.
What's more, it's always sunny when you go to the library. Even if it's raining there's a patch of sunlight somewhere and as it shines through the window you can see the swirling motes of dust in the air, and it's beautiful.

Gosh, how I love the library.

~Hurricane~

When the forces of nature crash together it results in a phenomenon, both beautiful and deadly. And so in life when everything comes hurtling together it creates the beautiful chaos we live through each day. The chaos that can lead us to despair.

But as in hurricanes there is an eye, at the centre a spot of calm that brings us relief. Every so often a moment comes along when there is nothing to do, nothing to worry about, nothing that needs to be acheived. And at that point it is a moment of pure bliss, of relaxation.

All too soon we are hurled back into the storm where we must once again fend for ourselves in order to keep from falling and being lost. But even when we are in the whirling confusion there is still the joy of friendship, staying together and holding each other aloft, staying strong.

So even though at this moment I am unbelievably peaceful I know that all too soon I will be back in the mad swirl of life. And the thought no longer worries me as much as it did because I'm ready and I know what to expect.

If we know what is coming, even if we don't like it, things suddenly become much simpler. It might be hard at the time, dealing and working around the difficulties you face, but by being prepared for things going wrong life isn't nearly as hard as it used to be.

~Together.~

Together we’ll run

Through the fields made of dew,

And the streets paved with ice

We will run.

Together we’ll laugh

At the tiniest things –

Only we’ll understand

Why we laugh.

Together we’ll lay

‘Neath a blanket of stars

And the bright silver shine

Of the moon.

Together we’ll be -

‘Til you shatter my dreams

For a person

Who’s no good for you.

Apart we shall stay

As a storm rears its head

And casts you adrift

On the shore.

I will fall to your side,

You’ll return my embrace -

We both needed

A warm hand to hold.

Together once more

I will help you pull through

From the misery

You now endure.

And as we sleep by the waves,

In the chill morning air,

I will stab you

For breaking my heart.

~From This Day On~

Gazing out over the choppy waves of the North Sea, Rhianon knew that today would be the starting point. A sense deep inside her told her that what she was about to was right, a sense that had been with her since childhood. But even though she knew that doing this would fix everything, Rhianon’s heart felt heavy at the thought of all the things she had left behind and, as if the ache in her chest spread to the muscles in her neck, her head fell forward, once wandering eyes staring back at her from the puddle at her feet.

The emptiness of her eyes scared her and automatically her head snapped up, eyes once again roaming across the horizon, escaping from the horror that lay only five feet away.

A lonely cry alerted Rhianon to the presence of a baby seagull, abandoned in its nest by its mother as she searched for food. This confused Rhianon as she remembered, from what seemed like years ago, her science teacher describing the intricate ways of birds and how a chick was never left alone, especially one so young as this one.

She caught sight of a lone black shape in the distant sky and once again, her instinct told her something she knew to be true. Inside her head Rhianon was screaming, “Where are you?! How could you just fly off without a backward glance? You’re its father! It needs you! It can’t survive without you! Come BACK!” but she daren’t open her mouth, else she broke yet another calm atmosphere; destroyed something else that wasn’t hers to destroy.

Rhianon had made a pact with herself as she sat by herself on the train from Waverly Station. No longer would she invoke the harsh feelings of disappointment and failure that her mother seemed to suffer from so much whilst Rhianon was around. No more would her stepfather give her disapproving glances across the dinner table as she glared at the abomination that he had married.

As the train had slowed, Rhianon had silently agreed to fulfil her pact that day with all the strangers bustling past her, surrounding her, staring at the lone teenager shouldering a huge khaki backpack - filled with scrunched newspaper balls, her sleeping bag and all the spare food she had managed to scrounge from the flat in Livingstone.

Now, standing so close to her goal, Rhianon felt the strangest feeling build up inside of her. It was one of such happiness and yet something else lingered on the sidelines – a touch of excitement and complete content. For the first time in her life, Rhianon experienced a sense of achievement.

She opened her mouth and let the sea air flow through her mouth, down her throat, filling her lungs with a freshness for which she had yearned for so long. A clarity came over her and, adjusting her position ever so slightly, Rhianon let her meagre supplies slip off her shoulders and leant them against a scraggly bush poking through the bare ground a hundred metres or so away from her final destination.

Rhianon lifted her head once more and slowly walked forward until she could feel the crumbling rock under her feet, falling down, down, down into the black abyss that was ever present just out of Rhianon’s sight. Once more, Rhianon filled her body with the sea breeze gusting in from the North, her hair blowing back behind her, as if trying to escape the fate that was rapidly approaching; the fate that Rhianon was willing to embrace with all her heart.

One more step and suddenly Rhianon was following the rocks before her except she wasn’t falling. Oh no. She was flying with the seagulls into the distant horizon, swimming with the dolphins into the deepest blue of the ocean, crawling with the crabs along the pebbled shoreline even before she hit the boulders waiting for her at the bottom of the cliff.

* * * * *

It was four days before Rhianon’s family noticed that the young girl had run away from home and it was on the same day, approximately two hours later, that three hikers spotted her body sprawled across the jagged rocks that lay at the bottom of the steepest cliff in that area. The local police had concluded early into the investigation that it could be nothing other than suicide – the lack of any indication that another human had been there and the backpack found at the top of the cliff allowed no other explanation.

However her family, to all those who observed them, appeared to be unconcerned with the mental state of their daughter that had quite probably troubled her for a number of years. Not because they didn’t care but from that day on, all the problems and complications in their lives had simply disappeared.

~Mirrors~

Don't you think it's strange that looking in a mirror is a different experience for everyone?

For some it's a reassurance, others a struggle. Some find it purely impossible to view themselves as others would, preferring instead to base the opinion of their appearance purely on what they see when they look down at their own body.
It can be very different - what you think you see and what you are actually seeing. Mirrors have the ability to show us the truth when we believe no one else. But they can also lie and distort shapes beyond recognition which, although amusing, can sometimes destroy people.

For something that shows a reflection, it's a terribly tricksy object. One slight alteration to the angle of the glass and BOOM you've got a completely different image. I often wonder if the same goes for a personality. Alter it by just a fraction and you end up with a new person, a totally changed being.

So is it good to try and alter the way we view each other? Not just by changing the mirror but by forcing them to change too. To suit you or to "make them fit". Perhaps we should leave them be, leave them to get by. After all, who knows what you're going to end up with if you go round making alterations?

#Taorem...

Before we moved inland, I had a friend I’d never been without. For now, we’ll call him Taorem, though his real name is so much more beautiful.

We were born in the same hospital, in the same month, the same week. We practically lived in each other’s houses, shared families even. This meant that as children we were almost inseparable. Yet we were often kept apart. We could hardly spend half a day without launching into an explosive fight – mostly verbal, sometimes physical. So we were separated – “for our own good.”

Really, all we were doing was marking our territory, laying down the boundaries – we shared so much that it was often unclear to us what belonged to the other.

Throughout our early years, we spent much of our time creating new worlds to explore – urban jungles in the park or rich forests under our duvets. However, it wasn’t long before everything changed. In fact, it wasn’t long after our young childhood freedom and innocence was stolen by the enforced conscription of education that our world collapsed. He had to leave – to be with his family Taorem had to follow his parents to a strange country, a different world that seemed a lifetime away. Along with his brother, he walked away from the only place we knew.

Only a couple of years later I too had to follow my family to the land she grew up in. It was as strange to me as any foreign country I’d been to – there were no beaches, no seaweed, no seagulls. How could I live somewhere so far from the untamed wildness of the sea? How could I belong here?

But part of me was glad to have left behind the empty memories of joy I’d had on the coast. Without Taorem I felt I was somehow missing something, like I’d lost an important part of life, but being so young I had no idea what this was, what it meant. With this new land came the possibility of new life and the chance that I could work out what it was I was missing, solve this puzzle that twisted my young mind into knots.

When we were little, our parents joked that we were an old married couple. Now I wonder whether they were witnessing the beginnings of an eternal bond. Of course, I have no idea whether he still thinks of me, or if he’s found the thing I’ve always been searching for since he left. I thought I’d found it once but I must have been lying to myself.
After Taorem left, I didn’t realise that part of me had followed him to his new life. It resides with him, whether he knows it or not. I try to call it back but it refuses, still clinging to him and the hope that one day he might return. It never will come back to me unless I somehow manage to unhook its claws from the empty promise of his reappearance.

We were young, so young, that I never knew what it was that I felt for him – Taorem was like my brother and yet he was so much more than that. I could never explain how it was but I’d always thought that nothing could keep us apart – even through the strained efforts of teachers to separate us we always ended up together somehow.

And now, sometimes it’s all I can do to stop myself thinking of him – seeing him, hearing him, feeling him.

If he doesn’t remember there’s nothing I can do, but I can never forget Taorem.

~Dreams~

Do you ever wonder if your dreams mean something?

When I was little I used to read one of my mum's books constantly. It was just about what different things in your dreams meant - if you were being chased or if you found something, whatever.
But as I've got older there have been things in my dreams that play out similarly in my life.

One night I woke up terrified because there had been nothing in my dream except darkness and confusion and I was alone - the next day my grandfather died. My Nan later told me that without him she felt alone, like she was trapped in a pitch black box and no-one could find her. She'd just decribed a dream I hadn't told anyone about.

And last night I saw my mother in tears holding a blue book in her hands. When she was out I went into her room and found the key to my (occasional) diary on her bedside cabinet. My diary is blue. She hadn't found it but I knew she'd been in my room.

Does that ever happen to you?

#I'm just scared...

Quite honestly, I had one of the most terrifying experiencs of my life during this past week. And it wasn't even anything exciting like nearly getting run over or falling off a cliff or something. Basically, I was talking to someone about my future and instead of asking me pretty typical questions like what I wanted to do with my life, they pretty much pyscho-analysed me. For anyone else, that might seem kind of intriguing - how do you appear to the people around you? For me, I would rather be killed a thousand times over than have to sit and listen while someone described how they saw me and what they thought I was actually like. The worst part was, this person could see through all the layers I'd tried to build up over the years and told me things about myself that I'd forgotten or had never been able to reveal to anyone else. And what scared the crap out of me was that I realised then that I had hidden myself so deeply inside that I didn't know who I was anymore. I'd locked everything that had made me 'me' away for so long that I couldn't see it anymore. And it's been so long since I've been able to open up comfortably with anybody, I don't know how to do it. I physically find it impossible to talk to anyone about the real me. The only times I feel truly able to talk are when I'm writing - poems, prose, or just when I write to remind myself how I felt. And I don't want to live like that but it's been so long that I don't know any better.

~Human nature~

Alrighty, so I'm pretty useless at doing more than one thing at a time which is why I have verryyy little blogging material to actually show for myself. BUT it is now a Saturday night therefore I can type to my heart's content without waking up in the morning thinking "Shit, I've only had two hours sleep."
So this week I've kinda been thinking about human nature and what makes us the way we are - I mean, why we're so different from the animals that surround us. I'm an atheist so don't tell me God made us like this because, personally, I couldn't give a crap.
So, in my view anyway, we were all once part of nature - whether we were monkeys or frogs, who knows for sure? But anyway, what I'm trying to say is this: how can we have adapted and evolved so much that it is now a part of human nature to want to destroy? To be honest, this all came after watching Avatar last weekend (if you haven't watched it yet do it now. it's amazing. and yes I know I sound like a mega-geek but screw you.). It suddenly struck me how violent humans are as a whole.
And I mean, yeah, we could get into the whole "Animals kill things too. It's all part of life bla bla bla..." discussion but animals don't go around ripping up forests and flattening out land to make way for houses or cutting down trees just so DFS can make more furniture.
I really am useless at explaining but what I'm trying to make a point of is that we've ended up on the opposite side of where we started - we've turned against what actually brought us into being in the first place. By constantly changing and finding new ways to power this and new things to make that with we are obliterating our own roots.
But the most annoying thing for me is that it's never going to stop because, let's face it, given the option would you rather be around now with mobiles and internet or back in earlier times when everyone was content with what they had.
Or maybe that is the problem with humans - we are never content, we are always strivng to become better. Is it a problem? I don't know. I've managed to confuse myself now. Help?

~Social taboos~

I couldn't sleep the other night and it's in the calm dark night that I often have my 'deep thinking' sessions. This particular night I found myself remembering a tv programme my mum had made me watch at some point last year.
It was about self harm. And as soon as I remembered it I thought "Oh my god, self harm!" This set me thinking. Why is it that as a society we decide that something is so horrible or disgusting that we refuse to talk about it and even thinking about it causes an immediate reaction? And then again in a drama lesson at school, self harm came up as an idea in an unscripted piece we were doing and practically straight away everyone looked uncomfortable and tried to change the subject.
It's only when you're having serious conversations late at night that issues like that are mentioned, and even then, at the most open time of the day, it's still a very hush hush topic. Is it just because the majority of people don't, and don't want to, understand what it is that makes people do things like self harm, or suicide? Or is it that nobody wants to admit that at some point in their lives they may have considered it? Or something else?
The same goes for eating disorders - nobody ever wants to bring it up or talk about it, why not? Why are we so scared to discuss something that everyone should be aware of? And sexuality is still quite iffy - not many people want to admit it, but they're just as freaked out now by the thought of homosexuality as people were fifty years ago.
And I think somehow we need to change that so future generations don't grow up thinking that certain aspects of life can never be talked about in polite company. I thought I grew up like that but now I'm older I realise there was so much my parents never told me about, and still they find it difficult to talk to me about things like suicide and self harm - I don't know about you but I don't think that's right at all.
What do you think?
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