Do you know what this feels like? Trying so hard, so fucking hard, and at the end of it all all you achieve is little more than average.

It makes people believe you don't care.

It makes you wonder what the point is.  Why spend so much effort trying when it doesn't make a difference in the end?

I miss this.

I...don't think... I belong anymore.

I don't know what I want anymore.
All I see inside is black and empty and ... nothing.

You wanna know a secret?
Sometimes I get really fucking sick of being treated as the stupid infantile one. And I get so fucking angry and then - I don't do anything and it disgusts me that I can't tell people to leave me the fuck alone once in a while.

Just, try to understand that I know a lot more than you expect me to.

The Seed

So, three months ago I had no idea if I would actually enjoy performing, or if I just liked the idea.
Now it's all I can think about.
But... I don't know what to do with it.
And it feels like I've been given this seed to plant and nurture and help grow into something amazing - but I'm pouring weed killer on it instead of water.

So it's 2011.

Big change?  New start?

Why is it that at the beginning of every year we set ourselves up for disappointment by promising that this year will be better than the last.  We cannot control everything that happens around us and there will always be something that makes this year one of the following: crappy, shit, awful, the worst year of my life. 

So this is a fresh start - it's a fresh year that I won't compare to 2010. At all.  New beginnings and all that shidazzle.  Not a new me, not a big lifechange, just another year to ride out and see where it takes us.

One thing does need to change though because my typing skills are appalling.

Welcome to 2011 guys :) Good luck.
<3

~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.