uni

Before people leave you never actually think anyone is going anywhere. Life is comfortable, it doesn't need altering. University has stolen some of my very close friends, and if not university the more exciting parts of the world have tempted them. Most of my friends have now experienced freshers, joined societies and as loans enter their banks, their new lives of independence has officially pieced together. Higher education has taken my comfort zone, ripped it up and then thrown it all back to me, and in desperate attempt to glue it back together I lost more and more of the pieces.

As I plough through my third year of sixth form, I can't help but wonder where all this university pressure came from. Its meant to be the best three years of your life, the place where you meet your true friends and where a job will be waiting for you close after. Not that I'm in a position to judge but is this really the case? Of course its a great time, but is it how we expect it to be? Can't say I know.

Maybe I resent it. Most likely.

in good company.

Amy Spencer took some amazing photo's of the best weekend of my life. The Big Chill Festival, and although this blog is about writing and thoughts and various other issues, I thought a little dedication needed to be made. Thank you to the music, the weather, the atmosphere, the food, the drink, the tent... the list is endless but most off all the lovely people that surrounded me. The company.

What would we do without the people that you know you can be exactly who you are, with? The people that keep everything real. Despite the drama and the frustration that you let yourself get caught up in, those people bring you back to the ground. They deserve a little recognition. We are flawed in different ways, but to be accepted... flaws and all is a little inspiring.

Being in the company of the people that make me happy made my weekend perfect.

'Our fingerprints don't fade from the lives we touch'

You wont understand. And if you do, I don’t envy you.

My world used to be calm, easy and the plan had one direct route. It didn’t have turnings or complications or options or changes that were on different station platforms. It was one way, one route, and just one easy plan.

The road signs have become unclear, the ground is unsettled and my mind is exhausted. If I could tell you what it was that I am searching for I don’t think this would be so over-thought, I don’t even think it would be an issue. The unsupportive obstacles don’t make it easy to run when everything is fragile. Time is running out, the deadline gets closer, decisions are not any more obvious then before and before I know everyone will have left.

“People don’t realise the effect they can make on your life without even realising it” – Megan Roberts (She is very wise.) If only they did know. I am who I am because of the people around me. I make decisions because of them, I worry about them, and I can’t stop thinking about them. To be able to let someone in, to trust, to feel, to miss and to love him or her. Relationships are beginning and ending. People change, but it isn’t forgotten. It is remembered with memories. That person made a certain impact on your life.

No one ever knows how things will turn out. The unknown is disconcerting and it’s becoming very apparent. It’s as if I am supposed to be searching for something, fighting for it, doing whatever I can to get it. But the thing is, I don’t really know what it is I'm going to find or what I want at the end of it or even I will achieve anything out of it.

Someone once told me that ‘nothing you ever do is a waste of time, because how could you measure good if nothing bad ever happened.’ This person also told me I was ‘Scattered.’ I think he knows what he is talking about. Everything that anyone does is something towards something, it’s a junction on a road and you make a choice to go right or left. Gloucester or Cheltenham. You or Me? Maybe you end up taking steps backwards instead of progressing forward. I think I might have landed a few miles behind where I was before, but maybe that’s because my route felt like going scenic. It is not a waste of time.

I understand that this doesn’t really make very much sense. It’s all my thoughts fresh from the core. No condensing down or filtering or pasteurising, just straight organic thought.

So there you have it an un-concluded and completely scattered stream of consciousness.

Eve.

When your young jumping from one bed to another always seems like a good idea. Especially when you’re in a hotel room and excited about a wedding that is the family’s entertainment for the next day. I had tonsillitis at this point so was paying no particular attention to anyone but myself and my mum was feeling stressed due to parent’s in law and some general family politics. So the little ones continued to jump from the double bed to pull out couch bed. Just like that over and over again. Me in the other room and my mum outside on the balcony.

The scream that my brother made still replay’s in my head like it happened only minutes ago. The cry of realisation that what just happened really did happen and the potential consequences for this occurrence were still very much unknown.

When I panic I want to just shut down. Like when I was younger and people were chasing me I used to just stop running and crouch into a ball because if I couldn’t see them I was convinced they could not see me. And that is exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to pretend I wasn’t there and this hadn’t happened and everyone was still jumping from bed to bed and my mum was still outside and I was still wrapped up in myself worrying about the fact I was going to have tonsillitis for the wedding. For the wedding of my step dad’s brother. The wedding that slightly tainted the family.

All I know is I managed to pull it together. My brother and sister ran for help while my mum wrapped a pillowcase tightly around her leg. I somehow managed to pick up that phone dial the numbers and speak to the woman at the receiving end of the call. She asked questions about the position of the wound, the bleeding and what we were doing to control it.

Time passed, people panicked and while this was all happening she lay on that bed perfectly silent. No cry, no tears just nothing. She let her hands brush through her hair and motioned her eyes toward the various people that were surrounding her. The paramedic carried her out and like that she was taken away.

She is my sister Eve. She is six. She was four when this happened. I don’t think I realised until that day how much losing her would affect my life. Without her kind nature, her innocence and her perfect take on the world; I wouldn’t be the same person. She is gentle and loving and forgiving and considerate and she has only good intentions for anything. The scar on her leg fades more and more as months go by. It is now only a memory that she can hardly recall but continues to remind me to never take anything you love for granted. Keep it close. Never let it go.

written by the sleepless

Its twelve minutes past midnight and I'm wide awake. On a friday or saturday night it would be perfect for me to be this wake. But its tuesday, I'm on a family holiday and for everyone else in the household the night has clearly ended. Just like everyone else I venture to bed, get under the sheet and lay there. I close my eyes but they seem insistent on keeping wide open, my back all of sudden seems extremely uncomfortable and for some strange reason the dark room just isn't dark enough. It's a nightmare to say the least.

Loads of people have sleep issues. Therapists are hired, insomnia occurs and stress always plays a vital role but why is it that at the time when I am most relaxed I find it the most difficult to sleep? My dreams seem busy and corrupt, its almost as if I feel tired from sleeping. And yes you can google these symptoms for various sleep issues but to be honest i lay it down to my subconscious. My subconscious has ulterior motives.

It's now thirty eight minutes past one and I'd like to say i was feeling a little more sleepy but i don't. I've only managed to complete three quarters of a blog post, a phone conversation and experienced a very tired someone stumble through the hallway. Maybe I'm simply just to tired to conclude. I want to be able to say something really philosophical and deep about dreams and being away from your everyday life for at least 6 hours every night, but i got nothing. So maybe its just about venturing to sleep, snuggling under that sheet, laying completely comfortable and thinking about absolutely nothing. I hope so anyways.

lets drink more.

Most under eighteens drink alcohol, its inevitable in today’s society. Drinking it is illegal which makes the thrill daring and somewhat 'cheeky.' It’s an icebreaker for potential awkwardness. Boys become more attractive as do girls I'm sure and it always seems like a good idea to chase the danger. Alcohol for a young teenager leads to confidence, mistakes, judgments and undoubtedly their will be consequences whether they be good or bad, situations will occur and leave you feeling slightly out of your regular comfort zone. Adults look upon you with disappointing eyes, they are shrugged off and you continue on with your day relatively hung-over. Sometimes the experience can be bad and tears are wept, minds are spoken and all kinds of frustrations are let out. The morning after can always be interesting, involving the seemingly endless headaches and the occasional stomach churning thrown in now and again. However that does not stop you from getting even more drunk then you did the last time, because the so-called high of alcohol is worth it. The feeling of being able to make conversation with absolutely anyone about anything, the ability to flirt your way through the evening and the complete and utter courage to say exactly what your thinking is always worth 'chundering' a few times in between.

Most people preach about the disgrace of teenage binge drinkers. I think that its most likely I will be one of those people one day when I am older and more mature. But for now drinking alcohol and going a little crazy is what my culture is all about. And yes i completely agree with the 'you don't need to drink to have fun' idea but you do need to drink to experience the mistakes that have to be made at this age because at any other age they are just completely unacceptable. Sometimes its just about letting yourself go a bit but still having the power to pull yourself together again afterwards.

Guilty Pleasure

ne·ces·si·ty [nuh-ses-i-tee]–noun, plural -ties.

1. something necessary or indispensable: food, shelter, and other necessities of life.

Shoes are a necessity. Flat, heeled, buckled or zipped, shoes are complex pieces of equipment and whether you chose to admit or not they are needed. The perfect outfit can be chosen but without the right pair of shoes holds a potential disaster, they have the capacity to complete and save an outfit. No matter what size you are, no matter how big or how little, shoes will always look beautiful.

For Christmas 2009 I had no idea what I wanted. This was the first time in my life where I didn’t have an answer for something (a characteristic of mine that I promise I'm working on). Nothing stood out; maybe it was because there wasn’t anything that I particularly needed. After a lot of long hard thinking, I decided that shoes were the only option. I wanted a pair of boots to be more specific. Apart from that I had no requirements on what they looked like, or what colour they were. Just had to be boots.

Weeks passed and along with my siblings I lived in anticipation for whatever awaited me underneath the Christmas tree. I had already told myself that I’d be happy with whatever because quite frankly the brown, fake leather, New Look ankle boots weren’t really cutting it anymore. Christmas day came around, after the traditions had begun and breakfast had been eaten we all sat around the tree and the presents were distributed. It was my turn and like any typical girl I picked the biggest box with ‘Hannah’ written on it. The paper was immediately removed and there sat a shoebox with the words ‘Kurt Geiger’ written on it. I am definitely not a Kurt Geiger expert, ask me anything about Manolo and I got your answer but I hadn’t yet reached a sufficient level of shoe expertise to give you any kind of advice on Kurt Geiger. The things I did know however were, they were expensive, black and the heel would make me taller by only one inch. The leather already had that worn out look and the studs were equally distributed along the strap that crosses elegantly around the boot. They were flawless. Images ran through my mind of how I was going to where them, what I was going to wear them with and they somehow managed to look perfect with everything. They were just what I had wanted.

Its seven months on and I haven’t worn them once. They still lived in the box until a month ago. There is something about them that I don’t want to ruin. They are untainted. I don’t yet feel mature enough to expose a £100 pair of shoes to the ups and downs of a teenage world. For now they are not a reality, they are a designer pair of boots and that’s how I plan on keeping them until I feel that the pair of shoes and I can progress in life together. So for now they are simply just a guilty pleasure. You know, something pretty to look at.