A ramble, of sorts

Something I do far too often and far too foolishly is put all my happiness in other people - I’m yet to figure out why I do this. Maybe it’s because other people make me happier than I feel I could possibly make myself; but it’s becoming a problem. See, when I talk to a person once or twice I feel a connection, we ‘click’ and suddenly I become attached, I think too much into things and they become the only person I want to talk to. Talking to them makes me happy and not talking to them becomes weird and uncomfortable.

I don’t recommend doing this.

I’m not sure how I started doing this but it’s certainly not a recent thing, for as long as I can remember I’ve been a clingy person (something I’m not afraid (though slightly embarrassed) to admit), I’ve always wanted to keep hold of relationships even when I know they’re over and there’s no going back. I hate losing people.

Something I learnt last year was that part of growing up is losing friends and growing out of relationships with certain people, as we grow we change and as we change our interests change. This is not our fault and not something we should look down on ourselves for. But I do. I learnt that losing friends is part of becoming who you are yet somehow I have to keep learning that because I find letting go of people so hard.

Talking to new people is something I love, or getting to know people I’ve known for a long time but never spoken to much is a huge thing for me. I love talking to people and learning about people but it never seems to end well for me. If we talk for a few weeks there’s a high chance I’ll miss you if we don’t talk for a few days, even if there’s nothing between us. I don’t tend to do this with people I’ve been friends with for a while, or just friends, hm.

I feel like it’s part of my overthinking process. Oh you started a conversation with me yesterday and today? Wow. Perhaps that’s because I struggle to start conversations with people that I assume others do too rather than the fact they’re just looking for a chat. I think too deeply and too anxiously about why he said that and what does that emoji mean. Is that anxiety or is that my love of literature and language going too far? I’m unsure.

Similarly, the overthinking works the other way. They didn’t message me today? Must not like me. Being a bit blunt? Clearly doesn’t like me. Which is crazy because I get blunt and I don’t message people but that doesn’t mean I hate them so why do I feel this way when the roles are reversed?

Attachment to one person is hard because as soon as they’re gone, that happiness is gone and suddenly everything comes crashing, quickly. Every time I learn to pick myself up and put myself together and every other time I forget.

It’s something that can romanticised on social media, specifically tumblr, but it’s not pretty or cute. Putting all your happiness in someone to have it ripped out weeks later is not something worth romanticising. Please find happiness within yourself and within your being.

I’m trying to get out of this, what seems, endless cycle but I find myself falling back into it again and again. 

Sometimes I need to write to get out feelings I’ve been harbouring for too long, I’m sorry this is unstructured and has no relevance to anything but I write things like this a lot and they just get stored on my laptop away from the world but I haven’t posted for a while and maybe it’s worth sharing how I’ve been feeling.

How To Escape

es·cap·ism

əˈskāpˌizəm/

noun

the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy.

I feel like a truly important part of life is to have escapisms.

I think that by staying in reality your whole life can be somewhat uncomfortable and overbearing, ignoring the world and blanking out, for me, is a necessity; a vital part of my daily life, if you will.

The great thing about escapisms is that it can come from anything and it doesn’t even have to be something ordinary. They can be individual and as long as it gets you away from the ‘unpleasant realities’ in a safe way, you should never be ashamed or afraid of them.

From writing to exercise, any way you can escape from life and focus on you and one thing is better than focusing on what is happening around you - even if it’s not been a bad day. Sometimes having a good day can still call for a little escape.

Escapisms allow us to move past the reality we are living, they allow us to forget about our stresses and what we’re meant to have done or be doing and that’s great because when life becomes too stressful, there is an easy answer.

I like books that I can so easily get into, movies, or music where I can just sit, close my eyes and really listen to the lyrics and just, not live for a while. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, either, quite the opposite. I think we should be able to escape, not even from ‘unpleasant realities’ just from reality, even if your life is all but perfect, why shouldn’t you be able to forget about everything?

Whether it be a book or music, we each have our own means of escaping from our own realities for a period of time. I’m just wondering how reading a book can transport you from the world we’re all in, to a place where it’s just you and the book - it can, I’m not disputing that, we’ve all experienced it, but how? I think it’s extraordinary.

How is it so easy to forget about the world but still be there, in your room or wherever you may be, to still be alive and breathing in your home town but to feel like you are alive and breathing in Hogwarts or watching the Hunger Games from the Capitol. Or, maybe you’re sat with your eyes closed, favourite song on repeat, and you’re there, in your perfect World, relaxed.

I love it and I truly, truly hope that everyone has their own personal escapism, maybe it’s something I haven’t even mentioned, maybe it’s your own way of surviving the tough times, or the easy times. I think everyone needs an escapism, because how can one live in reality for too long?

For me, my favourite ways to escape reality are either writing or going for a run, both with my headphones in and music going, any playlist where I can listen to every song and enjoy it really helps me to get away from all that’s going on. I think writing sounds obvious and general, maybe it is for people who enjoy it because it honestly is an incredible way to forget your life - creating a life for a fictional person, being able to control their every move, every aspect of their looks and personality. Just to put my headphones in and be alone with my keyboard or a pen and paper. Is running a ‘usual’ escapism? Or do you all think I’m crazy now? I just think that to be outside, running across the beach or around the downs with a beautiful view of my town is a great thinking space, or a space to get everything off your mind - whichever alternative is best for your ‘escapist’ needs.

If you don’t have a perfected escapism, please find one, there is nothing harder than having to go through life without a way of forgetting it all for at least five minutes a day. Whatever it may be; fall in love with a film, create art, workout or put on your favourite playlist and lay on your bed with your eyes closed for a while.

Escape from the world and clear your mind for a while and always have fun doing it.

Feel free to share your escapisms with me and us all.

Love,

Samiie xo

Lost

Some nights leave me speechless in a way I cannot explain.

Some mornings I wake up with not much memory of the night before which is probably for the best.

Laying in bed, at about 10pm last night, everything hit me. All the bad things, all the people I’d lost, all the things I’m missing out on.

I felt empty.

I felt alone.

I couldn’t even take my makeup off, I couldn’t even turn my light off, I couldn’t even go to sleep.

It took me twenty minutes to build the motivation to take off my makeup and even that was slightly forced.

I don’t like to openly talk about these feelings, I don’t like to message my friends when I feel like this, why bring other people down just because I feel a bit sad? People have it worse, people always have it worse.

I wander alone through a field, lost in a tangle of negative thoughts. With not enough room on the shelf or cupboards of my mind they escape, barging out of the places I hide them. I try to push them back but they keep moving forward towards the front of my brain, to the loudest part of my being.

I lay in bed and where I would usually spill words on to a page; I cannot, picking up a pen is hard and I have nothing I want to say.

Except the looming loneliness and fear or rejection, the idea that I haven’t spoken to a certain person in 5 days and how that’s the worst thing that’s happened.

It’s as if loneliness has consumed my entire being and it’s all I can think of. . .maybe that’s where this stems from.

Nothing bad has happened that day. That’s the problem. There is nothing and no one to blame, only myself and my overactive mind. 

But, who doesn’t think too much?
There is nowhere I’d rather be than tucked up in bed falling asleep; but I am there and I hate it.

Maybe this doesn’t make sense.

Nothing bad has happened, just smile, watch something funny, be a little happier, why are you even sad?

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

These thoughts don’t come often but they bring a painful thunder and several bolts of lightening. They bring rain storms or hail. 

Somewhere along the line, things turned black and white.

I mean, this isn’t a constant feeling, I feel happy in the moment, I feel fine. It’s just, I look back on the day or week and nothing happened.

Regardless of what happened - nothing happened.

I don’t know why I’m rambling about this but it’s always best to get things off your chest - right?

It just seems to be one thing after another at the moment. I have exams which are always an added stress.
Though summer is getting ever closer (and PLL season 6 ha!) and that seems to be the only thing that brings any brightness.

Anyway, I should be back to posting slightly more regularly soon (she says. . .again), especially come the holidays when I have as much time as I need.

Meeting Your Idols

If you know me through my tumblr, you’ll know I’ve been watching youtube for a few years and I’m pretty much in love with certain youtubers. Throughout my youtube-loving life, I’ve been a huge fan of multiple people; mainly loving the vloggers or beauty gurus.

Another fact to mention is that I live about 30 minutes from Brighton.

People always say they meet youtubers and are so surprised by how nice they are, but it’s never something I really thought about - not many of my favourite youtubers live near me and I’d never go to SITC or any meetups, they’re generally not my scene.

However, today I thought I’d share with you the two times I have been lucky enough to bump into those youtubers I’ve aspired to.

Back in June 2014, me and my friends were going to college (I went to college in Brighton last year), so we were at the train station having got the train from my home town. If you’ve ever been to Brighton station, you’ll know there are some shops around the outside which can be accessed both inside and outside the station. While my friends were getting their lunch from Marks and Spencer, one of my other youtube-loving friends noticed Alfie [Deyes] (pointlessblog), nudging me, we questioned if we should go up and speak to him or not. Before we had decided, he was in the queue and paying for his own items, so we decided to leave him be and wander around the station for a while. As he left the shop, we decided we should speak to him - what’s the harm in asking for a picture? He waited for his train to the side of the station and we went up to speak to him, telling him we were subscribers and loved his videos. He was extremely happy to see us, stood with skateboard and sunglasses in hand. We spoke about how he was going to London and America the next day, how he had broken his sunglasses and had no idea where to get them fixed. As it approached the time we needed to get going to college, we asked for pictures and said our goodbyes. We spoke for about five minutes and throughout he was really nice, polite and seemed to honestly enjoy speaking to us. It was strange to be speaking to someone with over a million subscribers and who I had been watching on my laptop/phone screen for a few years but it was nice to be greeted with a smiling face and a personality exactly the same as the one I had loved on youtube.

Fast forward to April 2015, me, my cousins and a friend go shopping in Brighton. Just to go shopping as it’s half term and it’s sunny. Me and my cousin separate from my other cousin and our family friend and we wander around the shops and laines for a while. As we end up in boots, we realise we’ve done everything we’ve wanted to do and there’s nowhere left for us to go. Heading to the photo department for somewhere to sit down, we wait for our friend to ring us back and sit chatting. Just as our friend rings us back, my cousin looks at me (she was facing the door and I was facing her) and says ‘is that Zoë’, I laugh at her statement as I thought she was joking - we had previously joked about meeting Zoë that day. As I turn round, I have to double take, there she is just walking into boots; looking absolutely flawless. Dressed in a maxi length dress and denim jacket, she looks great. We wait while she gets her photos processed and walk up to her after she takes a photo with another girl. We say ‘hi’ and ask if it would be okay to get a photo, she says ‘of course’ and takes the selfie on my cousins phone, saying it was nice to meet us as she does so. Walking away, me and my cousin are speechless - did we really just meet Zoella?! We call our friend back in excitement, the excitement which continues through the day. Meeting Alfie was one thing, but Zoella with her 7million+ subscribers, own book, own beauty brand, it’s a crazy world. 

I just want to leave with the fact they were both incredible to meet. They were both lovely and so sweet, neither of them seemed at all agitated upon meeting fans and having photos taken - in fact, most people point out how Zoë looks more excited in the photo than we do. It’s a strange world but I truly hope one day you meet the people who’ve inspired you or made you the person you are today. Whether it be idols or internet friends.

Five Years Time

A question everyone will get asked at multiple points in their life is ‘where do you see yourself in 5/10/20 years time?’, especially in your teen years as you’re approaching ‘adult life’. To be completely honest, it’s something I’ve been asking myself for the past year or two.

Where will I be in five years?
What will I be doing in ten years?
But, thinking about it, it’s such a crazy question. Who could possibly say where they’d be in five or ten years, let alone looking forward twenty years.

In five years time, I’ll be 23, mid twenties (ish), I can tell you where I’d like to be, but not where I see myself being. In five years, I’d like to be studying in America, I want to be content with life and I want to have travelled, not a crazy amount, but just a few more places. I want to have been to New York and explored art museums. I hope to have been to London some more, I live so close to London but the opportunity to go rarely arises. I also want to be a lot further through any writing projects I have at the moment.

In ten years time, I’ll be twenty eight, hitting my late twenties. I hope to be living in, or around, New York (the state, not the city, though the city would be incredible). I hope to be an author, but maybe with a more convincing, safe job on the side. I can definitely say I won’t be a published author by twenty eight, so maybe writing will be more of an aside. I hope to have my own apartment, flat or something to call my own. Whether I’m living there alone, with a friend or a partner, I just want somewhere to call my own. I hope to have travelled more, just around America, maybe I’ll have been to California or Nevada. I hope to have completed more of my bucket list, maybe it’ll be nearly done by now.

In twenty years time, I’ll be thirty-eight and that’s nearly forty and that’s quite scary. Maybe I’ll have a family, I would like to by that age. Maybe I’ll have moved out of New York into another state and own my own house, or maybe I’ll still be in New York. Perhaps, I’ll have moved back to England (though, I don’t really want to). I think by that age, the only thing I can really ask for is a happy, healthy family.

I can say all this, I can have all these ambitions but something could happen tomorrow that could change one or all of these things. Anything could happen along the way that would make me have to adjust or completely change these plans. That’s what scares me. Nothing in life is certain and it makes it hard to have ‘plans for the future’. 

Saying that, I believe that everyone should have plans; if you don’t have plans you have nothing to aim for. Stumbling aimlessly through life seems scarier than aiming to be somewhere. Even if your situation changes along the way, even if your dreams change along the way, always have them. Always aspire to be somewhere, be something, be someone.

This leads me to the question, where would you like to be in five years time?

“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” - Walt Disney.

Unmotivated

Recently I’ve been reading a lot.

Blogs, poems, books and the occasional fan fiction (guilty)!

This is great, I love reading and I love the pros that come with it - enjoyment, escaping reality and expanding my vocabulary - the downside? It makes me feel bad about my own writing, it makes me doubt my own ‘talent’.

It’s that feeling when you’re not even good at the one thing you’re good at. I guess writing has always been that thing that I’ve constantly wanted to do, constantly been inspired to do, I’ve always wanted to create a piece a writing, be it write a new blog post, start a new story, attempt a novel or try poetry. Writing has been the one thing that I’ve thought about as both a hobby and a career prospect but sometimes I read other people’s writing and I see how good they are and how well they use language; then I look at my writing and feel genuinely discouraged.

I can’t fluently express a point in a way other people can, I can’t use the same words in the way other people can. It’s as if they’re using this beautiful language and mine is plain, boring and dull. Okay, maybe those words all mean the same thing or have the same connotations but it’s how I feel.

Something I’ve always struggled with is comparing myself to others and silently competing with other people, I constantly feel like I should be as good as other people whether they’ve been practicing something the same length of time as me or they started five years before me.

I didn’t write for a long time in high school, there’s no real reason for this, I just didn’t. It’s left me feeling like I’ve missed out on a chunk of my writing ‘career’ that could otherwise have really changed me as a writer, had I constantly written through those four years (sorry to the rest of England who are at high school for five years, my town is quirky (or just stupid)) then maybe I’d be better, maybe I’d be at a different stage to where I am now, maybe I’d have finished a novel. Four years is a long time and to have missed out on writing for that long, to have missed out on a true passion of mine, is disheartening. It’s not as though I’ve only just got into writing, in fact I have the first ‘story’ I wrote in my bedroom, it’s about seven A4 sides long but I worked hard on it and sometimes I enjoy reading it just to see how far I’ve come.

Maybe it’s because I’m used to my own writing or because I write it myself that I think it’s not good enough but then that seems ridiculous because I’ll often write something that I’m really proud of and I honestly do think is good.

Maybe it’s good that we often become unmotivated with things we long because perhaps periods of distaste for our own work can, in reality, motivate us to do better. I know that after a certain amount of time of not writing I become overly motivated to write a load of things that have been floating around my mind, things almost boil up in my mind and I just want to write about every idea I’ve had.

In the end, I love writing and I wouldn’t stop for the world.

And that’s why I always come back to this blog, it’s like coming home after a holiday or some cliché like that.

I hope that explains why I’ve been gone for a few weeks, also this is an ‘I’m back now (potentially) post’!

Lastly, I have something a little different prepared for next week (she says) so you should all be excited for that - I’m scared but kind of excited *insert all happy and scared and wink emojis*!

Contentment

Do you ever feel completely content with life? Do you ever just have one day where everything seems okay, everything seems to have fallen into place. Even if it’s just for one day.

Even if it’s 1a.m. and you’re lying in bed and looking around your room and just for the moment, everything seems right.

The problem with feeling content is that it never lasts too long. I see a lot of people saying they feel content and the next day it’ll be the opposite. It’s funny that you can feel so content one day and the next you may feel like you’re falling apart; I feel like we should live for that content feeling, we should remember how it felt and that it’s possible for everything to be okay.

I know that it would be hard (but not impossible) to constantly feel okay, to constantly feel at peace with your life - this is why contentment is such a great feeling. You know that you’re okay.

Perhaps you’ve started something new and you’re succeeding at it and it’s making you feel good; maybe you stuck to your schedule; maybe something generally amazing happened that put all your worries aside and you just feel happy. Anything can make you feel content, it’s just what breaks that feeling that I find to be the problem, so I prefer not to focus on it.

When you feel content, it’s almost like life has come to give you a hug and pat you on the back, as though you’ve achieved something; even if you haven’t. It’s that moment where you just wish everything could stay as it is because you wouldn’t mind feeling that for the rest of your life. 

Contentment is defined as ‘a state of happiness and satisfaction’ which, in truth, can be found in mostly anything, so why do we feel it so little? In my opinion, it’s because the more we get, the more we want. It is said that the richer you are, the less giving you are with money because you have more so you want more; of course I am not saying this is true for everyone. I feel like we should all realise that we could have nothing, or a lot less than we have now and just appreciate what we have. It would be hard for me to say ‘look, your life is good, appreciate that’ because I know I’d be a hypocrite to say such thing because, my life is good but sometimes I don’t appreciate that.

It’s only moments like this that make me realise I’m fine and I’m okay and one day I’ll be sat in my own kitchen eating breakfast at 11am on a Sunday morning and regardless of whether I’m alone, with a partner or a family, I’ll have made it. This is how I get through the hard times - I think of contentment and how one day I will be content with life and what I have and I will have made it. All the hard times, all the worries of ‘will I go to uni?’ or ‘will I make it through college?’ will one day be over. And, in all honesty, I think it’s what everyone should live for. Don’t live for your best friends or your pet dog, live for the day where you look back and feel happy that you stayed. Live for the feeling of contentment every day.