the latter months

We’re currently in my favourite time of year. Approaching winter, approaching my birthday, approaching christmas.

The cold, harsh winds that kiss your face as you step out every morning - still trying to dress for summer, hiding the jumper until you can acceptably bring out your favourite christmas jumper. The nights become dark, for a while it messes with your mind it’s 3pm but the sun is setting so maybe i’ve wasted the day and it’s actually 7pm, but when you adjust it just creates a better feeling, a sort of cosiness ignored by summer.

There’s less light in the day but doesn’t that just make it. . .cosier? It’s so much more appropriate to sit in bed and watch netflix whilst drinking copious amounts of hot chocolate.

The looming thoughts of christmas and celebrating the new year, what will it bring? where will it take me?

Maybe it’s only the beginning of November but I’m already planning the beginning of 2016.

The rain turns cold, or more than cold, and you know you’re hitting the final weeks of the year - the most exciting ones.

Perhaps your favourite time of the year says a lot about you, maybe it’s more than just preference.

As christmas lights appear in every city and town centre, the hopes for a white christmas come to mind but knowing it’s never going to happen.

November babies can probably relate to the struggle that is a birthday not quite close enough to christmas but not quite far enough away. Being born just a month before christmas eve I always feel slightly too close to christmas, I kind of wish there was longer because birthdays and christmas are my two favourite things and I wish I got more time to enjoy both. Regardless - I love both.

We all know that Buble and Mariah come out to play now and, as much as we laugh and make fun of it, we all secretly love dancing around the house to those cheesy christmas songs as soon as we can. People keep saying christmas comes earlier each year but is anyone complaining?! 

For me, christmas is such a family-orientated time and I couldn’t be without the routine my family have for presents, christmas breakfast, christmas dinner and family-game-night in the evening. I love how, even though I have an insanely close family, we feel so connected over the holiday period.

I love the bare trees, maybe autumn is prettier but winter feels more real.

The weather is colder and so often, the people are too but throughout winter we are blessed with small joys and little things to keep the happiness up.

The wins we have created through the year cannot be over shadowed as we look towards the future, towards the joys of next year.

Maybe it’s slightly too early to be writing about the new year but trust me there are plenty more to come because I can never quite express my love for the November-February period.

- and some motivation should you need it - “November. Another chance to start on something new.” - 

somethings

There’s something about the days when you notice the small things, when you fall in love with life and all it holds.

I fall in love with taking photographs, however they turn out - clear, blurry, sharp or too dark. Points of interest or a simple shadow on the floor, I fall in love with the use of the camera on my phone and just how many memories it can secure.

I love busy tubes, we’re all cramped in this one space; there’s no room to move and you can barely budge an arm without hitting someone, an abundance of ‘oops, sorry’’s. People huff and puff but I like it, everyone is heading to a different place and everyone has a different end goal. It’s probably far too hot and you’re way too small to reach the top bar but I guess being stuck between five people lowers your chances of falling as the tube comes to a flying halt. The five-seven o’clock has got people heading from every area in London to another, back home or back to work and there you are. . .exploring the beauty. Who knew you’d find it heading to Green Park on the Piccadilly line.

I sometimes fall desperately in love with the arts; literature, photographs, paintings, whatever it may be it is beautiful. That quote I saw on tumblr, that unforgettable portrait in a gallery or that certain paragraph in the book you’re reading. I wish I was better, I wish I was more capable at any of them; at all of them.

Perhaps this is another example of how I fall too easily.

The people stopping on the bridge to get the perfectly angled picture of the London Eye (me included). People rushing to catch the tube, eagerly wanting to get to the next stop as soon as possible. The man stood watching Big Ben as his time lapse captures the sun set, who knows how long he’s been there.

The thing is, this is your life and why should you not fall in love with everything about it, why shouldn’t you love everything around you; be it where you live or where you’re travelling. 

The little things and the big things, I just wish I could see things out of those eyes everyday. The eyes where I’m happy and everything is beautiful, every colour a tad sharper. 

Because, in reality, these things are not overly attractive. The tube is sweaty and breathless at rush hour; my photos tend to look awful when they’re blurry; people stopping in the middle of the road is annoying and ‘in the way’; I am not as good as I wish I was at writing, taking photos and I certainly cannot draw.

But maybe through my alternate eyes I can keep believing, keep seeing the allure of the world. I can’t wait for the next day where I fall for the world.

{this post was inspired by my recent trip to london (obviously) you can find some sexy (bad) pictures over on my instagram -> instagram.com/sxmiiecast}

old flames

I don’t think I ever understood how people saw galaxies in other people until I looked into his eyes, I saw the moon and stars swirling in a sea of blue. I saw the universe appear and disappear as his eyes opened and closed; the way the night sky disappears as you slowly fall asleep.

I never imagined a feeling so deep but when he laughed so hard that his face crinkled in on itself I’ve never wanted to hold on to someone so much.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get how you can fall so hard without the feeling being mutual. When I looked at him I saw the world, I saw everything I ever wanted to see; when he looked back he saw nothing but a friend, someone who’d be there to talk about other girls too. 

When he giggles, ruffles his hair and it pains me to think about how happy it made me, how happy he made me with all his little quirks. People say the point of loving someone isn’t thinking they are perfect but noticing their flaws and loving them anyway; maybe that’s what I did, though love is the wrong word. A strong feeling because I saw his flaws, I could recognise them but I liked him anyway.

I knew the words he spoke at 3am when he was over tired but didn’t want to sleep, I knew the feelings he hid to create his persona; because your naked soul is a sacred thing - it shouldn’t be thrown around. . .so why did he let me see his when he just wanted to throw me away.

It’s the memory from another time, another place but it consistently blows up in my mind when yet again I cannot stop missing him. Because, many months ago he broke you but today you remembered something he said, ‘but, it makes you happy when I call you baby?’; suddenly an explosion of memories, everything he said that made you happy and you want that back, you miss the late night conversations - you miss the small things.

You see, I’m scared of the dark but walking along the beach at night with him has never been more calming, I’ve never felt safer than wrapped in his arms.

I’ve never felt more alone than when he threw me away like I was nothing. 

I’ve never felt more pain than when I told him my deepest secrets and he told me it was my fault, that it was just a phase.

I’ve never felt more upset than when he told me all his feelings were just pretend and he just wanted me to be happy.

Everyone around me is falling, everyone around me is smitten so why am I constantly falling for a boy who is merely an echo from my past, someone I haven’t meant something too for so long? Sat wondering where it all went wrong - why can it never be right place, right time?

They say it takes twenty-one days to make or break a habit but it’s been a year and I still call your name even though I know you’re not here. It’s not easy getting over someone you almost had, maybe it’s harder than letting go of someone you did have. Almost. Almost. Almost.

Perhaps it’s pathetic but, wow, my heart still drops at the sound of your name, my throat still tightens when they talk about you and my eyes still flood when I think too deeply.

I’m sure this feeling went away, the moment you said you didn’t want ‘us’ anymore and I felt everything drop to my stomach. I never thought I’d see you again but, oh god, I did and it hurt but it made everything seem okay again. 

Only you did it again - you said it again and I broke again.

I’m scared of heartbreak and I fear rejection but with you, it seemed impossible so I gave you the opportunity: you took my heart and crushed it in your hands, more than once.

I’m sorry I still cannot get you off my mind. I’m sorry your name runs through my head like it has twice before but right now I’d rather hear your voice than my favourite song.

All I want to do is see you, feel you, be with you but I know if I do my heart will break again, I can’t let you break me thrice when I never had you once.

a fear of the dark

Walking along the beach in the dark never feels calming the way it should. 

People say the soft sounds of the waves bring an air of newness to them, the fresh sea air with a taste of salt and the smells of the sea are clear but are they calm?

Black shoes peppered with chalk and dust from pebbles.

It’s finally a clear night and the abundance of stars shine down upon you slowly walking past the dark trees, it’s too dark for shadows and it’s too late for dog walkers but the stars give you the slightest bit of light you need to breathe and feel okay.

Only, you’re afraid of the dark and all the calm is clouded by the fear. 

The tide is out, you can walk as far as you want, the sound of waves is distant yet prominent. The laughter of you and your friends is the only real sound around; it’d be easy to feel okay.

But, something within you tells you something’s wrong.

Maybe it’s too dark and the small burst of light emerging from your phone doesn’t cover an area large enough to class it as ‘seeing’.  Combined with the distant street lights, nothing is exactly convincing, nothing is promising. But everyone is calm, why aren’t you?

The silhouettes of your friends, the trees and the groynes are blacked out but loud in your mind. They’re all you can see and all you can focus on.

A walk along the beach, with no destination but just a journey is clouded by the late night. 

Perhaps I’m losing myself in the dark, but the thought of losing everyone else is the scarier part. Perhaps I’m losing faith in the calm sea and the cool breeze.

It’s always been one of my safe places but right now it doesn’t feel that way, it doesn’t feel like it does when it’s 10am and I’m walking alone, headphones in, or dipping my feet in the water as the tide comes in. Now the tide is further out than I’ve seen it in a while, although maybe it’s not because I truly can’t see it until I get too close and I don’t feel safe walking that far out.

Maybe a calm trip to the beach at 10pm isn’t a calm trip to the beach but a wave of fear as no form of light is bright enough.

Where is this going?

Sometimes I find it hard to start writing if I don’t have the right font or the right background music. I find it difficult to find the words that not only explain how I feel but that people can understand, I wish I could use a more expansive vocabulary but using a thesaurus doesn’t feel real.

I don’t understand why people cannot be real and why they have to send you mixed messages when they know how you feel. Is it just me or would the world be easier if everyone was straight forward?

This thing is getting me down but the more I talk about it the more I struggle to understand it.

Usually sharing my feelings helps me figure things out myself; I listen to your advice but I’ll take my own - thank you. This time seems different. Everyone else can realise that I’ve been here before and this is just a repeat. . .I know it too, deep down somewhere.

If I spell one word wrong does it make me stupid? I read numbers the wrong way round and I cry too easily. I’m ‘good at school’ but when did that become more important to me than living my life. Why do I get more upset over grades than people and where has this come from. When someone says they haven’t cried in the past month I feel weak and somewhat stupid, I cried just two nights ago but I’m not sure why. Okay I am, I just don’t want to admit it’s because of him.

I get angry too easily, I wish I didn’t. I can’t stop though, no matter how I try. Becoming blunt with people is more usual than unusual it’s just that I want peace and quiet to clear my mind. It hasn’t been clear in a while I don’t know why I’m trying. People talk too much about unnecessary things, they make statements that don’t matter and share untrue information.

I take a walk along the beach and I can’t take my mind off ‘you’, less clearing my mind, more thinking of problems that sparked from no where. Somehow you’re a problem and a solution. This beach is too long and I’ve been here before, once too often. Pebbles with beach winds, I’ll walk until I’m lost, maybe I’ll end up in a different town.

Inspiration hits me but I can only write three paragraphs and none of it makes me feel good. My own writing is boring and I’m unsure why. I cannot inspire myself, how am I meant to inspire others? Why do I want to, why can’t I pick the career path I’m heading to over writing. Or why don’t I believe in myself enough to take a risk into the writing world?
Spending time on my own has become more of a hobby than anything else and no that isn’t sad. I prefer my own company but I wouldn’t say I’m introverted. Being with people is nice but sometimes they don’t understand me like I wish they did. Is that too cliché?

I’m scared of commitment but I’m scared of being alone. Why is my life full of paradoxes? I want you but the timing isn’t right. When is the timing ever right but why is that a problem.

A year is a long time why do people not understand that. Three hundred and sixty five days. How is that not long enough? I’ll smile and we’ll be friends, that’s okay I guess. That’s enough. That’ll have to be enough because I don’t think I’d survive without you in my life somehow.

Maybe I could convince you. Maybe I could make a year enough time.

I’m happy. I’m sad. I’m everything in-between, all at once.

I’m okay.

I’m okay.

When did spilling my feelings on paper become safer than telling my closest friends. When did spilling my feelings on a keyboard lead to realising I had feelings I thought had disappeared.

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