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.

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*!

Spring

As February draws to a close and March is just around the corner, spring appears to be breaking through. I like these last weeks of February, you still have a  slight windchill factor but the sun is out and the clouds are minimal. Whilst the weather is mostly unpredictable and you can never tell one day from the next, I feel like the end of winter is the best part, the calm of knowing that soon you will be surrounded by the perfect blossoms and warmer weather.

March 20th shows the start of spring and whilst that is still just under a month away, preparation is key. Spring is beautiful, everything is alive and well. Flowers bloom and the trees grow again, it’s as if everything has come to life.

Spring is the best time for walks along the beach, it’s not overwhelming heat but it’s nice enough and the sea still looks beautiful. Waking up in the morning isn’t dull and dark, there’s a light that awakens you and brings you out of bed without the thought of wanting to go straight back to your slumber.

I sometimes struggle when the ‘what’s your favourite season’ question comes up, usually I say autumn but when spring comes around I question myself and wonder what is so beautiful in the death of the trees when you can see the rebirth with the warm weather; the happiness that comes around with no fear of an early darkness surrounding you.

Spring is the time to put all your words into action; plan in winter and move forward in spring. Use the better conditions to make progress in your projects; take motivation from the way everything is growing and use it to grow for yourself. The air is fresh and clean, with plants working for us so work with them.

With an extra spring in your step, anticipate summer and be prepared for the break it brings. Remember how you felt in winter and improve on it. Spring and autumn become the ‘in between’ seasons, waiting for summer or winter, but I feel that they are the nicer seasons, somewhat calmer.

It’s strange how the seasons change slowly but they’re so different and each so beautiful in themselves. But spring, spring the start of new life, it brings around new beginnings and you should embrace them in every way you can. Embrace spring and be at one with spring.

A great excerpt I’ve found from an Ernest Hemingway book is:

“With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly in one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life.”

I find it so accurate, sometimes it feels like spring is never coming but if you wait, it will come, it always comes and yet every year we await it.