Sweet Dreams, TN – An Updated Love Letter

‘She takes my time, she grows the flowers in my mind
She makes it shine in my mode
She makes me trip, the words just fall out of my lips
And I forgot how to lie
A song reminds me, sidetrack my life
It’s easy as 3, 6, 9.’ – Swim Deep

It’s been a while since I’ve written on this blog, over 100 days, and surprisingly a great deal has happened. Many of you will know from reading these blog posts over the years that my experience with men has been poor and laughable, it has been the punchline of many jokes (including John lewis 1, 2 and 3) and it has almost become a part of my personality at this point. However this year, I stopped looking. I stopped looking for someone to ‘complete me’ or someone who would distract me for a couple of evenings and then inevitably mug me off. I was tired and bored and finally realised that I was happier just being by myself. I stayed on one specific dating app for when I was bored and I stopped talking to people who were boring me and that was that. Then one day, I get a message, a stupid drunk reply to my dating profile and here we are, 100 days later, together and happy.

I have always believed I would have to sacrifice what I wanted for someone to want to be with me. A weird sentence and one that I can’t quite understand why I believed but I did. I thought I’d have to put up with the ‘I can offer you no level of commitment’ boys or the ones who wanted to belittle you or the ones who only wanted you so they had someone to listen to their problems. I thought this was something I’d have to put up with. Truth be told I gave up on the hope that someone would ever love me and want me for selfless reasons. But then you appeared with your questionable chat and cute dog and I thought well, if I don’t put myself out there maybe I’ll never get what I want, so I did and believe me, I’ve never been happier with a decision.

I never listened to people who said that when you find the right one it will be easy, you wouldn’t second guess anything and it will all just fall into place, I thought yeah, maybe for you but that won’t happen to me and with you it did. From our first meeting, everything has just been easy. I’ve never had a second thought, I’ve never doubted you and you’ve never given me a reason too. It baffles me how for so long I managed to put up with people who made me believe I was ugly, stupid and ultimately a chore. I’ve put up with boys in bands who made me listen to their awful music, boys who didn’t tell me they were married, boys who emotionally abused and manipulated me and this is what I felt I deserved. For so long I believed I was a burden to whoever chose to put up with me, and I can’t thank you enough for making me finally trust that I’m not. I finally believe that I have something to offer.

But now there’s you, you’re handsome with the most beautiful brown curly hair and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. You’re funny, smart and talented, my dog loves you, my friends love you and I truly think myself lucky with every moment I get to spend with you. It’s been a short time but it already feels like I’ve known you forever. I love you.

Love Will Tear Us Apart – Find Yourself Again

I shouldn’t have called
‘Cause we shouldn’t speak
You do make me hard
But she makes me weak – Matthew Healy

It has been 485 days since I last wrote on this blog, a lot can happen in 485 days, during this time I have been to 8 gigs, I have bought a new car, I have lost a job and gained a new one, I have lost a significant family member and I have had my heart broken. I read back over these posts and I barely recognise who this woman is, she writes confidently and candidly about her experiences, she stands up for herself and most importantly she is confident and comfortable in who she is.

Somewhere along the way I lost this version of myself, the version that would happily call a guy out for sending unsolicited dick pics or a girl who would stand up for herself when she gets with a guy who conveniently mentions that he’s married after meeting for the third time. Along the course of this year, I have become a girl who has lost her sense of self-worth, I have become a woman who has allowed a man to walk all over because she felt as though she didn’t deserve more. I’ve become a woman who is ashamed of wanting attention, ashamed of wanting somebody to want her back, ashamed of her feelings and ashamed of being who she is.

If someone or something makes you feel this, naturally you would remove it, remove the toxicity from life. Friends will say it so easily, the words falling out of their mouths so effortlessly, ‘just stop talking to him, stop allowing him/her to make you feel this way, block them.’ But when you think you aren’t worth more than this, is it really that simple? I tell myself continually that this is it; this is the change I need to make, but old habits die hard.

I’m writing this blog post to remind myself that I can be better, I can do better and I certainly don’t need to feel ashamed for how I feel, act or choose. Perhaps if I treat myself with the respect I deserve then others will follow. I don’t want to be the old version of myself, but I don’t want to be this current version of myself, I want to learn to value my self-worth and treat myself with the kindness I expect from others. I’m writing this to remind myself of the girl who made light of these situations, who didn’t strive to change herself because a boy called her a brat, who loved herself because she didn’t need anyone else too.

I Wanna Be Adored – Lonely Tonight or Alone Tonight?

But I’ll come back to you, in a year or so
And rebuild, ready to become
The person you believed in, the person that you used to love
For I’m still here hoping that one day you may come back – Charlie Fink (The First Days of Spring) 

I recently had a rather eye opening discussion with a friend about the impact dating sites has had on our generation of dating, how it has shaped and changed the way we engage with people, how we meet or approach people and our new attitudes towards casual and serious relationships. On the surface dating sites are obviously very shallow, often used to combat boredom, being horny, or purely wanting attention, they’re something that aren’t often taken seriously and are now more of a punchline to a joke than a way to seriously meet the love of your life. On a deeper level, for some, they’re a way to alleviate loneliness and provide some sort of gratification if a stranger tells you that you have a cracking set of tits, but how much of this is a problem? How much have we come to rely on this rather than approaching somebody perhaps in a club or at a bar and meeting organically, no matter how many failures it gives us we either move onto the next app or convince ourselves that it’ll happen eventually, why do we do this?

My answer for this came down to loneliness, there is such a pressure to find someone coming from numerous directions and because of this we end up meeting people who might be our type on paper but in reality they have the personality of a wet piece of lettuce. These kinds of apps only allow you to ‘meet’ people based on three things; age, location and whether you think they’re attractive, it leaves very little room for personal interests, common likes and dislikes or whether you’d just get on as people. As a generation we are so greedy and impatient, we need causal sex or relationships now, if it doesn’t work then we need to move on to the next person straight away, for the majority of us we are wired to think that we need someone else in order to be complete or satisfied, in order to not feel lonely. The superficial nature of it all means that some of us have met, dated, slept with, spent time with people who perhaps we didn’t really have a connection with but we’re like well I want someone so I guess i’ll just go for you.

The other side of the coin is that we have this issue of confusing love with lust and sexual attraction, we crave attention, compliments, someone to talk to when we’re bored and then because we believe it’s what we’re supposed to feel we just go for it. We’re so conditioned to think that we have to be on the look out constantly because it won’t just happen like it used to, you’re not gonna meet the man of your dreams in Sainsburys and expect everything to come up peaches but if he sends me a wink emoji on Tinder then i’m all for it.

Maybe i’m bitter, maybe the fact that the majority of people i’ve met and spoken to on these sites have been either massive failures or mugged me off completely and i’m now jaded by the whole concept, but I do believe that our chronic need to avoid being alone or feeling lonely plays a huge part in why these dating apps are so crucial to our everyday way of living. Ironically I had this whole conversation with a man I met on Bumble so perhaps they are good for something.

‘In an age of disposable lovers, where calculated sexual pleasure has supplanted the unpredictability of love, where looking for love is like shopping and we demand from it what we have come to expect from our other purchases – novelty, variety, disposability.’ – Erich Fromm

As Tears Go By – A Letter to my Jealous Self

Can I reset my brain? If not I’ll go insane,
I swear to God that I don’t think I can go another day
Am I the only one? Is this in all of us?  – Turnover

Jealousy is complex, some people feel jealousy much stronger than others, some don’t feel it at all, it can stem from humiliation, abandonment, feeling threatened or simply someone having something you want. Perhaps my worst trait is my jealousy, it can make me say and do things that are out of character and at times I feel it consume me in a way that can only be described as damaging.

In day to day life I consider myself to be a person who doesn’t indulge in competition with others or find myself being particularly competitive, I don’t push myself to do or be better than others in most aspects of my life, yet when it comes to relationships or friendships I can feel the jealousy bleed into my thoughts and although it’s not something I always act on I still know it’s there.

My jealousy comes from being replaced, I fear that someone better, funnier or prettier will come along and just replace me, they’ll take my security and comfort of a person and use them for themselves, it’s a large part of my personality that I simply don’t like, I hate the feeling of competing with another person for someones affection or attention when in reality the only person i’m competing with is myself.

There are times however when I simply cannot help myself, how can I not be jealous when I think about him kissing somebody else the way he kissed me or whether when her hand is on his chest he’ll reach up and interlock his fingers with her like he did with me, a girl who replaced me, a girl who is obviously so much more than me.

It drives me into an awful mindset that takes control of who I am, it makes me sad and bitter and changes how I see myself. However i’ve come to the conclusion that even by recognising my flaws that it’s a step in the right direction, perhaps I can learn to concern myself less with others and focus more on me, learn to take control of the situation and not let my jealousy get the better of me.

Thank You For the Music – The Soundtrack of my Life

I let your love tease me
Now I am your love’s whore
Keeps me hardly breathing
But I could only love you more – Ellie Rowsell

This year, according to Spotify, I listened to approximately 32,693 minutes of music so far in 2017 which works out to be 22 and half days of music. My top songs include a mixture of artists and genres from Whitney Houston to The Wonder Years, from Drake to DJ Sammy, however buried within this year are songs that have vivid memories attached to them. I love hearing about people’s favourite songs and why those songs mean something to them, it says a lot about a person when they share the reason behind why they are particularly drawn to specific music. For me some songs didn’t make the cut in my top 100 songs yet they still hold such weight when looking back at 2017, like Childs Play by Drake which will forever remind me of the numerous road trips we took this year or There’s a Honey by Pale Waves which will always take me back to late night texts they left me smiling (and cringing) like an idiot. I wanted to recognise those songs that had shaped my year and ones that will continue to take me back to 2017, making me feel all fuzzy and nostalgic.

A Little Time – The Beautiful South 

You need a little room for your big head, don’t you, don’t you?

• The 15th of May of this year marked the day I finally handed in my dissertation and completed university, however the week leading up to this will be a week that I will never forget. I managed to write my ten thousand word dissertation in 6 days, during these six days me and my 2 gal pals who were in the same boat as me listened to nothing but Magic Radio, during our six day Magic Radio stint we found out about our friends love for The Beautiful South and it was one of the shining lights of the worst six days of my life. During this time I was also very poorly and the day before my dissertation was due in I ended up being taken to hospital after having a weird but amusing reaction to the antibiotics I was taking which left me saying that the TV scared me, I couldn’t feel my arms and everything had a border around it. After an odd trip to A & E I was left with 12 hours to complete the last 1200 words of my dissertation and I would like to thank The Beautiful South and particularly this song for getting me through it.

Diazepam – Turnover

‘Cause it was always a dream just to know you, sometimes I find I can hardly speak your name’ 

• Turnover are a band that have consistently been playing during key moments of my life in recent years, a band I adore so much with the song Diazepam being my favourite. This song reminds me of the moment I realised I wouldn’t be seeing a certain boy again. We were driving in my car, neither of us uttering a word until he broke the silence by asking me what was playing on the stereo and I simply replied ‘Diazepam – Turnover’. I could have blamed it on the hangover or the lack of sleep but the crushing realisation when he kissed me goodbye and then proceeded to leave my car was enough for the song playing to be ingrained in my memory. A few weeks later, after some drunk texts, another meeting and many sleepless nights he proceeded to break my heart again, and in true Carrie Bradshaw style I drove the short distance home from a friends at 2am listening to Diazepam whilst overthinking absolutely everything. During this extremely dramatic episode I stupidly ran a red light, which resulted in me crying in the back of a police car, mascara and eyeliner running down my face, slippers on my feet and explaining to a lovely police woman how I had got to this point.

Robbers – The 1975

‘She says, “Babe, you look so cool”‘

• Anybody who knows me will know that I have an endless love for The 1975, I listen to them an awful lot and I tend to go through phases with their songs, one day it will be Somebody Else on repeat and the next day it will be Antichrist, however this year Robbers has slowly but surely crept in to become my most played song of 2017. 2017 has been the year where I found a new love for Robbers, listening to it when I need to sleep, when i’ve been driving late at night, whilst getting ready for the day, when i’ve been sad, when i’ve been happy, the list goes on. It taught me that you should never attach music you love to people, because if they let you down or disappoint you then it can tarnish the very thing you found comfort in. There have been times throughout this year when Robbers has been difficult to listen too, but it has always been there to remind me that there is very little that your favourite song or album can’t make a little better.

Something About the Way You Look Tonight  – Elton John

‘There was a time I was everything and nothing all in one’

• This year saw the release of Elton John’s greatest hits and as someone who has always been a sucker for a guilty pleasure I couldn’t help but become a little bit obsessed with it. I grew up living with my Grandparents and through this I was lucky enough to be introduced to the likes of Elton John, Celine Dion, Tina Turner, Cher etc from a very young age. My Grandad especially loved to listen to music whilst he was getting ready to go out on a Saturday night, one of my earliest memories of my Grandad is hearing him bring his big bulky black stereo out onto our landing so he could listen to Elton John on full blast whilst in the bathroom. Sadly my Grandad passed away in 2016 and it left a huge hole in my life, 2017 marks the first whole year of my life without the man who I had lived with from the age of 5, without the man who had taught me to tie my shoelaces and without the man who hated me having posters on my bedroom wall. As soon as I hear songs such as Something About the Way You Look Tonight by Elton John I am immediately taken back to those Saturday nights where I can smell his aftershave and I can hear him picking a shirt to wear, but now it will also bring me back to the latter half of 2017 and the feeling of missing someone important.

 

 

Television Romance – Is This Me, Is This You?

I’ve been waiting for the phone to ring all night, why you wanna make me feel so good,
I got a love of my own, I shouldn’t get so hung up on you,
Oh I remember the way that we touch, I wish I didn’t like it so much – Whitney Houston

Every person has different versions of themselves, the majority of us have a filtered copy of ourselves that comes out depending on the social setting, it’s almost like we have multiple versions of ourselves for different occasions and especially for various people, for instance I act very differently around my friends to my family or around a boy a like. But is this just a method of people pleasing? Moulding ourselves to appeal to the person in the situation, whether that be to the boy you’re trying to impress or a group of friends that you’re not quite in with yet. It’s one of those things that many of us don’t even realise we are doing until it is pointed out by your best friend or in hindsight when you’re like why on earth did I pretend to like Slipknot for that boy?

I always notice it in myself when it comes to music, initially I don’t even realise I am doing it but slowly I subconsciously begin to exclusively listen to music that they are interested in even if I already like that type of music anyway. For instance I knew one boy that I liked wasn’t really into particularly mainstream music and this meant that when I told him I loved Cher more than life itself I believed he would think I was the most uncool girl in existence. But how much should I filter myself? Just because he thinks Cher and Whitney Houston is music for middle aged mums doesn’t mean he should like me any less and why should I alter my loves for another person?

My gal pals know me better than anyone and when i’m around someone that i’m trying to impress they immediately pick up on it for instance one of my housemates described me as making less jokes, being a lot more quiet and even being more still when sat on the sofa when a lad who I liked was there, three things that would never be used to describe me. I even held off on talking about drag queens, and anyone who knows me well enough will know that I find it hard to go a couple of sentences without mentioning Rupaul, but then this begs the question of why would I hold back on big parts of my life to fit into what I think is someone else’s preferences?

Don’t get me wrong, i’m very much aware this is a two way street and I know that there is another side of the coin, when a boy who was interested in me came to see me, he chose to avoid telling me that he smoked because he wasn’t sure on how I would take it, this was his version of filtering himself until he was comfortable enough to mention it resulting in us smoking cigars at 2am. I avoid telling him that Trixie Mattel is my biggest inspo and he avoids telling me that he likes a cigarette, when in reality neither of us should have had to have dampen ourselves down in order to appeal to other because if it works it works and if it doesn’t then it doesn’t and no amount of nicotine or drag queen would have changed that.

Yet this isn’t always a negative thing, one of my closest friends and I had a conversation about this the other day and we agreed that you always have those friends who you can have a serious conversation with and you also have friends who you can be silly with but perhaps what makes a best friend is someone that you can be all versions of yourself with and that’s the difference.

Having different or filtered versions of yourself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however it depends how altered you are. I shouldn’t have to adjust myself to appeal to someone and the idea of someone changing themselves to appeal to me also makes me uncomfortable, yet if i’m still being me but just my slightly more PG version then that’s still me, but if i’m acting so differently that even my closest friends don’t even know who I am then that’s a problem and maybe in the future I should be clear from the outset that I listen to a lot of Cher and the occasional cig is not an issue.

So Far (It’s Alright) – A Love Letter

But that place on memory lane you liked still looks the same
But something about it’s changed – Alex Turner

Three years ago, on the 20th of September 2014 I moved to Plymouth, I moved into a little room in Francis Drake halls and I was so incredibly nervous and I honestly thought I would be moving home again within the next few weeks, I had no faith in myself that I could make a new life for myself away from what I always knew. Yet here I am, three years later, moving out of Plymouth and it feels like leaving home all over again, leaving the people who know me probably better than anyone and leaving a comfortable little life for the outside adult world.

You meet the best and worst people at university, you’ll meet the people who will help you become a better person and open your mind to completely different walks of life, you’ll also meet people who will drive you absolutely crazy but even that in itself is a learning curve when you realise that not everyone is gonna be your cup of tea and vice versa. Moving in with 7 complete strangers, for me, is perhaps one of the bravest things I have ever done, before uni and moving to Plymouth I had no direction, I would work, go to college, maybe see friends every now and again and that was about it, I had little joy for anything and I wasn’t happy living in a small town with a mundane life. I wasn’t particularly outgoing, I chose to never really put myself out there and I had a very unhealthy mindset that anybody I would meet would probably dislike me and therefore why bother?

Moving into halls or a houseshare forces you to interact with people you would probably never associate with, a boy from Cornwall who is obsessed with football and sharks who confidently burst into my room 5 minutes after I moved in, another boy from a little village outside of Plymouth who knows everything about music, has the cutest dogs you’ll ever meet and works harder than anyone I have ever met. A girl from Somerset who couldn’t be more different than me, a girl so full of energy, who taught me about drum and bass and convinced me to get my nose pierced and another girl from Frome who became my soul sister from day one, my coursemate and agony aunt who taught me that coffee can solve anything and that 2000 word essays can be done in one night.

Our little flat that we lived in for a year became everything to us, from movie nights, to the 80’s and 90’s parties, to revising together at the kitchen table, to power cuts and hungover mornings. Even when we moved from house to house in second and then third year, losing and gaining people along the way, we always managed to find a way to make it feel like home.

University is like a revolving door of people, people come in and out of your life and some chose to stay and some chose to leave but you always have your core group, your number ones from day one who have been through everything with you from the start and even though it’s over I know that whatever happens as a group or as individuals we always have that and I wouldn’t change a second of the last three years together.

 

Untitled (Can’t Find the Words) – ‘Thanks, Goodbye, Don’t Call Me, I’ll Call You’

Can I erase from my mind anything that you said or any time that we spent with each other?
I don’t want to waste away another cell on a memory – Turnover

Recently I read an article that really hit home, it discussed the idea of  ‘ghosting’ and how in our world where social media and our phones are where some of our attachments are formed, the impact that can be made by simply ignoring a text or a snapchat. It sounds unbelievably trivial, the idea that not replying to someone can have an affect on them, I mean how important is a message? But what about if the only form of relationship you have had with someone has been through a phone screen? What if that person who used to send you over 50 messages a day goes to sending you maybe a snapchat every couple of weeks if you’re lucky?

I’ve read so many blog posts and articles about the idea of ghosting, the idea that you can ignore somebody on all forms of social media and messaging in order to ‘get rid of them’. From ghosting there has been two other more relationship based concepts formed including ‘benching’ also known as ‘putting someone on the back burner’ where the objective is to effectively put the person you’re talking too to one side whilst you perhaps either pursue someone else or whilst you decide if that person is for you, or the other concept known as ‘breadcrumbing’ where someone messages you perhaps once every few weeks in order to keep you interested without completely ghosting you. Confusing right?

I find it very very difficult to move on from someone if I have been ghosted by them, because, and I think most people will agree, how do you move on from something if you don’t know where it went wrong. If you go from talking to someone day in day out it’s extremely difficult to cut ties and forget everything. For me personally I get very caught up in what I did wrong, was I too full on? Was I not what you wanted? Not pretty enough for you? Was there someone else?

Breadcrumbing on the other hand is different, when you breadcrumb someone you give them enough to keep them coming back, sounds harsh but it happens, it’s a non-committal way of ensuring someone stays interested in you without having to exude to much effort into the whole thing. From my experience you can feel this beginning to happen, when a few messages a day becomes maybe a snapchat every week or so, and more often than not this eventually leads to being benched.

Benching goes hand in hand with the classic ‘hey how have you been’ conversation, everyone has had that break from someone they never quite got started with that eventually dies out and returns with the most mundane conversation about what you’ve both been up too and how you’ve ‘missed’ talking to each other. I think people unknowingly bench people, putting them on a back burner because they either can’t be bothered with it right now or because people get caught up in their busy lives.

To sum it all up, I think all these concepts are complete and utter crap.

It isn’t ghosting, or benching or breadcrumbing. It’s ignoring somebody and hoping they’ll still be there when you bother with them again. Without trying to sound bitter, I think people who do these types of things are cowardly, when i’ve ‘ghosted’ someone it’s because i’ve been to scared to tell them that I simply don’t want to talk to them anymore and instead just unfollowed and unfriended them because it’s easier for me, however this isn’t fair. If you don’t want to carry something on with someone, if it isn’t for you anymore, if you don’t want to talk to somebody anymore just tell them straight.

 

Don’t Delete the Kisses – You’ll Always be a Tinder Boy to me

I wanna tell the whole world about you
I think that that’s a sign
I’m losing self control and it’s you
It really is, one thousand times – Ellie Rowsell (Wolf Alice)

I deleted Tinder in May 2017 after I reached 1000 matches, out of those 1000 matches I spoke to around 20 of them, when I say talk I mean actually have a conversation past the classic ‘hey how are you?’ which ultimately leads to the conversation grave yard alongside other conversation closers such as ‘wuu2’ or ‘what you wearing’. Amongst these boys, 6 played guitar, 2 were vegan, 7 were at uni, 3 of them were obsessed with their cat and one even had a full time important grown up job. However at the end of the day they all turn in to the same person, the same beggy individual who will message or ring me at 1am saying ‘you awake’ or ‘wish you were here’ or the even more classic and unforgettable ‘i’m so drunk, send me a picture of your tits.’ All these boys start the same way, the hope that they’ll be different, that they won’t be the same as the others, maybe they’ll even end up being the one, but no, each and every one comes to a dramatic and bitter end resulting in sitcom worthy stories that are so ridiculous I lose all faith in the male population, however here are some of my personal favourites.

The first boy who I spoke to from Tinder lasted for a very very long time, from the end of my first year of uni right through to the middle of my third year. Although on and off he eventually became the blueprint for every classic tinder boy. To begin with he had that quintessentially British charm and he was a poster child for middle class Britain, spending his weekends playing cricket and holidaying in the south of France, it was catnip to me and we began talking 24/7.  I should have known he wasn’t worth the trouble when he told me his favourite band was Linkin Park but we carried on talking until the drunken phone calls started, being rung at 2am for him to tell me he was getting with a ‘poor mans version’ of myself is laughable and makes me jealous in no way whatsoever. The real kicker came when he started to get ‘obsessed with the gym’ however in reality he never went to the gym and thought that by telling me he was gymming in order to get hench for me would of course make me so overcome with lust and passion I would fall at his feet. Everyday he would send me snapchats of his supposedly new and improved body when in reality he had clearly googled ‘six pac’ or ‘muscley arms’ and taken a photo of the screen. The turning point came when he told me he could deadlift 300kg, after only ‘committing himself to the gym for around a month’ and for those who aren’t aware that’s the size of a pony or a rather large donkey. Things came to a head after a particularly stressful day leading me to politely tell him that I knew the photos weren’t of him resulting in me being blocked and that chapter closing. Soz hun but I know that isn’t you.

Boy number 2 ended on more of a weird note, the youngest lad I had ever matched, he had perhaps one of the best names I had ever heard, but from the word go he was the most intense 20 year old I had ever spoken too having a slight obsession with hair and once coming all the way to Plymouth because I hadn’t replied to his messages.  He went from 0 to 100 real quick, telling me he had feelings for me after talking for no more than a couple of days, however after a week or 2 he felt the need to get extremely drunk and of course text me declaring his undying love for me. I’m all for grand gestures and sharing your feelings, however a young lad telling you he loves you before you’ve even met is enough to make even me back off. Sorry babe, you were an absolute diamond but I wasn’t the one for you.

Boy number 3 was the closest to home, I didn’t often choose to match boys who were so close to where I lived for the fear of bumping into them when I went to Sainsburys in my slippers with a bare face resembling Sloth from the Goonies. However, boy number three took me by surprise, he was a music teacher who was slightly older but seemingly had his life together. It started how they all start, he told me his favourite band, his favourite album, his favourite film and then of course he dropped the line that always gives me heart eyes and makes me quiver like jelly…he was in a band and he wanted me to watch him play. In hindsight i’ve come to realise that there is being in a band and then there is being in a ‘band’ you know, because by band he meant ‘we sometimes play open mic night at your uni, but we can’t get a gig because we can’t play in time or tune our instruments’ which he failed to mention when he was describing the international fame his ‘band’ were set for. However the pièce de résistance came after 2 months of terrible flanter and mundane chit chat when he sent me a snapchat of a child, thinking perhaps it was his nephew or brother I of course replied ‘awww cute’ but little did I know this small little human was his child. He was a Dad. A Dad who had failed to acknowledge the existence of his own son. Sorry hun, but honesty is key, and your band was shit anyway.

Tinder boys will always be the same, all dick pics and drunk texts, however you learn so much about lads and the way they work from talking to arguably some of the oddest people you will ever encounter. After a 1000 matches you learn that some will never change, however they will always provide hours of amusement and it will forever be the biggest learning curve.

The Night is an Ocean – An Open Letter to Myself

Just take it out on me
It’s easier than saying what you mean
Test me, see if I break – Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim

When I began writing this blog post the theme was honesty, I began writing and through this I realised that I haven’t been honest with myself for a long time and for months i’ve been rationalising things in a way to make them appear better than they are because that way it’s easier for me to deal with them. If I tell myself it isn’t over then I don’t have to deal with it right? If I pretend you aren’t that person then you won’t be, if I pretend we haven’t changed then you’re still you and i’m still me.

Some things hit you slowly, waves will come and take your breath away every now again but they never truly hit you. But at some point, a tsunami will rush over you and you will nearly drown in the realisation that this isn’t working and no matter how much you try and convince yourself it’s what you want and that it will happen, you won’t be able to stop the oncoming wave that things are falling apart.

I’ll tell you that it’s fine, I’ll tell you that I understand, I’ll tell you that you didn’t do anything wrong, but this isn’t honesty. None of this has been fine and if i’m being truthful I don’t understand these circumstances.

Being there for someone should never make you feel like a terrible person, it shouldn’t worry you or make you feel anything less than full, caring for somebody should never make you feel clingy or desperate because everybody needs somebody in their corner, whether they want it or not, and whether they realise it is up to them.

This blog post is to remind myself that i’m not a bad person, my actions, my thoughts and how I feel is all completely warranted and I should never apologise for that. It is to remind myself that I shouldn’t cling to the good moments in order to justify the terrible ones, and that ultimately I should never lesser myself to make you feel better.