The Inevitable Breakdown

You know when you have that feeling that something bad's going to happen? When you know that at some point in the near future you're just going to crack because of some minor thing that really doesn't make a difference in the long run, but all the pressure and stress and all of the little things combine and the feeling of dread gets bigger and bigger until you're left in a sobbing heap on the bedroom floor?

That's going to happen to me at some point soon. I can feel it. I've spend the past few weeks watching as friends and acquaintances go into panic over the upcoming exams. And then I realised that at some point before my exams, that will be me. Sooner or later, I'll be the one who breaks down completely and totally in the middle of a lesson. I'm betting it'll be either science or maths - the two subjects I'm most concerned about.

I think it's pretty much expected for GCSE students to freak out around this time. I mean, we're being told constantly that we only have X weeks until our exam, and every teacher thinks that their subject is the most important. We're being forced to make decisions. We're evaluating which subjects are our priorities, and which we can pretty much discard from our futures. For me, languages are what I want to do. I love languages. But I've done 60% of both of my language GCSEs. So my other two subject choices for A Level are history and psychology. History, sure. Definitely my top priority. Psychology. Well. To do psychology at my school, I need Bs in English, maths and science. Oh.

You see how all these small decisions snowball? For a person who wants to study, say, English, History, chemistry and maths, their priorities are clear. For someone who wants to focus on the arts, again, their priorities are clear. If you're like me, though, and you have to work really hard on subjects you don't like to do the one subject you do have an interest in... I have no useful advice.
I know I repeated this sentiment in an earlier post, but I think it's incredibly true: Growing up is hard to do.

In Which I Parody Shakespeare (Badly.)

This has been hanging around in the notes section of my iPod for weeks now, and I thought I should put it to good use. I'm not The Bard, just a British teenager with a love of writing and a procrastination habit. As my GCSEs draw ever nearer, the revision process is starting. But it's difficult and I was bored so I wrote this. Note: I don't own Hamlet. I just own four Shakespeare-themed coffee mugs and copies of a few of his plays.

To revise, or not to revise: that is the question:

Whether 'tis better for my grades to procrastinate

With Twitter and fanfiction,

Or to take arms against the sea of procrastination,

And by revising, end it. To tweet; to sleep;

No more; and by prom we can see the end of

The heart-ache, and the sheer, undeniable terror

During the wait to results day

Before we go to Reading. At last we sleep;

We sleep: we dream of summer

For in that extended summer what dreams may come,

When we have finished our GCSEs

And can finally pause: we'll burn our books

And forget what an alpha particle is;

For until September, the world is ours

Three months of freedom, three months of sun,

We forget stomata, the water cycle,

The electromagnetic spectrum,

We forget who Gorbachev was,

The Cold War was a boring topic anyway

What even is caesura? What's enjambement?

We don't need to know now, anyway 

Because the poetry anthology's gone

CGP guides are a thing of the distant past 

Our exams will be stressful,

We'll cry together on Skype,

And wonder why we took textiles,

Media does make cowards of us all,

And thus the days of chemistry revision

Is made worse with the uncompleted textbook,

Because you spent two years on Core Science

But we have just a few months

To prepare for action.

A Milestone

This is just a short one, but it's a big deal for me, and I wanted to share this. I don't know if I've got the exact date right, but I do know that it's close enough.
Today marks a year from the day I started recovery. It has been a year since I really started trying to fight my self-harm addiction. And that, to me, seems incredible.
When I look back to the dark place I was in a year and a half ago, I find it difficult to believe that I am here today. At that time, I was severely depressed, I was suicidal, I was self-harming every day, I went through episodes where I wouldn't eat and didn't care who knew what I was doing to my body. The first time I realised just how serious this was was terrifying. I'll spare you the details, but basically I was on a school trip in France and there were cliffs and I was thinking how jumping to my death may not be such a bad idea. I was barely 14.

Now I'm nearly 16 years old. Not fully recovered- it's an uphill battle, but it looks like I'm winning. I still get depressed from time to time, but I haven't caused my body any intentional harm for 6 months almost. That may not seem a big deal to some, but to me, it's a sign of how I managed to fight my demons and beat this mental illness, alone, for the most part.

I couldn't have done it without the support of my beautiful and perfect friends, even if they never knew about the darkness that threatened to consume me. They were there and they still are, and I will be forever grateful to them.

It Needs To Be Said

Wow, look at me, two posts in one day and one is directly after the other... What can I say? I've been inspired. :)

I shall preface this by saying that a good friend of mine recently came out. I love her and I'm proud of her and all of those sentimental clichés that people say when someone they know comes out (and I do love her and I am proud of her, but they are overused.) But it got me thinking about love, and relationships and sexuality. I am a wholehearted supporter of LGBTQ rights and marriage equality, I have always been.

I have two uncles who are gay, so as a child, I was always brought up being aware that the 'traditional' idea of a relationship between a man and a woman being the only sort to exist was not true at all. I thank my mother for bringing me up and teaching me to be accepting and open. I was pretty outraged when I learned that some parents don't want their children to know that some people are gay. To me, that's on the same level as forbidding children to watch the news. Not letting your children watch the news is ridiculous - you want to protect then from things like death and crime that appear on our TV screens all too frequently, but what you're really doing in bringing them up in a perfect fantasy world. They will be exposed to bad things sooner or later, inevitably, so why not just let them know about it from a young age? I always watched the news in the morning when I was young, and I'm in no way violent now, at the age of fifteen.
I
Bringing your child up unaware of different sexualities is the same thing. Ignorance breeds fear breeds hate, and if there's one thing we don't need more of in this world, it's hate. Opposing same-sex marriage is one thing; pretending it doesn't exist is another matter entirely. The former I will accept, even if I totally disagree. The latter will enrage me. Because the truth is, like war and abortion and famine, homosexuality is very real. (War and famine are not the best examples, as they're pretty much considered universal evils, but I couldn't think of anything else)

We are living in a society where being LGBTQ is becoming less controversial and more and more accepted.  I strongly believe that we could be the generation that will change things. I'm convinced that the vast majority of people despise racism, which was common until fairly recently. If our attitude towards racial minorities and interracial relationships changed so quickly, what do you think will happen to our views on LGBTQ?
And a final question: We despise racism, and look back on white supremacy as a horrific belief held by ignorant people. In twenty years, how will we look back on homophobia?

Jumping On The Bandwagon (A Review)

So today I'm going to be one of those bloggers that talks about hair accessories.
I recently jumped on the bandwagon and bought one of those hair doughnut things, after seeing how fantastic they look on other people. The one I bought was £4 from Matalan, and truth be told, I wasn't expecting great things. I'm not really an 'appearance person' except on special occasions, my hair and makeup skills are mediocre at best, and despite owning many, many nail varnishes, I still haven't mastered painting my right hand.

I was pleasantly surprised, then, when the hair doughnut was not only remarkably easy to use, but also looked kind of cute. I have the unfortunate habit of hiding behind my hair when I get shy or anxious, and I'm trying to avoid doing it. Before, I put my hair in a ponytail or a plait, but now I think I'll be sticking with the doughnut. It's incredibly versatile; you could make the bun really messy, or it could look very beautiful and elegant. I prefer to go somewhere in the middle. As a theatre kid and dancer, it is so practical and also super easy to do. Even I managed to figure it out and make a decent-looking bun on the first try. So if you haven't bought one (but let's be honest, you probably have) then I wholeheartedly reccomend it.

Growing Up

I am growing up. That is scary. I'm currently 15, almost 16 years old. In a year, I'll have done my GCSEs, and I'll be (hopefully) in sixth form. I have to make so many decisions right now - what subjects do I want to take? (French, Italian, Psychology and History) What do I want to do after sixth form? (A degree in French and Italian, including a year abroad) And which sixth form do I want to attend? (...)

The problem here is that I have a huge internal conflict. Part of me wants to stay at the same school I've been at since I was eleven, where I know the teachers and students and I can find my way around. That side is competing with the more rational part of me, which wants to move to a different school in the area that specialises in languages. Given my ambitions, that would be the logical choice. But for some reason I just can't picture myself there. I've visited the school and it's lovely, but it's all very open, unlike my school which is relatively closed off. My family wants me to move schools, and on some level I do too, but I have friends here and I don't know if I can leave them after everything I've been through to form actual friendships.

Growing up is hard to do.

A Brief History

My theatre story isn't like many other people's- I never did anything like this before, save for the weekly ballet class that I persevered with from the ages of 3 to 13, which I decidedly hated. I had a friend who was into the whole musical theatre thing; it was something I had wanted to do for a long time, but honestly my family just didn't have the money. I was 12 when my mum relented and I started this obsession. It's only been three years, but it feels like longer. I've made so many great friends and I owe them so much for welcoming me and being awesome. :)
I was talking to my friend Maya the other day about how performing arts is like my therapy - I've been through counselling for anxiety, I've had major friendship issues, I struggled with depression and self-harm, but the theatre is where I really forget all of that. Even during the really bad times, when I was 14 and had forgotten what it meant to be happy, when I was convinced that I wouldn't let myself live to see my 16th birthday, my GCSE results, my prom, my A Levels... I always felt content in the theatre. Even during a tedious dress rehearsal where everything is going wrong and you're all freaking out, I was at peace with myself.

Many people struggle to understand why my theatre group is so important to me and why I devote so much of my life to the performing arts. I hope this can help explain some of that.


NOTE: if you're struggling with any of the stuff I mentioned, know that you're not alone. I try to be very open about my past because I don't want anyone else to feel like I did. I'm by no means a qualified psychologist, but if you need to talk. I will be here and I will listen. Stay strong.