Laughing through your tears...

There's this story I have from when I was little - the kind of age when you wear flowery dresses over jeans and princess welly boots without even thinking about it; the age when best friends are forever and ever; the age when boys are smelly, the tooth fairy really was real and school involved colouring in as actual lessons - the kind of age, essentially, before life has any consequences whatsoever. I must have been five or six - and I clearly remember this bit even now - I was lying upside down on the sofa, probably watching CBeebies (who remembers that?!) as the phone rang. One of my two bestest best friends had been hit by a car. I remember my mum telling me she had been knocked over so hard she flew feet into the air. I remember she had broken more bones that I knew the names for. I remember it was quite unlikely she might get to carry on being alive.

She did, luckily, and get to live on and finish off being ages six and seven and eight and grow up happily ever after (as far as I know - sadly we lost touch when she moved away.) But having that happen to your child, to your big sister - and even to your best friend - is something hard to deal with, especially at age six, when life has never been quite this serious before. She should have been giggling in the playground and chasing her constantly escaping pet rabbits round her back garden. She shouldn't have been in an ambulance with flashing lights and having paramedics tell her mum that if she didn't survive the journey to hospital, she might not get her daughter back. She - if you want to get really picky - definitely shouldn't have run out into the road. The one road in our town where people drive as if they think they're on a motorway. But you don't know these things, not when you're six.

I made her a get well soon card - as soon as we knew this was definitely going to be an option - wrote xoxoxox inside in smudgy felt tip pens, coloured in the outside, and as a last thought, added a message in messy, primary-school, joined-up handwriting. Something along the lines of.... feel better soon, love from Jessica. Oh and P.S. This chocolate is for you but if you don't feel like eating it you can always give it back to me at school. Innocent, six-year old logic. My parents dropped it off at the hospital for me and her dad told them it was the first thing that had made them laugh since the accident.

This tiny, random memory colours so much of my attitude to life now I'm older. I'm just as bad as anyone else at using the phrase "let me know if there's anything I can do." We're all guilty of it, when a friend needs help, when someone is ill or has lost someone or even is just having a rough time. I should try harder not to say it though - I know first hand just how irritating this meaningless combination of words can be - even when meant with the best intentions, in cards saying "With Sympathy," with bunches of flowers that slowly die, from faces that just don't know what else to say.

Do something. Don't ask the sick person, or the family that have just lost someone "if there's anything they need." Of course they need something - they need their daughter out of the hospital, or their friend not to be dying or for the person they love to be alive and well. So do something, don't ask. Even if you just buy them some chocolate. Or make them a cake, everyone loves cake. And then you've done something and you don't have to say those meaningless words any more. Make people laugh, even when they're sad, Actually, especially when they're sad. Laugh through your tears and they dry a lot faster.

xox

“Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn't stop for anybody.”

Today has been a weird kind of day. I dragged myself out of bed, after pressing snooze a few times, went downstairs and ate what I usually eat for breakfast, swallowed my iron supplement tablet with a mug of green tea and got dressed. I found some clean jeans and chose the rest of my outfit from the mess of clothes, make up, books and magazines on the floor of my (not-usually-quite-this) messy bedroom. Messed around with my hair, put some make up on my face, plugged my headphones in, grabbed my bag and left the house. So far, so normal.

 

 

This is where it changes. I walked into school - early for once in my life - and waited around for my appointment. My appointment to send off my UCAS form. My university application, personal statement, results, predicted grades and reference are currently being sent off to the five places I have applied to. It's all done, it's all finally finished and I can have my life back. It may sound a bit dramatic and it probably is, but I have always been someone who doesn't deal very well with even the idea of change. And this change is a big one. This time next year (hopefully/fingers crossed) I will be finally moved out and living at one of my five choices.... and no, I'm not going to tell you what they are! It's safe to say I would be extremely happy getting into any one of them but for various reasons my application had to be sent off early so, along with everyone else from my sixth form in this position, October 15th has been a big deadline hanging over my head. And now, with under 12 hours to go, it's all done and I can stop worrying. I can go back to spending too much time watching the Gilmore Girls, never quite enough doing notes and essays and coursework and dance around my bedroom or go for a run without feeling guilty that I'm not redrafting my application for the millionth time.

 

 

It's amazing to think about how much has changed in the last couple of years. Everything from my favourite books and music, to the people I'm closest with (except for an amazing few who have stayed the same) and the things that interest me most are completely different. It's really hard not to feel like a different person when so little about my life actually feels recognizable to me. When I was fourteen - aside from the fact I was still convinced I could become a ballet dancer, don't laugh too much - I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life. When I was fifteen I thought having a full fringe and short hair was a good idea and when I was sixteen getting my nose pierced was the scariest thing I had ever done. Luckily that one did turn out to be a good decision, and I hope as I finish up being seventeen the good decisions are starting to outweigh the bad ones.

 

 

My friendships have changed beyond recognition, I no longer spend hours of my life perfecting barre exercises or learning solos and fixing new ribbons onto ballet shoes. I talk far more than I used to, and while my family are unsurprised as they complain that I never shut up at home, teachers in sixth form and people I had never bothered trying to get to know are surprised that I have "come out of my shell." I think change is a good thing now. I get bored if I haven't moved my furniture around in a while, constantly need new posters for my walls and feel that live isn't really worth living if I haven't got something new to look forward to just around the corner.

 

 

There are so many plans I have, so many things I want to do before this year ends. I need a new job for starters, I need to save up some money and finish learning to drive. I really really need a new phone. I need to go to Washington DC in February for my Year 13 Politics trip. I need to see Taylor Swift when the Red Tour comes to London (thank you God, for amazing people who buy me tickets for things!) I need to have a lovely Christmas with my family, the last proper one before there are only two people living in our house all the time. I need to make sure I don't worry about them too much but at the same time, set up Skype on my laptop and come home to visit every now and then. I need to go travelling next summer, I NEED to go to Reading Festival again, I need to find my wristband from this year and put it on my pin board, I need to get a new camera and take so many pictures of all the things and people I want to remember. I need my hair to grow some more, I need a lovely prom and a happy ending to being "in school." I don't particularly want to be eighteen and have to start being an "adult," but it's going to happen anyway and I might as well try and love it.

 

 

I used to say I hated where I had grown up, that it was boring, that I wished I had lived somewhere else but I think I actually might be starting to realise how much I'll miss it. I think my resistance to any kind of change comes from the insecurity I have from being moved around the world so much when I was little and being afraid to put down roots and have to leave again. I don't remember it, of course, I was one and two when we moved from England to Hong Kong and back again and three when we moved to where we live now. But I remember the anxiety I had throughout my childhood of people disappearing, of moving away and never coming back. One of my close friends in primary school moved to Italy, another to the other end of the country. Others I have lost touch with since then, Year Nine friendships break up and people move on, things change and there is nothing I can do about it. I remember waving goodbye to my dad so many times from windows and airports and trains - jobs with constant travel are really good for building abandonment issues into your children.  I remember how much easier that made it to say goodbye to him permanently and how much I hated it, and tried to miss him more, on purpose. I remember all of these things and how they have made me into myself.

 

 

I hate looking through my old pictures because I hate how I used to look. I hate hate hate myself with short hair and I have still not quite gotten over it yet. I'm working on it, they were not happy years for me and maybe that was reflected too poignantly in those photos. But there are one lot I found: pictures from my trip to Italy this last summer. I spent nearly three weeks with my mum and little sister and the in photos from this holiday we look the happiest I've ever seen us. I don't know why this is, a combination of sunshine and exploring in a beautiful place? The amazing food, the friendly people, the feeling of being so far away from anything about home? Whatever it is, I intend to capture that feeling and spend as much as possible of the rest of my life being exactly that happy.

 

Who am I?

It is crazy really, this pressure put on everyone to define exactly who they are. What you makes you unique, special, different from the hundreds of other people with the same age or hair colour or even who share your name?

Is it the bands you listen to and the albums you buy? The concerts you attend and the posters you display on your bedroom walls - telling anyone who comes in: This is me, this is what I like, therefore this is who I am.

Is it the books you read, films you watch or TV you like? Is it the characters you care about or the movie adaptations you slate for being "nowhere near as good as the book!"

Is it the social media you use - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, the list soon to be never ending? The photos you share, the things you retweet, the blog you write too infrequently?

Is it your friends, the memories you share and the things you have in common? Is it your family, your interests, pets, favourite colours and smells, way you drink your tea or coffee or whether you drink it at all? Or whether you drink or smoke, whether you love going out or prefer staying in, whether you are one of the loud, chatty ones, or the one they always say "needs to speak up a bit more?"

Is it whether you like science and numbers or would rather be reading and writing? Is it if you want to go to university, or get a job or start a family or have no idea at all?

Is it all of these things? All of them and the many millions more that go into making up a person: a completely unique individual. Exactly like everyone else - with skin and lungs and legs and eyes - but at the same time a total original, never again to be repeated genetic fluke.

What is about society that insists we have to know the answers to all of these questions. What if the choices you make change, the stuff you used to love no longer makes you happy? Have you changed who you are? Why do I have to define who I am right now, when I and everyone I know are all still trying to work it out?

Don't Forget To Be Awesome...

When was the last time you read a book from cover to cover? The last time you read your way into a whole new universe, barely pausing to take a breath between chapters, the relationships and characters becoming as familiar to you as the people in the next room?

For me, it was over the last three days in which I read my way through Looking For Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines, both by the amazing author and youtuber John Green. While I consider myself a huge fan of John Green - Crash Course World History pretty much saved my life right before my exam on the Crusades, and god knows what I would have written about in my English Literature exam without having watched his multiple and brilliant videos on The Great Gatsby (thanks, basically) - it occurred to me the other day that I had only read one of his books.

Despite the fact that, in my opinion, if you cried as many tears as I did while reading The Fault In Our Stars, then you don't really need to read any other JG books to call yourself a number one fan, I decided, seeing as I was at the moment of this realisation, actually in a bookshop, with a giftcard burning a hole in my purse, looking at a sign announcing: "Buy One, Get One Half Price!" I decided that the universe was probably trying to tell me something.

So I bought the aforementioned LFA and AAOK, took them home, got back from work the following day and then had precisely no human interaction until I had finished them both. (Okay, I'm exaggerating slightly, I did have to, like, talk to my family and other people who were physically in my house or otherwise un-ignorable) but I literally could not put these books down.

I read TFIOS in November last year, around the time I read The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, and absolutely fell in love with it. This may be one of the reasons I didn't read any of the other available JG books for so long - the worst thing about discovering an amazing author is always the fear that the one book you loved so much happens to be a fluke and the rest of their body of work is nowhere near as good.

However, this was not the case this time. Although LFA didn't quite live up to the expectations I had for it (but to be fair they were pretty - extremely - high) once I had got into the characters and the story I found myself laughing, crying, full-on sobbing at one point, and basically just experiencing the emotional rollercoaster along with Pudge, The Colonel, Takumi, Alaska and Lara. The entire book is a whirlwind of excitement, drama, love, and the kind of high-school experience everyone (secretly) wishes, aside from the obvious exception, they could have had. Read it - I promise you won't regret it for a second. Cheesy as it may be: it will change the way you see the world.

AAOK was, surprisingly, just as good as the other two books, but in a way that snuck up on me. Colin and Hassan, Lindsey and Katrina, The Other Colin and his friends, not to mention Hollis and all 19 of the Katherines, are characters you believe in, laugh with, cry over and eventually matter to you in the way that makes you sad when you have to put the book down and realise there's no more story left. (PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE WRITE A SEQUEL, JOHN GREEN.) I felt that the power of the message hits you harder in AAOK, maybe because you don't expect it as much. The book appears, at first and in its many laugh-out-loud hilarious moments, to be more of a comedy than TFIOS or LFA, both of which are pretty much sob-fests for a good 75% of the pages, but surprisingly its just as poignant and touching as you would expect any good read to be. Read this one too - unless laughing and crying your way through a roadtrip, a mystery, a broken heart, a disastrous pig hunt and 19 crushingly disappointing relationships doesn't sound like a good idea to you (you freak.) And don't worry, understanding maths isn't in anyway essential to understanding the story, which revolves around the hopeless, but permanently hopeful, child "prodigy" Colin.


Never stop writing stories John Green. I now have to go and buy his other two books (Paper Towns and Will Grayson, Will Grayson) just to see if he can maintain this streak of writing incredible, heart-breaking, hilarious and unforgettable novels. Is it just me who wants to live in a world where these wonderful, unique people are real? I want to camp out in a forest with Alaska, explore Gutshot, Tennessee with Colin, and fly to Amsterdam with Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters. The actors have been cast for The Fault In Our Stars movie, my heart is already waiting to be crushed into a zillion pieces all over again and all I need now is for Kaya Scodelario to be given the role she was clearly born to play... (no prizes for guessing - could there be a better Alaska Young?)

To be honest, all I have to say to anyone, who, like me, is putting off the point when they have to admit to themselves that its time to read another John Green book is to promise them they won't be disappointed. Whether you choose to go on a road trip and attempt to convert love into an algorithm (confusing maths thingy) or go to a school where pranks are a way of life and the only crime is getting caught, discover rooms with books for walls and strawberry wine buried under the fields, whichever incredible world you choose to enter, the one thing you won't be is disappointed.

As John Green says: "Books belong to their readers," and TFIOS, LFA and AAOK now belong to me the way that I Capture The Castle, The Great Gatsby and all the Harry Potters do, earning their place as My Favourite Books.