The Past..

....''Look not at the days gone by with a forlorn heart.  They were simply the dots we can now connect with our present, to help us draw the outline of a beautiful tomorrow... '' ~Dodinsky

Listening to an old album at the moment, and it was the first album to connect me to the past, when now - in the future - I listen to it.

I am starting to look back with smile, at the people I once smiled and laughed with. The people I held, who held me, and who made those years, so utterly memorable... its funny that now, those memories have a theme tune, and its beautiful. ..

Yes, I admit, part of me still feels a little .. sad, about it all.. because those people are not part of my life in any way anymore.. and I sometimes wish I could just relive those moments , with this music playing, and laugh and scream and really be in that moment - those moments - again.

I understand that the path I chose for myself meant that I knowingly was leaving it all behind.. and at the time, I was full of regret. But knowing what I know now, and what I have felt, and seen, and experienced, has me feeling a real strong sense of ..my own control. 

And I often find that scary.. its like for the first time and not necessarily in a complete way, I am feeling what it is like to be in control of my own surroundings..

I sometimes look back and think I could have tried to keep it all together.. but when two different worlds are pulling away from eachother.. which do you choose?..

I miss the fantasy of the memories. I think that's what pulls me back. I am always searching for those perfect moments again.. but I wish that, and I know it is possible, to feel that I could just leave the past be the past, and leave it behind me forever.. 

Right now, I'm living in a new world, and experiencing a new life with new people and forming new memories that I love, and I know that I will look back in another 10 years, and find a song, and sit here listening to it, remember the time of now, and the people and memories who made it...

Something made me smile just then..the thought that I'll be looking back at this time, and the nights and days full of fun and screams and laughter that like I had 10 years ago, will all be part of a past that I wish I could experience just once more and relive the moment all over again... But I cant.. so i need to learn to start being in the moment, knowing it wont ever be this moment ever again... not in a sad way, but so i can look back without the regret, and feel what I did back then, because in the future , the memory is going to be the only thing to take me back there... 

Still on this album, and I feel 16 again.. my long hair, baggy jeans, hoodies and eyeliner.. its a wonderful feeling.. I dont want to feel sad about it - so how could I make sure I dont get sad.. I know, im going to look through the photos of the people i know now, and the people I love.. i may even make a video.. yea, that sounds like a good idea :)

ok, feeling good, so while im here, im gonna end on this positive vibe, change the music to something that reminds me of the now, and the people im with now, that I love.. 

''Bring the past only if you are going to build from it. '' ~Doménico Cieri Estrada

I am what I am and what I am is.. erm.. .??

I deleted my last post because I have honestly felt like I am not being true to myself when I write.. Well, rather I'm not being true to what it is that I totally want to write for me, I sometimes just write what I think others will want to read...

Lately I have not been able to accept that I look the way I look, and that who I am, is, who I am. I, for the best part of my life, have been utterly convinced that I am not good enough for anyone, let alone myself. I have believed that the world is somehow happier that I am below it, uglier than it, less exciting and adventurous than it, less up for a laugh.. that I am WORTH laughing at.. that I am a good person to make feel miserable.. I have been convinced that EVERYTHING that I do and say and feel, is worth feeling guilty over.

I am less of a person in the world. I am not worth what the world has to offer.. because.. I simply dont deserve it..

Lately I have been looking at photos of my friends.. well, 'the people who love me because they have to and/or feel like they have to like me because they feel sorry for me..' (please don't be offended, this is just what I think , I know this may not be the case, but my brain tells me otherwise). I look at their pictures and I think.. 'its so unfair that I don't look like them..'... everyone but me seems to look like.. they don't look like me, they have lovely smiles, great ideas and interests, beautiful hair and eyes, something that makes them stand out as in individual.. and then theres me.. I'm nothing, there is no..me. I'm just a body . A person who isn't really meant to be there. Just another profile on Facebook make-believing that I am just as happy as the rest of them..(perhaps this could also be the case for the people I am looking at.. but who am I to know..)

I hate that I cannot trade in my face and personality for a new one....

I have struggled with my body image and food for so many years now that I cannot be anything other than a self obsessed freak.. I cannot accept myself. Why cant I? Why is hating myself the easiest thing in the world to do?... Why is loving myself so fucking hard..near impossible?....

For the last two weeks I have been crying almost every day.. because simply, I am not someone else..  I am not ... who I think everyone else thinks I should be..

and who is that exactly... who is it I am trying to be..

..more popular..?
..prettier?
.. louder?
..thinner?
..smarter?
..spontaneous?
..smarter?
...... more... alive?

When will I see what others see in me.. When will my inner bully take off these evil tinted glasses and help me understand what it is that keeps people interested in who I am..?

It honestly fucking dumbfounds me.. I just dont understand.

Does personal acceptance just happen..? Does it take an accident, or incident, or a big talking ball of light and glory to tell you that now its time to accept yourself and you can finally be free of that inner restraint that holds the real you back from shining through..?

Im going to have to continue this in a little while.. back soon...xxx

and im back.

So where was I...

right.

Earlier on, after I had written the first paragraph, I was handed a photo of Luke as a boy. Big glasses, big hair, skinny arms.. the kinda kid I would have probably (and shamefully) giggled at, as he looked like a prefect, blazer and all...  Then I looked at Luke, now, and I came over all emotional and started crying.. He asked me why I was crying, and I said it was because I couldn't believe I was looking at the same guy that's in that photo. That kid was bullied, and taunted, and picked on. He didn't like anything about himself, and even hated his school so much that he left, and swore he would never wear a uniform again.. Now I was looking at a guy who is loved, popular, very cool, and so self assured it makes me jealous.. He is filled with self respect and self love, and it makes him shine out of every pore in his body. I've never met anyone like him.. yet how did someone like him, change from the boy he was then...

Luke said to me.. 'change is possible'... 'see.. *makes me look at his school photo* '.. and he said it with a beaming smile on his face. Luke loves himself, not in the way an egotistical arsehole does, but the way someone should love and respect who they are, as an individual.

And it makes me wonder how and when I will be able to look at myself as someone who I should be learning to love, rather than hate and condemn to a day of misery and self hatred because i maybe had stupid hair in the morning..  Maybe its more of an effort sort of thing, like, I need to put more time into the things that I like and love, and enjoy it.. but then I still cant figure why that should make me happy.. because I'm still not someone else.. I want to learn how..

Some things take time, and others are just a matter of 'I want this sort of life now, so I'm going to have it' sort of moments....

can anyone suggest anything.. as to how to learn to .. love, yourself. To like what you see...?

because I really really want to know how..

I want to love myself, because .. I don't want to live hating myself.. I really am not a bad person, and I know that.. but why wont my head let me see what my heart badly needs to...

have you succeeded in this endeavour..?...

If you have.. then, I wish you all the luck and happiness that every smile you beam can bring you..

If you havnt.. we can work on this together .. there has to be a way out of the damned circle of hate..

can we do this..?

Can you?

Can I....?

xxx

(photo by the amazing photographer Asya Schween...)

Conversation with myself.

God I look awful today

Don't say that about yourself, you cant be that bad

But I am, look, panda eyes, fat belly.. and my hair looks like the end of a garden brush.

What do you know, you always hate the way you look. you should go easy or this could turn into a really shitty day.

I  know but really what's the point. my face is fat and there's bound to be like a million beautiful thin girls out and about today

So what, they all look the same, you should like you for you.

What the fuck is great about me eh, I have a serious freckle issue which hasn't really even started yet, so when that happens I'm going to burn, explode in freckles and my hair will bleach and i will look like a beached whale with a Debenhams make over flopped on the grass on the common for people to laugh at.

This is so stupid, your beautiful, really. You have pretty eyes

They're sunken

Your smile is cute!

I have wonky teeth and my lips are thin

Your body is curvy

Curves are another word for fat..

oh stop it! im trying to help!

You have to agree with me anyway because we share the same body

then fuck off somewhere else then, i don't need your goodytooshoo bullshit in my ear. its not realistic. you know that we wont get on unless I'm thin and beautiful with sunken cheeks and a gap between my thighs. seriously. what man women child or even animal would really listen to you, when the reality of it all is that we suck. you suck. i suck. this body sucks.

Im not that bad.

Yes you are, if it weren't for you, perhaps we'd be thin, we'd be successful and your parents would be proud. and everyone would adore you, and you could spit on all those below you, because we are in the few that made it big, and all in the body of a size 8 beauty.. how on earth do you think being nice, or true or accepting would get you anywhere, really. who are the real winners in this world. the big shots. the celebrities, they are gods, and we.. you!,are nothing to that world.

but why should i care about all that, im happy where i am.

really? i mean, really really?

yes, it just so happens im quite happy ..

happy don't cut it babe. happy doesn't make you attractive. thin does. control does. money does. without any of that, your nothing

then why don't you fuck off then, i don't need you! if im happy here, and you're unhappy, then leave! i don't need this, i can stay in this body and forget all that mindless crap that you care about. we'll see who will go further..

Ha! see you at the top babe! ill be looking down at you with the beautiful people.

Ill be looking ahead into the real world and seeing what really makes people beautiful..

fine. lets see who wins this battle.

Brady Bunches and Blue Cabbages

Movies and television portray family life to be simple. easy. perfectly glossed. The sun beams down on the home of the American dream. In the elegant flower blessed garden the Aunts and Uncles laugh with the Nieces and Nephews. The children play quietly on the floor with jigsaws and doll houses while their skin becomes kissed with the summer heat. The Mum and Dad so in love laugh like life has always been perfect and every moment they are experiencing is that close to a moment of heaven. The door bell rings and look who it is, the neighbours who are also the life long friends of the mother and father (who they occasionally go hiking with and picnicking and whose children have grown up and married eachother because every one is so fucking happy).

This is bullshit.

In real life, Its raining. The gutters are clogged with last autumns leaves and there is a very high chance of a once trapped, now dead sparrow rotting away inside. The garden is scattered with hard plastic moulding patio furniture, bits of old sandwich lay soggy in the uncut grass, and theres a dog shit on the patio slab. Inside, the baby is screaming. The ten year old with ADD is pulling his screaming sisters hair, and the mum is having her fifteenth fag of the day while watching Jeremy Kyle. The stodgy stale smell of the weight watchers ready meal lingers thickly in the air, while the teenage girl cries over the latest incestuous episode of Hollyoaks.

Now its sad, but, these two juxtaposing scenarios probably do exist. Perhaps not to these exact extremes but you never know.

What I'm saying I suppose is that somewhere in all of us, we have an ideal of what we would like our own family situations to be like. Whether we want every single member of our family around us, or just a close few. Perhaps our friends are our family. Perhaps you want to be left alone. Some of us decide to step outside of our family box, because we just cannot relate. Sometimes we try so hard to be part of a family it creates something sick and heavy inside us, the want to be loved and like comes so hard, and it can crush you. You may be happy like this. Family may be your key to happiness. Maybe your ideal would be every one smiling twenty-four seven, laughing, drinking, joking, singing, dancing... But its not necessarily the ideal for everyone.

There is one thing that every person alive will never be able to escape. You are part of your family whether you like it or not. Your blood is shared with them. You will look like someone you are related to (you hope they are pretty). But this doesn't mean that you are... a part, of them.

I feel in my own experience, that I have always been divided as to who I recognize myself from. I am stuck as to where I belong and often feel perhaps the wrong stork got the wrong baby. I end up in situations where I'm sat thinking 'do they not see how different I am'.. 'why do they think I would enjoy this'.. I push myself into situations where I would rather be sat plonked out of my face watching Sister Act, or at a local bar with my close friends who are also a bunch of nutters like myself.

I am finding that spending time with the people I am meant to want to be around just forces me in the other direction. I don't want to be suffocated in gossip and the same old stories. I don't want to be guilt tripped for seeing or not seeing someone. I don't want my life to be talked about while I'm not there. I'm not a fucking 'Heat' magazine.

Its presses you down , and when you don't bounce back up you get criticized and scrutinized and then they wonder what the hell is wrong with you...

But perhaps we are not fair to them either. perhaps us being different can be hard. You are your own person after all and sometimes not following suit can seems almost like a mutiny. You've taken up your own ship and cast away from the family island. I imagine it would be pretty hard to watch that happen.

I just wish sometimes that everyone could just.. see. look. and watch, and understand, and get rid of the formalities of tradition.

Families are made up of Weirdos and Wankers. Witches and Bitches. Drunks and Druggies. Dread heads and Bed heads. Swimmers and Sinkers. Lovers and Lawyers. The new born dribblers, the dying and even the dead!

We are all so massively different, yet we are expected to be a clone of our own gene pool.

I think sometimes our families need to look at the originality that it can produce, the sudden changes and moves that can occur just within one person. And I suppose on the family side, perhaps we can understand that sometimes when a unit has been together for a lot longer than we have been around, its  not surprising that sprouting a Blue Cabbage of out of all the Green ones wouldn't shock them slightly.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, just hoping that someday you will be accepted for everything you are, and everything you do, and you can feel part of something , whatever it may be, with whomever it may include, and that your happy, being you. Being a freak. The odd one out. The black sheep. The weirdo. The blue cabbage. And at the same time, love and accept your own personal Brady Bunch, and celebrate them in every weirdness that they show. They were probably freaks too once. And just as your gene pool is expanding in every direction, sometime in the future I hope that the teens and weirdos of your future family will look back on photos of you and celebrate the uniqueness that they share, and realise that being a freak was in their blood, and its something to be proud of .
There will only ever be one time we can enjoy being who we are and spend it with the people who love us. And this includes a one way ticket ride with our family. It wont ever happen again, so if we could all enjoy everything we can about ourselves and the family that we wish to spend this time with, whether its relations, our friends, or even spending it with your favourite pet or DVD and the beautiful smiles from the perfect family of the American Dream, then perhaps our versions of our Brady Bunch families can keep moving and evolving , and we can be happy and supportive of everything we are and want to be.

Saying that, even the Bradys weren't perfect, I vaguely remember something about one of them being Schizophrenic,,,

See. Takes all sorts of Cabbages really.

xxx

That big blue moon saw me standing alone.

As I left the house believing more than ever that the ugliness I saw on the outside of myself, was truly more visible to others than ever, I tried my very best to hold back familiar tears on a subject that has ruled my personality since I cannot remember when.

I turned the corner from an orange lit road onto a dark and shady car park, falling into shadow and knowing if I was going to cry it would be my only chance to hide it.

I looked up as I started back into the light leading onto the main roads, and suddenly I was struck with amazement. I gazed up at that big beautiful moon, holding itself with effortless awe in the light polluted sky. The halo and haze around it looked like it could gather the world up softly in its arms.. and I started on a different direction to try and capture some of this beauty on [digital] film.

I walked nearby a local lake where a man had died recently. The minimal amount of flowers there seemed to burst with mournful energy, and yet the image of the flowers tied so sadly against thier will to the iron fence, seemed so perfectly matched to how low and inviting this beautiful lunar moment was.

I held the camera steady, and waited for the second click. The street lamps and the moon had created vibrant lines of light across the picture, as I failed to balance myself, and stay still.
I decided no-one knew me, and it was no-ones business what I was doing, so I walked further away from the usual path home and tried again in a few more locations to capture an apparently pretty picture. The moon was never going to come out on the photo as big as I wanted it to be. I think I'll  have to hold how the image was in my head, and keep it as my own personal photo forever, although I was pleased with the outcome of a few of the ones captured on camera.
 

I walked by the ferry, and and sat on a bench that was facing the city across the water. The towers and the lights almost suffocated the moons glow, but it was wonderful that she was taking none of it.
I looked around, and saw a father and daughter together. She must have been about nine years old. The dad took a photo or two of the beautiful orb in the sky, and showed it to his little girl. She stood up on the stone wall to see the image properly, and looked into the camera and said 'wow, its beautiful!'... Its making me feel in such an emotive state thinking about it...

While sat there, waiting for my ferry home, I suddenly realised that all that ugliness I had felt, had suddenly gone... and I thought about how this happened...

I was for a moment, caught up in an image of utter beauty. Everything about the ugliness and sadness I felt about my own body was suddenly swept away without me realizing, and it was like I had been caught in one of those rope-foot traps, and I was suddenly pulled away from myself, and looking at things from a different perspective. 
I had been so intensely focused on the images and frames around me,and the beauty and feeling of it all had, for a little while, caused me to feel at peace, and happy again.
How could I be sad, when there was something so beautiful that had stripped me of feeling otherwise..?

I decided from now, that anytime I began to feel like I was slipping into my own sadness and self pity, that I should stay in any beautiful moment that made itself present to me while feeling so, and let myself fall deep into the pool of positive feeling.. I should embrace it, and let the negativity slip away through the ends of my fingers, and away into the world..

Its the first time that I have ever come to feel this on my own. I finally understand everything that my friends and loved ones have been saying to me for so long.. I can understand, and relate, and feel what they mean about the world, and looking up, and feeling the beauty in everything.

Without you, that moment with the moon would not have meant to me what it did.

So to you, the moon, and the universe in all its amazing glory..
 Thank you, I love you, and I will always try from now to see beauty without, and the beauty within....xxx

To the Paddy in you.

Today is the day for everyone on the planet to become obliterated at any time of day they wish possible, and blame it on thier apparent irish heritage. I for one say, good for you! I am also of Irish blood through my mother and grandparents and so i agree with any amount of consumption of the black stuff! (provided you are not driving or operating heavy machinery).

However like the rest of the planet, I am up early for work, not because my cat was insistant that I feed him at 6.15 this morning which resulted in my smooshing his head with a wet hand that i dipped into my glass of water to shut him up... no, that wasnt the case at all. Still, I am sat ready and waiting for my second cup of tea... and I have just realised that I have aquired another trait of my mothers. suppose if it going to be any day it will be today!

Today is the day to be happy, and celebrate life, and joy, and knowing somewhere along the line, you are related to an Irish man or woman who will be later tonight singing thier heart out in song and laughter and spilling the black stuff on the shoulder next to them.

So basically, I think today you should look at life, and feel proud to have paddy blood somewhere in you, because everyone does, and if you dont, you can just pretend, because everyone loves the irish, and everyone loves an excuse to drink, so go on and do so, have fun tonight and raise a drink to the paddy in you!

SLAINTE!!

To Tick, Tock, Tock, Tock.

Since being with my partner, a self confessed gannet for self help books, I have been presented and  gifted with enough literature to cure a psych ward. I however, am a self confessed  giver upper. If it doesn't work first time around, or doesn't change my life within the first chapter or even the first paragraph, then my brain becomes distracted and Series 3, Episode 4 of Ugly Betty somehow makes it way mysteriously into my DVD player and before I know it the Dairy Milk is being consumed and I have formed a similar position to that of a hand held school time bean bag thrown across the gym hall that has landed on the seat of one of those luminous plastic chairs.

And so, as '5 years time' plays in my left ear, and my bare feet against my bare thighs become uncomfortably hot in my crossed legged position, I look outside of our sash paned window, and after catching the eye of a Lozak* wonder if there will be more to today than previously considered. I live 1 minute away from a beautiful green common on which upon the other side is a beautiful rush of salty air and views of local land and ships and gulls. We actually saved a gull once from the common, it sadly died, along with my enthusiasm to continue my new fad for wanting to become a jogger. 

I am considering perhaps to venture down to the common with a blanket and flask, and bring upon myself a new challenge.. one which perhaps will dare me to challenge my lack of ability to concentrate.... reading.

Out of the abundance of self help books I have gathered over time, I don't recall reading the final words of a single one. 

So, as ELO 'Mr Blue Sky' begins and its toe tapping tempo cruises into my ears, I sit here with a book entitled 'The Journey' (quite relevant don't you think considering my last post). Ms Brandon Bays claims it is ' an extraordinary guide for healing your life and setting yourself free'..

I may be just over 11 years late in picking it up after its first publication in 1999, but the bible is pretty damn old and still seems pretty popular.. I couldnt finish that one either.  

So, .... I'm very reluctant to start reading it,, but I have never finished anything in my life, apart from dinner. I'm not sure exactly what I'm challenging myself to, perhaps to begin to broaden my mind in an attempt to understand and help myself a little bit more than I am now. 

With this beginning , I will furthermore challenge myself to dive into self help books, and post my reviews and opinions and general mind babble on what experiences I get from pursuing something that normally I couldn't give two of my cats litter gifts about.

Starting with Book One 'The Journey', perhaps this could be the beginning of the start of something I could never have imagined myself doing. My insecurities and issues and problems can only benefit from this type of challenge, and by facing it with the start of something new in this direction, I have already made a good start to becoming a healthy and confident me that I so wish to be. 

PrettyCog.

xxx

* A Lozak, is the sister of another Lozak who live in the flat above ours. They have been living here since the dawn of time. Occasionally I will accidently catch eyes with one of them as they leave our building, or even worse, when they are coming home, upon which our buzzer then rings,and if I am alone, all the safety in my soul leaves my body, as I have to answer the door, and become the soul reason why all the gas in our building has run out yet again, and since I moved in this never used to happen. Sometimes I will get told the story of the great fire that happened in the building, some-when, probably back when Jesus was a neighbour, but thankfully I get rescued by my man and I can slide away and they keep on before realising they are talking to a closed door.