Saturday 7 December 2013

Love is difficult

Loving someone can be difficult, it can challenge you, it can change you, but the hardest thing in the world is to stop loving someone. To stop seeing their little flaws and flukes and finding them sweet, to stop wanting them to be happy, to stop feeling warm when they smile, to stop wanting to know how their day has been, to stop talking to them every day, and feeling like sharing your every silly thought with them. It is hard to forget the sound they make when they sip their tea, the way their eyes look when they laugh, the way they kiss, the feeling of being safe in their arms. It is hard to ignore the ghostly remembrance of their fingertips on your cheek or their hand in yours. You can remember how they walk, how their joints click, the sound their hair makes when they scratch their head. It is hard not to remember tiny things like and eyelash on a cheek or a missed button, an unruly curl or a tattered shirt sleeve or a hole in the toe of their sock. It is hard not to remember a thousand afternoons of silly baby talk or bad TV, evenings walking the dog, times you cried, times you laughed, times you caught your breath, times when they rescued you from a spider, times when you got caught in the rain or went ice-skating or bowling or danced. It’s hard not to want to fix everything for them, it’s hard not to want to guide them, it’s hard not to tell them your opinion.

 It is hard not to think of all these things in the split second your eyes meet, before you look away from one another, ashamed because things will never be the same, and not allowed to be sad about it. 

I forget

I gave you all my favourite parts of me and when you took them and appreciated me I felt ok. You slowly discovered all my least favourite parts of me, and told me you loved them, and I started to feel like maybe I wasn’t so awful, like maybe, to someone, to you, I did not have a hideous side, only a side I was afraid of. And I felt whole, and better.
The problem was when you left; you took with you the ability to see the good in all these parts of me. Without you I forgot I didn’t need to fear food, or that it was ok to be sad, and that crying didn’t make me weak, that even in my pyjamas, or when I hadn’t shaved my legs, I could still be lovely. When you stopped speaking to me, I went back to thinking I was sad, and annoying, and boring. When we stopped hanging out I forgot how to be the life of the party, how to laugh unselfconsciously, that I could still be fun.
When you found someone new I remembered the fat on my stomach, and my mismatched eyes, and my frizzy hair. I remembered how sometimes I can’t bear to be around people because I’m anxious, I remembered how I was afraid to show my body, I remembered how I was no fun because I won’t drink, or smoke, and I felt again like the girl that no one has ever wanted to be.
When you changed, I felt like the same idiot who’d fallen for the sweet words of a dozen boys, only this time it was worse, because I’d known it was real, and now it felt like everything I knew was wrong. You took away all the good of you, and you took the best of me,
And I couldn’t even be sad and miss you, because you weren’t mine anymore to care about, to miss, to love. And that hurt more than all the sadness for my own self.

 Because the only thing I couldn’t forget was you.

Sunday 27 October 2013

It's amazing the stuff that makes you smile and suddenly feel like life is this wonderful thing. Realising your mum bought milk while you were out, someone boiling the kettle for you, the person who opens the door, or lends you that extra 10cent you needed for the bus. The friend who gives you half their cookie or drags you out for a coffee when they know you've been having a rough day. The ones who remember to let you know if they're coming to the party, the ones who stick to the dress code, the ones who help clear up, the ones who get you some silly inside joke present. Sometimes its as simple as someone saying thank-you.
I am full of all the love in the world today because for the first time in a really long time I feel like I am appreciated-like my friends not just care about me but are genuinely glad to know me, that my family are proud of me, that my work is being recognised and that I am feeling more confident in myself to go pursue my ambitions. Life is truly spectacular in the very simplest of ways. When you are happy, everything feels better, food tastes better, views are more beautiful, time passes more easily.  Even the people you dislike and the things that would ordinarily make you miserable is just a blip on your radar.

Monday 30 September 2013

Debate

I was once the very keenest of debaters; I could argue anything convincingly-whether I was educated on the topic or not and whether I agreed on the topic or not. I remember one particular Mace debate in secondary school where the motion suggested the voting age be move to 16. Two teams argued for and two against. I was proposing the motion and a girl from the other proposing team came to me after and wanted to chat enthusiastically about our shared passion for politics and the right of young people to influence how our country is governed. I had to explain that actually I wouldn't want a vote and that I knew less than nothing about a politics (a fact that has hardly changed despite being a well-educated student now-though I do think we deserve a right to vote and make a point of not voting on topics I haven't first educated myself about!).
The point I am blundering towards is that almost anything has points to support it and points to tear it down. War has its upsides, peace has its downsides; sadness can have benefits and happiness has some drawbacks. I find this an oddly reassuring thought because what this says to me is that there are no wrong answers. The only wrong answer is one you cannot support with at least one coherent argument. Not necessarily a fact, but an argument. I like nothing better than a good debate, because in a debate each person gets to say their piece, they are afforded one or two rebuttals of the opposition and then an objective third party decides not who is right, but who better supported their claim. If we argued like this in the real world there would be far fewer violent verbal spats because you are not trying to create an argument by beating down the other persons opinion-you merely both present your perspectives for consideration. If only we could be so civilised!

Wednesday 25 September 2013

Dear Blog

dear blog,
I am sorry for neglecting you. I am sorry for ignoring the creativity inside me that you need to exist. I am sorry for becoming absorbed in silly things, like television, or phonecalls, or doodling. 

I am sorry for letting you down when you have never let me down. I am sorry for not helping you to reach your full magnificence. I am sorry I haven't written. But I will. 

Friday 20 September 2013

I might be gone

I might be gone when you get back.
I was thinking I might leave. 
I've been tired for a while now.
So tired

So I might be gone when you get back
I'm telling you so you know
If I'm not here, don't worry
I felt it was time.
It was time.

If I am gone when you get back, 
And I feel I probably will,
Don't be concerned, because as I said
I haven't been feeling the best,
The best

If I am gone when you get back
It's not because you left, 
It's not because of the time you lost my scarf,
Or the fact you forgot the milk again
You forgot again. 
But I don't mind

I going now before you're back
I guess I just thought you should know
That there was nothing you could do to change things
I just, kind of, needed to go.

Tuesday 17 September 2013

Hypochondriac

I am a hypochondriac. A catastrophiser. A constant prophetess of my own doom and demise.
Every itch, or scratch, or ache; a sudden pain, and unexplained lump, a mole that looks fractionally bigger. My mind creates deathbed scenarios, tearful hospital scenes, shocking test results, hands held and tears squeezed out. I imagine huge obstacles to overcome during recovery; physio, hair regrowth, learning to write, recovering memory.
While my mind concerns itself with all the drama that could come with the most unlikely of scenarios- all the dangers that could be posed by a sneeze, or an itch, or a sudden sharp sting -my immune system works away and all is well.
All but the sickness where my brain cannot stop creating danger from the daily.

Friday 30 August 2013

No typey no likey

Have just realised I won't be able to bring my laptop to the Ukraine with me. I don't actually have a clue how I am going to cope not being able to write for two weeks. I need my blogs, I need my play, I wanted to document the trip, I wanted to be able to relax and get some work done on my writing. This writing lark is oxygen for my soul and I've grown so accustomed to the ease of the laptop that thinking about the mess of pen and paper makes me feel unwell. I hate the desperate hand-can't-keep-up-with-my-thoughts scribble that I write freehand.
Plus I can hardly do reviews on my phone, or long blog posts, I can barely send a text message or update my facebook status on that little touch-screen nightmare. I actually feel anxious, unhappy and I can't really think straight or sleep knowing that I won't be able to do this stuff or that I'll have to catch up on it all when I'm back. Fuck. And a half. With great big fucking knobs on.
Apparently not reminding my father every day for the last month to bring home a back-up drive means it is my fault that my laptop isn't backed up. I've said it to him a hundred times but it should have been a thousand. It may sound very childish and petty and almost bratty from an outside perspective but I cannot cope with the idea that this is another two weeks of no work on my costume budget, no work on my play. Two weeks of blog silence. No way for me to write up my trip. I don't want to have to sit in some dinghy internet cafe desperately trying to finish a scene and a save the document before my time runs out on a computer.
I know the saying is supposed to be 'A writer writes', but it has become 'a writer types' and frankly I haven't found a better way to do it. Adventure is going to be somewhat ruined by the fact I'm going to be setting off in a state of blind panic at this drastic change to my plans. Cannot deal. No thank-you. Goodbye. Help

Thursday 29 August 2013

Sex and the TV

For a very non-sexual individual I have an odd obsession with Sex and the City. I hate the puns, I hate some of the outfits, I hate how dependant on men it makes women seem. But I love it. It's my guilty pleasure. Like Busted, or snickers, or over-knee socks.
I kinda like that it's all about men and relationships and sex. It allows me to live vicariously through a bunch of fictional characters, and I don't have to deal with the backlash when things go wrong. I'm out of relationships right now, and enjoying it, but as a women relationships are something we spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about. That and sex. Every young person (and Carrie Bradshaw regardless of her age..) thinks about sex. Whether they're having it, not having it, thinking about having it, or wondering why they don't feel like having it. Even if they've never had it, or they had it yesterday. I find myself wondering about it simply because I know other people are thinking about it.
Maybe that's why SATC appeals to me. Because unlike my friends' sex lives, those of Carrie and the girls do not require my advice, opinion or, god forbid, involvement. No one on the show is asking me whether they're a slut, or complaining about needing to get laid and hoping I know someone who can help. Best of all no one on the show needs to be rebuffed for sexually advancing on me.
While some people blame the likes of SATC for the over-sexualisation of society, I personally find it a trivial and harmless form of escapism, where gingers, prudes and blonds get their kicks in a fun, safe and mature way. Plus they get to be 'fabulous' in between hopping into bed with people. There's even some interesting relationship advice, and women-empowering moments.
It's relaxing to allow some other people to deal with all the sexual tribulations of their friends. It's like a silly chat with your girlfriends, except you don't have to actually solve any of the questions-that's Carrie's job!

Tuesday 27 August 2013

I need to write. I need to create. But I feel dull inside. Like when a pan has been used too many times and the outside is the same but the inside no longer shines. I want to create. But I can't conjure my dented thoughts into something worth saying.

The World is my Oyster

I recently worked on my bucket list with my best friend. We had the scary realisation that 10 years from now we will be on the cusp of our thirties and - shock horror- adults. Hopefully with jobs and a partner and maybe even a house or kids, who knows. So we reckon we have 10years before all the things we're going to do become all the things we should have done.
Now to anyone older who is feeling horribly offended by that statement I am not making the assumption that life ends at thirty, only that real life will have kicked in by then, complete with taxes and bills and a car and cooking all our own meals and only visiting our parents on special occasions or when we're lonely. 
I feel like I have a finite amount of time where I can indulge my childish side to the fullest extent and I am terrified of wasting that and becoming one of those middle-aged creeps with no friends their own age because of their inappropriateness and lack of responsibility for their own life. 
While looking through things that other people want to do before they die I've discovered that I've done plenty of interesting things already. I've swum with dolphins, been snorkeling on a coral reef in the Caribbean, I've gone on a trip with friends, and one with a special someone, I've done a spiderman kiss, I've made something from scratch, I've been to a ball, broken a Guinness world record, had a bonfire on the beach, jumped from a cliff and even milked a cow. 
I want to make sure that, even though I know my best adventures will be the normal ones, the family, the house, the job and the future, I want to be sure that I do all the things I might not be able to do when I have other people to think of, or when I'm too old to enjoy them. I don't know when my muscles will get old and tired or my joints start to ache or whether I'll have an accident so I want to expose myself to as much culture, adventure and excitement as I can! 
I want to be sure I appreciate the years between childhood dependence and grown up responsibility where pleasing only myself isn't to anyone else's concern or detriment. After all, the world is only my oyster while I'm able to treat it as such. 

Sunday 25 August 2013

Off into the great blue yonder

Soon I will be creating a new blog about my travels. It will be mostly be to act as a time capsule of my trips (I plan to take many during my next few years of college) and also to act as a way to keep my family and friends here in Ireland updated on how I'm getting on and the adventures I'm (hopefully!) having.
I am overcome with nerves as the one week countdown to my language course in Ukraine starts. I received info about my homestay and my class timetable but am very much throwing myself in at the deep end with next to no clue what it will be like there or even whether I will be fed of be able to go to the gym.
I am also extremely excited for my first trip to Eastern Europe as this is going to be a huge part of my life in the next few years. I can't wait to actually try to communicate in a language I've been learning for less than a year, to experience a new culture, new foods, new sights, a new way of living. I'm glad to be going with friends but nonetheless being thrown into things while still more than a bit unprepared. It's exhilirating in the way a bungee jump or a sky dive is- a heady mix of mild terror and anxious excitement mingled with the thrill of the unknown.

Giving

I have a friend who I have reached the stage of being near unable to hold a conversation with. Every interaction causes me pain, sadness and sometimes downright misery. Despite having struggled, hard, to get myself to a stage of independence where I have made myself an item of priority in my own life, and knowing that this person is a detriment to my happiness, I refuse to give up on them.
This person claims to know both depression and happiness, but would rather accept depression that refuse to continue placing conditions on their happiness. I am proud of myself every time I amn't sad, not only when I'm genuinely happy. Being able to get out of bed feels like a win when there was a time in your life when life was something you didn't feel you were able to manage. This person sees every misfortune as a crippling loss and a sign never to strive for anything, while I try to tell them that the only way you can get of these hurdles is to keep sight of the fact it is a hurdle, not a brick wall fathoms high.
This person claims to know love and to have been destroyed by it. But I know love to be the only thing that can only build you up. Knowing that I have people I care about, who's happiness is my happiness, who's achievements are my delights and who's tribulations are my opportunity to build them up is a constant reminder that I have a value and a purpose.
The worst thing about this friend of mine is that, they do not know how love should work. I love them, so I do my best to be supportive despite the fact that for months now they have done nothing but tear at my fragile happiness, that their lack of awareness of their effect on me makes me realise constantly that they do not love me, nor do they seem to know how. This person does not want my help, they practically push my friendship away and crush my emotions constantly while reminding me that if I go they have no one, guilting me into staying because I am so desperate for them to appreciate the other things they cannot see, if only to allow myself some piece of mind. Being a part of someones happiness is a gift. Being responsible for it, is a terrible pressure. Especially when nothing you can say or do will make them realise the pain it is causing you to care. The great expense to your own happiness it is to keep them just a millimetre from total misery.
But that is love, you care til it hurts, you care some more, and you sometimes have to be content with nothing in return. The fact that this person doesn't deserve your love doesn't stop you trying  to give them what they need. Even if they don't appreciate how much you are giving.

Self-deprecation

She will always be far more appreciative of others than  she is of herself. In fact, most of the things she likes about herself she credits to her parents, either genetically or for encouraging her when she was growing up. She never takes full responsibility for things she thinks she might be good at, though she accepts as her own any and all failures, weaknesses and troubles in her life. 
She has always accepted others much more readily than she accepts herself. She tend to rarely be critical of others, even though she notices the flaws in others almost as much as she notes them in herself. She forgives those imperfections, irritations and issues much more readily in people who aren't, well, her. 
She doesn't have a reason why. She knows most of us are more critical of ourselves, but she is pretty much exclusively critical of herself, which is perhaps why it can be so vehement. She just assumes that everyone judges her as harshly as she judges herself and if they don't that they are simply being overly kind.
She can always think of dozens of things wrong with herself, yet struggles to think of things she is genuinely bad at. She punishes herself for mediocrity and refuses to reward herself even for things approaching impressive.
 I wonder sometimes why I am the first to praise, support and nurture everyone but myself. Even now I am criticising myself for writing this where people will have to read it only to discover I'm a boring, self-deprecating fool with a laptop. I'm also criticising the lack of literary flair in this destruction of my character, I should really have made it a poem, or a tale or woe worthy of pity. But it isn't sad, simply true. It is no dreadful thing, only something I cannot reconcile with the logical part of my brain.

Thursday 15 August 2013

Mystery

It's fascinating to be at this midway stage in life. Every day you might discover something that will make you who you'll be in the future, every day could be the first time you see your future neighbour, future best friend, future spouse. Every day could be the day that one person moves out or moves on or is no longer a part of your life. Every day is touch and go, but in this scarily exciting fantastical way that you can't quite get your head around.
 Everyone wants to know who you are and where you're going and what you want to be and whether you're with someone. You are at your most developmental stage. People think your childhood and teenage years are the most formative years, but can you honestly say that your college years weren't the time where you started to lay the foundations of your adult life? The longest section of your life.
It's astounding to me that I may already have encountered the person I might marry, or my future boss, or my room mate when I move out, or the friend who'll help me plan my wedding.
It's also fascinating to consider that in a year or two I may have entirely different friends, plans, interests, relationships and aspirations. I may go in some completely separate direction. I may become a different person entirely to the one I picture myself becoming.
I'm still trying to become the person 7 year old me was dreaming of becoming (only I'm probably not going to be an astronaut after all!). I'm still trying to stick with the things I'm passionate about and not just let go of them because I want to appear more grown up.
I only have a few more years where I can still call my parents when I'm scared or tired, where I can dye my hair all the lovely colours I want and not be looked at like I'm crazy, where I can wear what I want and do the things I want before I have to assume a set place in soceity, a set role, a set look. Everything is so fluid I don't want to let go of that, yet one part of me is excited for when it finally happens. One part wants to peek out from behind the curtain and see who I am 5years from now, 10 years from now. One part of me wants to see what stores I'll have to tell my kids and grandkids in the next few years, what pictures will be stuffed into albums and giggled over with a bottle of wine in my thirties.
I guess the greatest mystery in life is our own selves, because even we in our own heads have no real knowledge of ourselves. We won't know ourselves fully even until we're probably about 80 years old, and even then there will be things we don't know about ourselves.

Warning!

I was thinking recently about parental warnings. We are warned constantly on packaging, on TV and in our homes. We remember to eat our greens, not to talk to strangers, never to drink and drive, how to protect our beverages and our bodies and what things are safe an what aren't. What we are never warned about the things that often have the most impact on us-other people.
True there are some of us who have the kind of parents who vetted our friends but even the best friends in the world can be harmful. Even the great loves of our lives cruel and painful. We are a species with a very unique capacity for damaging others, often without even intending to do so.
I have never had trouble with a stranger, skipping my vegetables has never caused me serious harm and I have yet to develop ink poisoning from drawing on my skin. I have, however, been hurt, abandoned, let down, betrayed and even punished by people from whom I never expected it. No one ever warned me about them, no one ever warned them they would hurt me either. It is not something one prepares to do or prepares to react to- yet it is much more damaging and dangerous than almost anything that comes with a warning label. Even without the warning common sense tells us not to drink bleach or wash red sock with white shirts or to leave the stove on. Common sense does not protect us from the people we trust, we love, we look up to.
Maybe it's we that should come with a warning label.

Sunday 11 August 2013

Legalise Cannabis

This is something that is currently being debated in Ireland and a lot of my friends have been inviting me to protests about it. Frankly I don't want to be involved, I'm not against cannabis, I'm well aware that safe cannabis has dozens of useful and even helpful properties and that for many people it can have a positive effect on their lives. Unfortunately I am certain that the vast majority of people interested in legalising cannabis just like the idea of not getting in trouble for smoking weed.
I get that people enjoy it, that it can be fun. But drinking can be fun too and there's a reason there's an age limit, cocaine probably can be fun too but we don't want everyone taking that either. Like alcohol, while not the most harmful substance to the human body, weed can be problematic in the wrong hands, the wrong amounts, the wrong circumstances.
Someone close to me got into weed when he was 15 and ended up fucking up his exams and getting expelled from school and a mate of his died in circumstances with weed. I have another mate who smokes weed nearly every day to help him relax after work, or de-stress from being with his family.
Despite being someone who sometimes wishes I could just take something to make me relax, or to help me be happy, I don't believe that any substance, especially a legal one, is going to help those feelings. Because they don't fix the problem, they just help you forget about it.
If I thought that people were protesting for something genuine, something that would be positive for society, I would be out there marching too. But frankly, when my friends, or guys I'm dating, are high or stoned, they really aren't as fun, or nice, or interesting to be around as they normally are. I guess I like things real, even if the real is less pleasant to deal with sometimes. At the end of the day, I feel like weed isn't a life experience I should have, life is something I want to experience, and weed changes the real world, the real way you see thing and feel things.
When I meet one person my age who wants to legalise cannabis for a real reason, a good reason I'll think about marching. Til then, I'll stick to my guns!

Triviality

I spend hours becoming stressed about things that should be trivial. What to have for dinner, whether or not to go out, when to have a shower.
Sometimes just looking at myself can make me stressed because I feel like I have a thousand things I have to do and fix and improve. I think way too much about food, photos, clothes and text messaging. It sounds completely shallow, and even self-obsessed.
Even thinking about it a little while trying to write has me all pent up and stressed and nervous. Like my chest is constricted and there's a weight on my shoulders. In my house there are frequently arguments over trivial things, such as TV or the last potato waffle or whether or not someone is allowed to use something belonging to someone else. The problem is that even the most trivial of things have a connection to more deeply rooted needs, feelings, thoughts, they can spark and idea or emotion that is all consuming. I hate the way you appear like some sort of bratty petulant child in reaction to something that should mean nothing, and really does mean nothing, but just set off a tornado of bad thoughts which cause you to turn everything into a nightmare.
I was just bothered by something trivial, I was at a party recently and took a lot of photos. I was in a few with a friend I used to be very close to and I notice that on facebook he has hidden any of just the two of us from his profile. Now if I think rationally and logically he may not have liked them, or thought there were too many similar ones, or not wanted to look like we were together because it was just the pair of us. But ma brain catastrophises, spiralling into a dozen negative reasons and becoming sad and angry and anxious and generally upset about all the things I think it could be!
A few deep breaths later and I'm calm but it will niggle at the back of my mind til the end of the day. It irks me even more that this has upset me than the actual reasons behind the upset. Maybe it smacks too much of change, or failure, or rejection to my mind when it's actually not that complex.
I wish I could switch off these parts of my brain that do this. Instead I analyse them. And I write.

Saturday 10 August 2013

Gifts

Yesterday I received a really perfect gift. There is something about gift giving that makes you feel special and loved, but nothing more so than a gift that perfectly suits you, that shows how well your friend knows you and makes you love and appreciate them all the more.
My friend brought me a copy of one of my favourite novels in Spanish. I love reading in other languages and I was so delighted I almost wanted to cry!
Being a girl you often get a lot of crappy default presents. People seem to think that toiletries or jewellery are the things that girls want. I do love an accessory but  I almost never receive jewellery that is the kind of thing I would buy myself. As for toiletries, I only ever had baths when I'm sick and if I get another Lush bath bomb that smells overwhelmingly of sherbet I may throw it at someone.
Gifts are sweet but gifts for the sake of giving someone something mean almost less than no gift at all. If it's the thought that counts and you put zero thought into the present then what on earth is the point?
I am very lucky to have some lovely friends who know me and think of me and remind me just how well they get me.

Friday 19 July 2013

Some scars

So today I have something a little personal I want to talk about. Scars.
I have many scars, childhood accidents, an operations, a recent scrape from my bike; I have few that I am self-conscious about. I am most nervous about the ones on my chest. I have bad acne scarring all across my shoulders and chest and because I have sallow skin they are noticeable little white circles. People have commented on and asked about them and that's the only reason I know they are noticeable not just to me.
When I was fifteen, the friend of a boy I was dating commented on 'those weird marks on my boobs' and a years later a friend of mine asked why my shoulders were sprinkled with white marks. As someone who comes off as very confident this is one things I struggle with. Every time I wear strappy or low cut tops I worry that people are looking at my scars and wondering why I would show off a body like that.
I have friends who are similarly self conscious of only certain marks and scars. One with scars up her spine from a scoliosis operation, another with marks on her arms from self harm, another with a scar on her lip from a childhood bike accident.
We spend a great deal of time being proud of our unique traits, skills and defining features but also a significant amount of time hiding things we think people won't understand or might comment cruelly on, despite having no way of changing these things.
I have no insecurities about the moles on my face or the parkour wound on my shin or even the lump in my foot where I have a metal screw. These are all part of me, of my story, of my life. Somehow, a part of me doesn't see my chest scars that way. They seem to me something that shouldn't be there, marks that should have faded, that should no longer define me, that have no significance to my story other than a few negative comments after their appearance.
I guess so many times I've been able to be open about mental scars, or to tell a story of some gnarly scar I obtained doing something cool or stupid, or showing off some unusual birthmark or quirky trait. But there are some things that are not special, not shareable and not interesting but can mark us in ways we didn't realise. I suppose my scars are a reminder to me of all the things that shouldn't have an influence, like mean comments from strangers, or bad days from the past, or lost items or forgotten places. They are a permanent reminder of nothing but their own effects, normally nothing good.

Thursday 11 July 2013

Kids these days

Apologies for my recent silence readers. I thought summer would afford me so much free time that I would be writing constantly but since I started working I am invariably there or sleeping off the exhaustion incurred there!
Today I am thinking about teenagers. On my first day starting at the camp I was thinking of My Chemical Romance's song Teenagers. Because teenagers really do scare the living shit out of me. I'm too young for them to respect me and too old for them to want to be friends with me.
I have one group of Spanish students, thirty-seven of them, out of which there are maybe seven to ten nice ones and the rest are rude, ignorant and just plain disinterested in life. Some of them actually stand in the road and don't seem to understand the frustration of the drivers, or me for that matter. Even the students from the other groups are driven mad by them (which is comforting). Unfortunately it feels as though there is no way to get through to kids who just don't want to do anything. They don't want to see historical sites, they don't want to do fun activities, they don't want to go home...if only I could give them nap time or chatting in Spanish time I'm sure they'd be thrilled.
What on earth does one do with teenagers? Granted there will always be some kids, great kids, who make the most of everything and who try to encourage others (I have reached the stage where I actually worship these children as my work saviour) but there are others who just slink off to smoke and do nothing.
I was a go for it teen (sometimes I'm a do nothing kid now) and I can't understand how these kids can come all the way over to another country and want to speak only their only language with people they already know and refuse to appreciate anything about the country they're in (except possibly the large Abercrombie).
I feel like I should be blaming the technology age of instant gratification but that doesn't account for the lack of respect for leaders, elders, others or even traffic lights. I'm worried that maybe some of them are just a little stupid rather than be completely obnoxious. Though I could be being a little generous.

Monday 1 July 2013

Golf


Today was my first day of work at a summer camp. I had to go golfing with some teenage boys. I'm a sporty type but golf is one of a handful of sports I really have no great interest in. It's the exercise equivalent of following a stone you've been kicking down the street (with arm swinging thrown in here and there). I am not in any way belittling the skill I know to be involved in golf-it's really challenging in terms of gauging distance, accuracy and even just hitting that tiny little ball with the skinny stick! As a hockey player, I thought there would be a bit of similarity in the whole swinging-a-stick-at-a-ball genre but I could barely manage to make contact my first few swings at the driving range! It seems to take forever to get in any way decent at it, and it doesn't seem like a fun sport to be bad at! I mean soccer with your mates will be still be fun if you;re rubbish and most people are happy enough to shoot some hoops whether they've ever played before!
Golf just seems like a sport that is not just for the fun of it. There are dresscodes for starters -dresscodes that, as a self-proclaimed fashionista, I am not a fan of. The outfits definitely contribute to golf's image of not being a 'young' sport. You won't see any jeans or Nike's or patterned leggings around the golf course and you won't see many young people in sweater-vests and sensible trousers. 
Most young people want to have fun with sports, they play for the social aspect, for the competitive aspect because it's exhilarating. Most people take a while to reach the 'exhilirating' stage of golf. You really have to be at least decent at it to get any of this out of it. It's not hugely social as you can't have crews walking the greens and it requires the kind of concentration and time-taking that you aren't often afforded with friends! For me, I don't think golf is a sport I will ever get into. Too much walking, too much standing, too much thinking and far, far too little adrenaline. Hockey may have a similar premise but I'd gladly take a hefty-legged girl steaming towards me with a concrete ball than a long stroll over a lonely green with a ball that won't go where I want it to!

Writing vs. Talking

I have discovered that I write much better if I have a topic to discuss. I can happily write about just about anything but some days I can't think of anything! (suggestions welcome alternativekitten10@gmail.com).
It is the same as when talking to people; it's easy to join in on a conversation- even if you don't know much about the direct topic-but when you're put on the spot you're brain does this fun thing where it goes completely blank!
It's also much harder to write than speak sometimes because it requires concentration-your hands need to keep up wit your thoughts which can be difficult-especially when trying to word something just-so. There are usually more distractions when writing, in a conversation-the conversation is the focus of you and of those around you. When writing, unless you are in a library on somewhere alone, life continues, often noisily, around you.
For me, writing is a soothing, relaxing activity most of the time (bar term essays or other work on a deadline) provided I'm not suffering from writers block. However, my mother finds the sound of a pen scribbling or keyboard clicking as irritating as most people find car alarms or high-pitched d4 girls talking about boys on the train. My brothers also have this fantastic ability to make annoying noises or do mad activities as soon as I look busy or like I might be concentrating.
It seems to be a rule of life-if you have nothing to do, those around you will be busy, if you commit to something, a dozen opportunities will appear and suddenly everyone wants to talk to you. Sitting at my laptop seems to have a similar effect to heading for the door-suddenly my family are reminded of a dozen important things they have to show me, ask me or discuss with me.
There are only rare occasions where I think writing is easier than talking and it's normally when you really want to structure things. Conversations take twists and turns and tangents while writing (if you plan it) stays more or less on a similar note. You rarely start writing on one topic and then end up on a topic so far removed for the original you can't remember how you got there!
The most important time, I feel, to write rather than talk is when you are extremely emotional, it's much easier to be rational and articulate in writing in these situations. Sometimes, if I have an important talk I need to have with someone, friend, relative or relationship, I will write down all my feelings and thoughts when I'm feeling them so I know what I really want to say, and, more importantly, avoid saying.
There can be no life free from talking or from writing-the two complement and contrast one another and are both crucial, you need to be able to communicate both ways-especially in the technology age. A wild personality in person can be ruined by a dull text-persona while it is equally, if not more, disappointing to discover that the person, who is so engaging via the phone or Internet, can't keep a conversation going in person.
I don't expect everyone to be able to write, but to be able to converse via a written medium is a pretty important ability to have! And anyone who can keep up in a conversation with me is pretty good conversationalist in my book.

Thursday 27 June 2013

Neglect

The theme of today's post came from the fact I have been creatively negligent recently-I have not been taking the time to write and update this blog or work on any of my other projects. I have a novel and a play sitting part written on my hard drive, two books half read, a costume mockup unfinished and several incomplete posts on both my blogs.
However, we are all constantly negligent in some way or another when you really think about it-we prioritise at the expense of neglecting things that might be more important than we realise. Lately, I have been negligent of my health, my creativity and several of my friends. I've been out late at the expense of my immune system, I've been exercising or helping my mum at the expense of social engagements-especially phone calls. I've been running errands at the expense of family meals. While the things we do are important, and often need to be done we neglect to acknowledge that so too are the things we put off.
One thing we humans often do is neglect our emotional needs. Because emotions and conversations and drama are time-consuming, energy-consuming; we can't get on with all the daily tasks that need to be done if we are busy working on our emotions. But what we forget is that maybe, if we took a little time, often, to acknowledge and look at our feeling, our well-being, we wouldn't have to have the semi-regular explosions of emotion when things get on top of us. Just a thought.
Another thing I neglect is really making an effort in my relationships. I am guilty of taking some of my friends and family for granted. I'm not always bothered to take a call or have a lengthy facebook conversation or play basketball with my little brother. Sometimes I want to be selfish, I feel a need to focus on me. Lately, since I have had less to do and, for a change, am not in a relationship, I have been placing more of an emphasis on the people who make the effort to be in my life-by making an effort to let them. Neglecting something for another person is the best kind of neglect simply because it is the least selfish. Yet it is also good for the soul to actually invest in your relationships. 
I think my worst sin of neglect is my laziness. I neglect to reach my full potential in some endeavours. I settle. I accept satisfaction in the place of delight. I let goals and plans slide, I meander through things instead if powering into them. This post is more meandering than pointed, more vague than poignant. 
I feel a little dull when I think of neglect, of laziness. It reeks of complacency and boredom. With just a hint of pretentiousness. But then, it's what's on my mind-and exploring my mind is one thing I rarely neglect to do- I should simply think more closely about  which of my discoveries may be worth sharing. 

Tuesday 18 June 2013

Happiness

Oh my daysss! Have you ever let out a breath you didn't realise you were holding? Ever felt relieved without even realising you were tense? It is a wow feeling.
No feeling quite compares to realising you are happy, or calm, or relieved. It's always amazing to feel this way but it's so much better when you realise it. When you are aware of a good feeling its potency is trebled. You appreciate it, you revel in it, you acknowledge how gloriously great it is to feel, well, great!
We learn in life very early how to notice sadness, anger, pain. How to wallow in it, throw it around or carry it with us. We take happiness for granted. We think that happiness is the normal state of things and that sadness is an anomaly that we should take notice of. We don't accept how special and important good feelings are. We feel entitled to contentment.
And frankly so we should be but that doesn't mean we should forget to appreciate it. Like love, happiness may not feel constant but it is much more so than we realise. We have the ability to be happy all the time but we feel like something needs to make us happy. Just as we expect a trigger for anger or sadness, and forget that sometimes these feelings come unbidden-as should happiness, if we would only recognise it.
I guess happiness is one of those under-rated things, like the euro-saver menu, mums doing the grocery shopping, spooning and cream cheese. We need to recognise happiness when it's upon us. Otherwise we will continue to pursue something which cannot be caught.

Thursday 13 June 2013

Sleeping Babes

I think there is nothing that makes you love someone more than when you see them sleep. We are all at our gentlest, most vulnerable and childlike when we are sleeping. For me at least, seeing a friend sleeping stirs some warm, fuzzy mothering part of me that makes me smile and want to stroke their hair or kiss their forehead. The confident blonde who shook her ass in a tight dress with you on the dance floor suddenly looks younger, softer, peacefully innocent and free of the weight of self consciousness. The strong lad who downed a few too many beers, slagged you and threw you over his shoulder suddenly looks like a pouting toddler, his normally tensed body relaxed, his face softened and more childlike.
Nothing is more endearing than the squished face or tangled limbs of a sleeping friend. The funny expression they fell asleep wearing, making you wonder what they're dreaming of. The awkward pose they dozed off in somehow seeming to reveal a part of them you don't see while they are awake. Even those of us who do not doze off at our most elegant are somehow beautiful in our sleep purely because of that absence of insecurity and self awareness,. The innocence and purity of our sleeping selves is revealing, but only in the kindest way. Even if they are drooling, or snoring, or muttering or their face is squished unflatteringly into the pillow the softness of our relaxation makes us peaceful. Makes us look like a child in a way that speaks to the relationship instinct in all of us. The part of us that wants hugs, that wants to love, that wants to smile and be smiled at. It is a heart-breakingly perfect feeling to see someone you love sleeping because it reminds you of everything you instinctually love about them, not just their jokes, their stories, their voice when they're excited, their goofy dance moves or the way they hold your hand in a crowded place or how they walk when you're staggering through the night together. You just seem to somehow see everything and nothing all at once. The most simplified version of them, free of the adornments of them consciously engaging with you. It's simply lovely in its lovely simplicity.

Scattered self

It's scary sometimes to think there are little parts of me scattered about the world. In people's memories, in filing cabinets in schools and workplaces, in a bank, in dustbins, in other people's houses and here on the Internet. I wonder sometimes if strangers see little bits of me and wonder about who I am, what I might look like, whether we'd get on.
It' scary because sometimes you want people to see you completely, to understand you in all your hidden complexity, to accept the parts you show of yourself as manifestations of the things you sometimes hide away. Other days you wish you could hide everything about you, portray this someone else, some outer persona, independent of all the things you know about yourself. Not because we are afraid of what other people think of us. But because we are afraid of what we will think of ourselves if we let the parts we don't like to look at out. It is like wanting to be gloriously naked some days, revel in your unique imperfections but have others marvel at the wonder of the human form. Yet other days we will want to cover our body in so many layers we no longer appear ourselves. To protect our soft parts, our scarred parts, the bits that don't quite match. Because we will have to look at them ourselves. And we are scared to expose these things to people who won't realise we can't change them, because we feel like our imperfections are our own cross to bear and that we can't impose that trust upon others whose minds we cannot influence to perceive them as we wish them to be perceived.
So too is the mind. It is scarred and freckled and stretched and damaged in places. Our consciousness is that bit more private because we have too much control of what is seen of it, yet other times no control over what we reveal. We can decide what to use to cover up or flaunt our physical form, but sometimes the mind leaves parts of itself in the world without us realising- while we are trying so hard to control it.
I wonder about the people attached to the little bits of world that cross my path. The owner of the lost glove hung over the railing, the person who feeds the cat that follows me home, the stranger that dropped an entire chicken fillet roll in the alley near the dart station or the face that smiled as I cycled past the bus. So many stories weave through our own and I wonder sometimes how many people might have read a page of mine. And I hope that the writing at least shows me in a good light.

Tuesday 11 June 2013

Drink, Smoke and be Merry

Last night was a truly fantastic night. For the first time ever I think I was a little tipsy. I was giggly, I was relaxed and I had a lot of fun. My friend and I even got stuck in a bath together which was both a result of and a cause for a fit of giggles!
While I did wake up with what I call a food hangover (due to my allergies) I was in good humour despite a mere hour and half of sleep and spending the morning cleaning my friends house! One of my favourite things that stayed with me from the night was everyone's smiles. The embarrassed grin of someone stuck in a bathtub, the mellow glow of someone who'd just smoked a joint and the raucous laughter of people sharing a few cans and talking about stupid things, like boobs or braces.
The night was one of those memorable evenings where I just felt so loved and the happiness was infectious. Walking in I was hugged and squealed at and smiled at more than I have been in a very long time and I felt a weight I didn't realise I was carrying lift from my shoulders because I felt so relaxed. So happy and just...Alive!
People's smiles are the greatest reminder of how much you love them. Seeing someone you love happy is the greatest feeling I believe there is. It meant I didn't stop smiling all night because some people, such as my ex-boyfriend, while completely off of their tits, wore the blissful smiles of the thoroughly stoned for the entirety of the night. I was comfortable in the atmosphere. It was easy. It's been a while since I've felt so completely at ease.
Cans were scattered about the house, people passed out (or rather dozed off!), several threw up (most politely into appropriate receptacles), cigarette butts and roaches littered the garden and voices and music swelled. It was the perfect party atmosphere that you would write in a teen movie. But it was real. It was my people, the people I just want to throw my arms around and plant a big ol kiss on their collective faces. There was no drama, there was no uncomfortableness and no peer pressure. People were drinking and smoking but no one was 'in the horrors' as we call it. No one was aggro. No one was annoying (with one exception of an unwelcome guest). Most importantly, no one was dragging anyone down. If someone was sick, someone stepped in, if someone was getting tired, they looked for a quiet spot and curled up before they had a chance to get cranky!
Last night was  the very definition of 'merry'. It was the scene in Lord of the Rings when the hobbits are drinking pints, it was the party at the end of Superbad when they finally got there with the alcohol, it was the prom at the end of Mean Girls when everyone learns to get along. Happiness is a party surrounded by people you love.

Monday 10 June 2013

Who really wants the D?

At the risk of sounding like Carrie Bradshaw by writing and questioning concepts relating to matters of the heart I feel I need to express my confusion at the male race. I know that men say that women are complicated and I don't deny this fact but the very fact that men are supposed to be simple makes it all the more frustrating when they are mysterious.
Some people argue that if a boy pays any attention to you that is not, by circumstance, necessary he 'wants the D' (obviously not the D its a choice of phrase). If he makes the effort to contact you he wants the D. If he pays you a compliment we definitely wants the D.
Lets suppose that this is not true and that boys are in fact a little less one dimensional than they would have you believe. I happen to have a good few guy friends who obviously hang out with me or talk to me without sexual motivation and therefore fall into the category of 'not wanting the D'.
By contrast there will always be those boys who hang out with you or, more commonly in this technology age, relentlessly facebook or text messaging you, simply because your hormones cause you to have two glands on the front of your body. Yes I wear a bra, it doesn't mean I'm going to fall at your feet because of your eloquent phrasing 'you're hot'...wow. Take me sir...not!
Realistically, half the people who act like they want you, wouldn't know what to do if you agreed and half the people that looked like they don't know who you are secretly find you attractive. Who's talking to you because you're fun and who's hanging with you just because you have a second X chromosome? Who really wants the D? Are all my guy friends secretly wondering what I look like naked? Are all the lads who walk past without wolf whistling thinking I'm a hound? The answer is-who fucking knows? If we could read minds life would be a lot less work...but also potentially very awkward and creepy! Lets just hope that if someone really wants you-they will say so.

Sunday 9 June 2013

Snuff

So this is an unusual direction to take but I was at a club recently, working, and had my first really college experience where I was offered drugs. I actually laughed. Someone offered me some pills and I was so, I guess, surprised, that I just kind of laughed. I don't even drink and there was actual drugs being offered to me of all people. It felt...weird.
It did however set me on the intriguing subject of substance, which of course were discussed in their many forms at different stages during the night. After several acquaintances swallowed some gods-know-what, I joined a group in a haze of smoke with their rollies dangling from lips and between fingers, before dancing with another crowd with their beers in hand. The most intriguing substance I encountered however was snuff. My friend who was using it laughed at himself for the habit, saying it made him look terribly posh to say he would rather snuff than smoke. Despite that fact that there's no way to sniff snuff without looking like a cocaine snorter this was probably the singular flaw of the substance. My friend made a very compelling argument for snuff, and,  as substances go, it seems to have few drawbacks. It is all the fun of a cigarette only without the negative effects! As a non-smoker I wouldn't see the joy of consuming what is essentially pure nicotine but in opposition to the humble cigarette it seemed by far the preferable option. None of the yellowing of fingers and teeth, no smell on your hair and clothes, no ashen taste in your mouth to scare off potential lovers, no need to carry a lighter, skins or filters and most compellingly in my friend's words 'NO CANCER!'. Call me old fashioned-like snuff-but a no cancer option sounds pretty nice in this modern world where it seems to becoming more and more like the common cold!
As a substance-free individual I was surprisingly won over to the underdog snuff. I think if you were to abuse anything, it seems, at face value and based on one friend's propaganda, the safest form of substance fun. I don't think I'll start carrying a tin but I was definitely fascinated by the concept, and it seemed far less scary than the effects I've seen of alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and even the humble marijuana. For ye who strive to try all life's sensations-let me know how snuff stands up against it's cousin the cigarette!

Wednesday 5 June 2013

I Hate You

I hate you. The three little words it is so impossible to say to someone you have loved. You want to scream, and hit them, and shout it out. I. Hate. You. But you can't. Because in your heart of hearts you know what it really means. I love you and I want things to be different.
We always have that one thing, that deal breaker that ruined what our minds, deludedly, perceived as perfect. It could be something they always do, something they never do, one thing that they did or simply that the timing wasn't right. And you want them to change it, you want not to notice it, you want things to have worked. But they haven't-and you can't ever explain what it was you wanted, what you needed, without revealing just how much your heart has hoped for. I hate you really means I want to hate you.
Because things would be so much easier if you could. You may even have ended it-and they did not understand it-and you want so much to explain but they can never understand that it just wasn't right...no matter how much you wanted it to be. That ending it was for them and not you. You wish you could be furious with them for not understanding, for being mad, for being so inconsiderate of feelings you couldn't declare. Your brain screams I hate you to your heart beating I love you. And forever they will niggle at your mind as unfinished business. You will see them across a party, or they'll come up on your facebook news feed with someone else and you want to scream at them for hurting you, why can't they see they're hurting you? Yet how could they? You made it so they wouldn't have to know how they would hurt you, you let them think that you were hurting them when you were protecting them, and yourself. But now you just want to shake them for an obliviousness that was your gift to them. But you can't. You never will. You will think I hate you, feel I love you and say nothing at all.

Tuesday 4 June 2013

Drivel

I disappoint myself ladies and gentlemen. As I go through my daily life I am constantly thinking of great things that I want to write about and the moment I log online after a day in the sunshine I discover my brain has melted and my ideas have wandered off somewhere. The bastards. 
It is a terrible thing this unreliability. The unreliability of my brain and of the Irish weather. You can't ignore the rare bouts of sunshine and lock yourself indoors with your lappy to further your writing career. You must sit and bask in the sunshine. I am at least attempting to further my literary education by reading everything in my house from Look magazine, to Fifty Shades of Grey, to the collected plays of Chekov. So, on the one hand, I feel every day more like a literary goddess, while simultaneously feeling like the laziest writer in history.
It doesn’t help that there’s the added bonus of my brother having commandeered the living room, the only place where my laptop will access the internet, as his study lair for the dreaded leaving certificate. I was under the impression that the desk in his room was for studying, and the living room was for television but clearly I have a mistaken concept of interior design.
It is also a nightmare to attempt to write outdoors because the glare off the page renders me blind and headachy in a number of minutes which doesn’t make for good writing-it makes for bitching, moaning  and exceptionally dire poetry about the sun as a weapon against me.
I am currently attempting to form a list of topics on which I would particularly like to elaborate (some of which, I realise, will make me appear the quintessentially pretentious student but I swear I’m not trying to look intellectual-I really am a nerd!). The list is shockingly short, due in part to the distraction of my father playing on his iPhone while eating his dinner across from me, as I have been exiled to the kitchen. He’s a loud chewer, not much of an excuse for my rambling but it’s the excuse I’m making nonetheless.
By way of another excuse I am horribly dehydrated because I have been lizard-woman all day, basking in the uncharacteristic Irish sunshine. I have a headache that feels like I was violently beaten by a gang. A big one. Of boys. With tattoos. I am hoping once the heat fog clears from my brain (and my brother fecks off to bed) that I will resurrect my night-owl inner writer to dazzle you with all manner of criticism, wit and let’s be honest, probably a lot of rambling. ’Til then I really must end this trail of nonsense (because if my father scrapes his plate with his knife again I will throw my laptop at him) and bid you a fond farewell with an apology for the self-centred drivel you have just read! I promise that I shall thoroughly warm up my creative brain muscles before I write next time.


Friday 31 May 2013

Inexperienced

Hello there interwebbers! I apologise for my online absence but I have been on the hunt. I am currently job hunting like the proverbial mad-yoke while broadening my horizons through study and literature (on top of my busy jobbity job for the lovely dublinconcerts.ie). I have a great deal of exciting topics to broach here with ye faithful readers however at this current moment I am completely and most utterly spent (or as we Irish call it-buggered). Searching for jobs is a) exhausting b) time consuming and c) utterly bleeding depressing. It is no use being academic/literary/sporty/quick on the uptake if you don’t have the Holy Grail- experience. One becomes stuck in this vicious cycle of being unable to get a job because you don’t have experience and unable to get experience because no one will give you a job. Apparently my months in slavery (working for Supermacs) are not enough to secure me even a waitressing position! I am a ballerina! I can balance plates without too much trouble I’m sure! If I can remember the contemporary history of Eastern Europe I’m fairly sure I can remember not to put onions on table 5’s burger. Alas I am apparently unemployable. Walking from business to business in Dublin today I felt like I had a big stamp on my forehead saying INEXPERIENCED. I would consider myself more than qualified for most of the things I have applied for and for the ones where training is required I am quick as the proverbial whip at picking things up. It is so terrible to spend time compiling a list of everything you’ve done and everything you’re good at only to be basically realise your skills are inadequate or useless in the so called working world. Ye of little self-esteem (cough me cough) shall suffer greatly from this level of rejection-the job market is treating me the way boys treated 13 year old me-with complete and utter disinterest! If you like I are struggling away in the aul job market and considering selling yourself as a human rug to gain some meagre funds DO NOT DESPAIR. I am telling you right now that employers are fools-you are a delightful being filled with potential! You have skills. You are capable, talented and downright dynamite! Keep your heads up job seekers because while it may be cripplingly depressing and while you may feel inadequate you will one day be laughing at these silly managers and owners who based your abilities on a silly slip of paper and a lack of experience. 

Wednesday 22 May 2013

Goody Two-Shoes

No time to write much today but talking to an old friend reminded me of a nickname I once had: Goody Two-Shoes. My best friend growing up was half Brazilian and only spent half of the year here in Ireland and called me the name affectionately-not realising that it was considered a tease here in Ireland. I remember telling her I was offended and asking her not to call me it but looking back I can't quite pinpoint why I was offended. To be perfectly honest I was, and still pretty much am twelve years later, a Goody Two-Shoes.

I guess those of us who are seen as 'bad' just want people to see how 'good' we can be, while those of us always seen as 'goody-goodies' just want people to think we're bad and a bit wild from time to time. Honestly, whatever people assume about me I inherently want to convince them of the opposite. People who know me well will know that I'm actually a bit boring, I don't drink or smoke, I've never been arrested, I barely even go out and when I'm at home I'm usually watching T.V. or doing chores like a good daughter. I'm pretty similar to how I was when I was 7 year old 'Goody Two-Shoes'. All that's really changed is my outward appearance and a handful of strange hobbies I've acquired.
Since I was 14 I have no longer looked like the 'Goody Two-Shoes' I am. I remember my very first boyfriend's father being wary of me because I had dyed hair and boobs. I've looked older for my age pretty much since I hit puberty and having had a string of boyfriends, dyejobs and the occassional punky haircut people began to make assumptions about me.
Now most of my schoolmates still knew I was a nerdy, debate loving, teacher's wet dream but out of uniform people thought all sorts of things. For a while I actually liked it, I'd never been that badass chick and it made me feel cool. After a while though, it started to make me self-conscious and even offended; people implied all sorts of behaviour, from sexual behaviour, to boyfriend stealing, to lesbian trysts, to run ins with the Gardaí and I started to get sick of it. I just wanted people to see me as Goody Two-Shoes again.
Now that I'm out of the jungle of secondary school I feel like I'm finally capable of being both my personalities. When you leave school, life's deck of cards is reshuffled and you get to introduce yourself as whoever you want to be to all the new people in your life. People still question my duller habits, especially the not drinking. While others question my more, I like to think badass, attributes-like my multi-hued hair or my tiny tattoo. At the end of the day I finally feel secure enough in myself that no matter what assumptions people may make, I know that being Goody Two-Shoes is nothing to be ashamed of, even if the only people who seem to find it completely pride-worthy are my parents.

Monday 20 May 2013

The storm within

Anxiety weighs upon the soul like a stone in your pocket.
A weight in your chest that makes you feel as though you can't move, or breathe, or even think. 

You want to smother yourself in the comfort of blankets, ingest the warmth of tea to melt the cold stone of anxiety.
Yet, 

No amount of comforting your body or mind seems to ease the ache, the constant niggling heaviness of the anxiety.
You can only breath and wait it out. 

Like a storm outside-no amount of battling the wind with your inside-out umbrella can make the sun return. 

Saturday 18 May 2013

Anti-social Socialite

I am always chatting to someone. I know a lot of people around my college and when I walk around town or any of the places near me I can never do so without running into someone, getting chatting to someone. I get invited to things the odd time, if people are on their way to something they'll often ask me along; in the case of some particular friends this can be by way of forcibly bringing me with them!
Despite the fact that I superficially appear to be quite 'popular', I can be quite an antisocial individual, most of the time I'd rather stay at home and relax than go out and hang with other people. If there's short notice I usually pump myself up to go and end up having a great time but if its on a day where I'm just kina waiting around til I go to some event I often can't bother myself to be excited about going-it's a real pain.
I was telling one of my closest that I only really have a handful of people that I genuinely want to spend time with, plenty I enjoy spending time with but only a handful that I actually really think about hanging out with and consciously would make the effort to see. I have some close friends who I love deeply and would be there for in a heartbeat if they needed me, yet some days I am just not in the mood to hang out with them. Sometimes in life we even make those fabulously rare friends who you can tell that you're simply not arsed to go out and they will just laugh and not hold it against you.
This year has seen me become somewhat of a hermit. Between the transition to Trinity, a broken leg and ending up behind on work I haven't really gotten back into my social stride and still feel a little awkward about socialising in the arena of my peers, especially those who don't know me all that well yet. I feel like I'm out of the loop on what's normal to get up to, where's cool to go out, what people listen to; I feel like someone's mum trying to be 'down with the kids' because of my current level of social awkwardness!
At this stage, I'm hoping someone will force me into some fun so that I realise that I'm perfectly capable of interacting with people and that I'll enjoy it if I just get off my lazy ass, slap on some mascara and smile!

Thursday 16 May 2013

Age before partying

So I've reached a stage in my life where I worry that I'm acting like an old fogey. I know I'm not the most typical of students, I don't drink, smoke, I don't experiment with even the softest of drugs and I'm not someone who sleeps around. I sometimes worry that people think I'm what we Irish call 'a dry shite'. I know that I'm not as bad as our parents-I don't oppose any of the things I don't practise (bar drugs lets not be silly now!) but I definitely have days where I worry about some of the behaviour of my friends.
I rarely voice these concerns except in an occasional jokey fashion because I don't want people to see me as the mummy of the group. It does seem unfair to me that people constantly criticise or laugh at my choices while I am forced to keep silent about my feelings because people will think I'm either boring, damaged or highly religious. Is it totally unreasonable to think that drinking at two in the afternoon isn't really a good thing? Or that being stoned five days in a row isn't hilarious? Or that getting an STD isn't just 'par for the course in student life'? I hate that I'm uncool for being able to remember all my nights out, or for never having thrown up on someone, or for refusing to poison my lungs, or for not wanting to have sex with someone who won't remember me. I'm not afraid of people thinking differently of me because of the way I live, I just don't see why my way has to be considered 'weird'. I'm more than happy to have you blow smoke in my face or bring you snacks and febreeze your clothes when you're stoned and even hold your hair back or listen to the same slurred story over and over again, I'd just appreciate is next time everyone was laughing about a one night stand or some drunken shenanigan that they wouldn't also tell me 'I don't get it' or laugh at me for never having done it. You're young, have fun and take me with you-just don't judge me when I accept much more annoying fallout from your lifestyle.

Mind over matter doesn't matter

Popular psychology tells us we have ultimate control over our minds and ourselves, and that no one can make us feel a certain way without our permission. We think we can control our mind and our world by focusing on positive thoughts or productive thoughts or even negative thoughts. Frankly, we are completely wrong. Hear me out before you judge me for denying psychology as a whole. Yes, to a degree, we control ourselves and our actions; I'm not saying we are powerless slaves to some other force. But, our thoughts are not entirely under our control. Sometimes, no matter what we're doing, one thought dominates our minds. Other times we can't keep one thing focused in our minds no matter how much we need to-our minds flit from thought to thought with little consideration for things we need to get done. Sometimes we get a song stuck in our head and we could be in space, or at a funeral, or kissing someone and our brains can be singing 'I'm gonna pop some taaaaags, only got twenny dollas in ma pockeeeeeeet'. We think we can control our minds but we can't. When we're trying to relax, all we can think about is the things we need to do; when we're trying to get over someone, all we can think about is their smile. I have realised recently that I cannot control my thoughts. I already knew this was difficult with someone like me who has an anxiety disorder-I am well aware of my mind having its own agenda which, more often than not, is totally contrary to what I want or need. I guess I'm just glad to learn that, when I really think about it, none of us has as much control as we think we do, a fact that is oddly comforting when one has those moments when one feels completely nuts.

Poetry 2

So I recently found some poetry I wrote when I was about 15 and I thought I'd share it here. The sentiment is good but I've tweaked the writing a little because I had a bit too much a need to rhyme regardless of whether the words fit.

This was called The Barbie Doll Race

I started to choke
On your second hand smoke
As you turned to me
I looked at you
You asked if I would like one too.

Just one puff and I'll be in your heart
If I say no, we stay apart
I guess right now I have to choose
Myself or you, both ways I lose. 

Should I follow the crowd
or stand my ground
The smoke, these thoughts,
make my head pound. 

I could make myself the girl of your dreams
How I am won't do it seems.
If I'm not like you its clear we're through;
I can't be me and still have you. 

(I think it looks better ending there though it does continue on:
I shake my head and walk away
because to me it's clear as day

What i thought were dreams of love
Were clouded by smoke
It was the truth
Not the nicotine
On which I choked.)

Tuesday 7 May 2013

Self-awareness

Self-awareness is terribly important. Terrible at times, but also important for everyday life. I think everyone out there has that one friend who has no awareness of what their talents are
I am not talking about those over humble friends that don't realise that they are gifted or lovely or beautiful. I am talking about those friends who think they are many things but are, in fact, terribly ordinary. Those friends who constantly show off 'talents' in which their performance is actually very mediocre.
I have a number of friends who think they are really deep and gifted writers. But you cannot tell them their poetry is awful or that promoting their 'short stories' all over facebook is embarrassing. The very worst is those people who, while they may not be bad at something, the very fact that they think they are talented at something makes their mediocrity all the more painful. This most commonly manifests in singers (usually girls). Now I myself cannot sing, and I do people the courtesy of not pretending to have any skill in that area. I do however have a number of friends who call themselves 'singers' when they really do not have a good voice. They can carry a tune yes, but their confidence causes them to try to sing well beyond their range and limits. A truly good singer adapts songs to their abilities while the unaware sings like they are Adele when in fact they're more in the region of Ke$ha. It. Kills. Me.
Now I'm not saying that confidence and a bitta balls aren't admirable traits, but over-confident people are incredibly hard to get on with, especially when they don't have the talent to back it up. I don't want to read your bad poetry, especially when you expect me to tell you how moving it was; I don't wanna watch you sing when you expect me to clap; I don't wanna tell you how 'awesome' and 'unique' your outfit is when you look totally normal. I once heard a great traceur (parkour practitioner) say 'Never tell people you're good, if you're good they'll tell you'. I think there are plenty of people who could benefit from this kind of thinking.

Monday 6 May 2013

Poem 1

Sometimes I get sad
I know everyone does
But I worry
I worry that sadness is not beautiful
I worry that I won't be lovely for you
with tears on my cheeks
and a weight
where my heart should be

The age of information

People like to think we live in an age of knowledge with all the technology at our fingertips and google to answer our every question. I think we live in an age of information but where knowledge is sorely lacking. There is no knowledge without experience. We cannot learn without context.
I got thinking about this because I've been having some problems in different aspects of my personal life, nothing big or scary just stuff I'm trying to figure out. Unlike my exams, the answers i need are not online or in my notes, I can't email my lecturer and ask for guidance on these, Even the internet cannot help me.
My concern is that we are so used to being able to instantaneously acquire information that we no longer acquire knowledge-if we forget it we can just google it again. I feel this is slowly making us ill equipped to deal with issues we encounter in our lives. Sure you can google 'How do I tell someone I like them' or 'How do I break up with someone' or 'Should I get back with my ex?'. You can askjeeves why your parents are always on your back or why your friends seem to have changed since they started at their new college. Let's be honest though-the internet is full of information, but not a lot of knowledge about you, your situation, your feelings or what you need to know. The information age cannot make up for the ancient technique of simply figuring things out for yourself, and i apply this not just to personal lives but to research, learning, curiosity; we have become lazy where we were once, as a race, ambitious. Luckily, there will always be things that technology cannot do for us so we must always endeavour to acquire knowledge ourselves, and not try to learn information.

Tuesday 30 April 2013

Typing stutter

It is unbelievably the number of posts for this that I start but, for one reason or another, never finish. It's like when you half remember a dream, or some anecdote from your life or a scene from a movie but suddenly-in full swing of relating something, you lose it. That's it; there is no getting back on the train of thought once you've leapt off the back carriage. You can chase the train, but you'll just stumble on the tracks, realise there's no catching up, and just accept that it's gone.
In real life the conversation moves on; there's a brief moment where the speakers recognise the loss of topic but they do not mourn, someone else has a story, or an idea, or news, and you forget all about what it was you were going to say. Not so when writing. When I click onto my blogger account and enter the realm of my posts, there await me dozens marked with neat orange italics pronouncing them drafts. I like that it says draft, it makes me feel more like they are practise runs, that I'll take another swing at them, roll them around in my mind and produce them differently, hopefully better. I know in reality that they are half formed thoughts, and it annoys me because I don't want to change them or improve them I just want them back. Sadly this means that the thing I like best about writing this blog; that I log on with a thought, follow it to its conclusion and then publish it. (Occasionally reading through it for typos since I don't seem to be able to find the spell check anymore.)
Some days it doesn't work though, someone messages me, my best friend calls, my mum needs to fill me in on when she needs me to babysit, someone wants to watch the TV or I have to have dinner. The thought is lost and, like waking from a dream, the more I try to clutch at the straws of what I was doing the quicker it seems to flee my brain. I keep these half thoughts here safe online so that if it ever returns to me I can get it down. If it never returns, I just let my eyes look on it in a new way, finish it some other, less inspired day and publish it with a little less satisfaction knowing that it wasn't what it could have been if I'd got it all out at its purest.

Leggings

No dear readers I am not converting this to a fashion blog (I'm mad enough to have one already...don't judge me I'm fabulous), but I do feel that this issue of the humble clothing item has weighed heavily on my mind this year and I must be silent no more on this highly superficial issue.
I wear leggings a lot, they are like sweatpants in terms of comfort and jeans in terms on wearability, they're great they really are. However ye people of Ireland have taken the legging, blessing that it is to those of us too style conscious to venture into the world in sweatpants, and you have made it a thing of cringeyness, of sadness, of oh-dear-god-no-...ness.
Issue one-why is it that such a high percentage for the Irish population think that it is suitable to wear leggings like trousers. No. I repeat no. This is incorrect thinking public and it should be clear why. Would you wear tights out without a skirt or a dress or something over your bottom?? No is (hopefully dear Jesus) the answer. Leggings are only a small, teeny really, step away from tights. Please consider the fact that they are much closer to tights than to trousers. So stop it. Cover your bum it is public indecency.
Issue 2- Irish people exposing their behinds in such away has another issue to it. Now I do not wish to offend people, I am Irish myself please remember but this has to be said. As a nation, our women are not blessed with good bums. I'm sorry but they tend to be on either the broad or flat side and this can be shown off in an extremely unflattering way by the leggings look. Too naked ladies. No please...even if you have a really great bum this does not look good. Stop wearing them like jeans..stop it
Issue 3-now this is the key issue with combining them with zero bum coverage is pants. If you wear big pants people can see them through it or you panic about having a VPL (visible pantie line for those of you unversed in underwear strategy). Worse than this...is the thong. Now thongs have their function, otherwise no one would wear an uncomfortable string type thing in their bum let's be honest, but leggings are not that purpose. I cannot count the number number of times I have had to walk behind an unsupported bottom with just a thin layer of fabric separating me and the naked glory of someones behind. You are fooling no one-we can all see your thong...and we don't want to. I would rather have a vpl than walk about with people seeing my entire bum. Ladies...please no.
Issue 4-finally and this issue is closest to my heart-gentlemen-never wear leggings. Unless you are at a ballet class or performing as Peter Pan you must never ever wear them. They were not made for you. They do not look good on you. They are not attractive. No. That is all.

I apologise for being so ranty but I had to get this out or I risked yelling at strangers to put clothes on. Which is a little premature at my age...I'll wait til I have teenage kids before I make such demands.

Monday 29 April 2013

Magpie

I am a magpie, collecting beautiful things into my life. Perhaps because of some acute awareness of my own normality, a sense of how ordinary we all are beneath everything, I, like so many, yearn to have beautiful things in my life.
I am not thinking of material possessions, not like the magpie do I crave the sparkle of jewels and precious metals. Money is not beautiful nor does it lure me. I will admit I appreciate the beauty that clothes, accessories and decorations bring into my everyday life but my insatiable desire to collect beauty to myself is not concerned with these easy methods of owning beauty. True beauty cannot be owned, only experienced. This is why is has to be gathered, collected, catalogued into the mind, into the creativity of an individual.
I've talked before about beautiful words, which I collect in my mind and in a document on computer. I have a tumblr account where I collect beautiful images. I have a camera to collect beautiful moments and sights and I have a tin to collect beautiful little objects; pressed flowers, buttons, postcards, notes and letters, ribbons and wrappings, beads and scraps of fabric.
But the place where I collect my most beautiful things is in my heart. The special moments you share with the people closest to you, the hugs and kisses with friends and lovers, those days of laughter with friends who you forgot you loved as much as you do. The moments where someone, who didn't have to, picks us up when we're down. When a stranger pays us a compliment, when a story moves us, when we surprise ourselves, when we make someone proud, when someone tells you they love you. These are the most beautiful moments, the little pearls the pressures of life reward us with.
Collected in the jewellery box of my heart with these moments are my life's beautiful people. These are the ones who didn't steal your heart, but made you realise just how it felt to really use yours, the people who make you smile even when you're sad, the people who make you feel lucky to know them, the people who inspire, the people that make you feel like you are capable of anything, the ones who make you feel like you are an inspiration. There is nothing more beautiful than a beautiful person who nurtures beautiful feelings and beautiful thoughts within you. That is the beauty I collect.

Shall we dance?

I recently re-lived one of those magical childhood moments that you grow out of being able to do, that you forget about because you think you're too old for.
I don't know if many of you did this with your dad or grandad or something when you were little but I vaguely remember being very small and dancing on my dad's feet. You tentatively put your feet on top of someone else's, part of you terrified you might squish them, then you hold on tight to the person and they move you around with steps and twirls and you can't help but feel like a princess at a ball.
I'm all grown up now but the feeling is exactly the same, perhaps even more magical because you thought you'd never do it again! I was particularly stressed out as I have college exams at the moment and, it having being a difficult year for me, I felt very unprepared. My friend opened his arms and gathered me in, holding me closer than my favourite jeans. While I was snuggled in the warmth of the embrace, he whispered into my hair 'Put your feet on my feet'. I laughed but he insisted so, ever so gently, I stood on his feet in my big heavy trainers. Suddenly he lifted my feet with his, gently at first, side to side like a slow dance, then faster, bigger steps til we felt like we were leaping around and I was his puppet girl.
Honestly, it may not sound it, but it was magical. Breathtaking and giggly, silly but sweet I felt like I was six years old again-and with that I lost all the cares of my adult self.

Wednesday 24 April 2013

Stress

People cope with stress differently. Almost no one knows how to deal with it in a healthy way. Some of us stop eating or sleeping, some of us can't stop eating and just feel constantly tired no matter how much we sleep. Some of us lock ourselves in libraries or bedrooms, while some of us get out and try to forget it's even happening. Some people cram and others plan. Some of us feel more confident the more we revise, some of us just find more and more panic with each turning page. Some days we feel we need to keep constantly busy so we don't have time to feel stressed while some times we just crack and lie in state, hoping that maybe we can acquire knowledge by osmosis.
Sometimes stress is like an illness; dark circles under the eyes, shaking hands, problems focusing, exhaustion, lethargy, depression, pushing people away and spending hours in bed or unable to eat or sleep.
Other times its like a drug; frenzied bouts of energy and productivity, sped up speech, constant business and inability to connect with people because of manic mood swings and brutal crashdowns.
For something that crops up so very often in even the most average of lives, our ability to deal with the feeling of stress is almost non existent-we simply have to battle through, hoping that every so often the stress will pressurise us into greatness and not into something more desperate.

Tuesday 16 April 2013

Gold and grey

Everything looks better in the sunshine, the grey buildings of the city centre transform, peoples eyes seems to sparkle and their hair shines and their skin glows. Where I live the days are too often grey, drizzly, dull and downright miserable. It's easier to be happy when the sun is shining, when the world around you is bright. The brightness almost encourage you to complement it with brightness in yourself. Grey days have a power to make us similarly gloomy, sluggish, dreary and tired. I find it harder to do anything when the weather is dark and depressing-it brings out the misery in me. I'd rather be warm in the sun and warm in my heart than almost anything else in the world.

Defining marks

I hate when my scars itch, that niggling irritation of an injury that has healed but hasn't had the decency to leave your body, that is not content with being visible but must remind you, itching away just in case you forgot it was there.
Growing up, scars were my trophies, rewards for scraps with the neighbourhood boys, daring feats on my scooter, silly falls on my roller blades. When I got to my teens they were just parts of me, signs of growing up, a patterned patchwork of the incidents that make up a life.
Growing older, they became something I worried about, I worried people who did not see their stories would read my scars differently, would judge me differently. The parkour accident that mean my shin will never be smooth, the long line and the lump of my foot operation, the perfect circles where moles were removed.
We are all marked in ways that single us out as individuals, some of us have different bones, one leg longer than the other, a curved back, double jointed fingers or something that doesn't work properly. Some of us have freckles, others have birthmarks and some moles (I have some on my face that can be joined into a near perfect parallelogram).
We are none of us without defining physical features, yet, when we walk around, we don't always remember these things because we carry them with us always and sometimes it takes a questions, a comment, a remark from some other party to make us realise that something about us is different...other times, the only thing we need to remind us-is an itch.

To pass the time

I wrote down all the burning questions in my mind, all the ones I could not and would not ask of you. I touched them to my old yellow lighter and watched sad words and ugly thoughts become beautiful flames.
I wrote down all the beautiful things you'd said to me, the things I couldn't stand to remember anymore, knowing I will never hear them cross your lips again. I tied them up with string and buried them like the feelings I cannot live with. 

Last of all, I took all the anger, all the frustration, the misunderstandings and the sadness. I stood by the sea and I screamed them into the wind, letting it carry them away from me while the crashing waves drowned them.
Then, when I was empty of everything in me that could hurt you, I wrote this to pass the time while I wait for you to learn to live with me. 

Friday 12 April 2013

Consumed

Panic; anxiety and pain and sadness are my fears. They are consuming, monstrous, destructive. The crushing pain like your heart is being crumpled like a sheet of scrap paper, the breathlessness like you've been punched in the stomach by hulk-like fists, the overwhelming, all-encompassing feeling of utter futility-of having no power over this unfathomable, crushing weight crashing down upon you. The tears that roll down your cheeks turning from a shower to a raging storm as you lose the ability to keep them silent, to stop your face from wrinkling up and noises like that of an injured animal escaping you-crushed out of you by the pain that you can't sooth because it seems to radiate from the very centre of your being. You feel like you would give anything, that you would tear the beating heart from your body just to take away this feeling, to relieve the pain, the weight, the breathlessness. The puffy face from the crying, the unpleasant stickiness of the congealed tears on your chin, the sicky feeling in your throat from all the gasping and heaving and sobbing.
But it is not the lack of control, nor the crushing pain, the hiccoughing cries, the sick feeling afterwards nor the sheer hideousness of the experience that is the worst part-it is the feeling that caused it-that one little thought that can cause an anarchy of emotion, physically and mentally, that is like a ravaging natural disaster upon the terrain of your body and soul.
And after the crying is over, and when the jumpy, heaving breaths have subsided, when the tears have dried- sometimes the rawness, the emptiness and that thought that triggered it; they linger on. This is why pain, however 'temporary' is so feared, so very devastating.

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Lovely Noise

Today while typing emails to people and working on my script I realised just how soothing and pleasing the soft clickety-clack  of my fingers moving across the keyboards was. It's probably one of my favourite sounds; it's the sound of productivity, creativity, enthusiasm, communication.
There are so many simple everyday sounds that are lovely just because of what we associate with them; I love the whoosh noise the burner makes when the heat is turning on, or the hum of the water heater when the shower starts running. I love the crackle of hot butter in a pan of the click the kettle makes when it has finished boiling.
I love the sound of my name in other people's mouths, the accent in a voice telling the story of where that person has been. I love the sound of fingers brushing lightly along skin or the beat of a heart. I like the heavy but gentle sound of sleeping breaths or the click of bones when I stretch in the morning.
I love that the world was intended to be experienced by each and every sense and if you focus on just one you realise just how much you take in every day, the murmur of other peoples conversations, the tinny sound of music escaping from earphones, pages turning, pens scratching on paper, chairs creaking, legs crossing and uncrossing, scratching heads, drumming fingers, tapping toes, beeping horns, engines roaring and the wind shaking the trees; these are the things that form the soundtrack of our lives.

Sunday 7 April 2013

Just trying it on

Today I want to discuss a pet peeve of mine; straight people who kiss members of the same sex 'for fun' (which often is a loose translation for 'because they've had a lot to drink'). While I am generally an advocate of fun, especially of the kissing kind in the right atmosphere, I can't stand mixed messages.
People don't realise how hard it can be for people who are actually attracted to people of the same sex to work out who's interested, who's not and who's just playing around for the night. For you it might just be a bit of fun or 'just to try it' but for some people it is a way of life and you could be toying with someone's emotions when you're 'just having fun'.
While you know what to expect from members of the same sex whether they kiss you on a night out or at a party or in a more casual setting it's 10 times harder when it's someone of the same sex because the signals aren't the same. Unless you're at a gay bar or you intimately know the person it's damn near impossible to tell who's just having a laugh and who actually might be interested.
I know many people who have been absolutely crushed after finally kissing someone they've liked for ages at a party only to find out when they spoke to them the next morning that it was 'so funny' that they kissed and they were 'sooo wasted'.
Loose sexuality these days can be really emotionally damaging in some situations (it's not exclusive to gays and bis receiving mixed messages) and I really so wish some people would think before they act.

Tuesday 2 April 2013

Peer pressure

Today I experienced something I hadn't for a long time; peer pressure. OK admittedly it was highly lighthearted and jokey but nevertheless I was surprised at how difficult I found it to stand up for myself to my peers.
Growing up I was lucky enough that most people actually kind of respected the fact that I wouldn't be pressured into things and they were usually quite complimentary of the fact that I didn't drink or smoke or do drugs or fool around with inappropriate men. Granted there were also a lot of insistent drunkards who kindly poured beverages on me in an attempt to nourish me with alcohol or those who spiked my drinks and offered me 'just a glass of fanta'. Luckily, I was always much more assertive when I was younger because it was something to be proud of then.
Nowadays a lot of people kinda just think it's weird and some are actually almost uncomfortable with the idea that I don't drink, smoke or do drugs. I don't care because I don't object to these things-hell they are pretty darn normal these days! I think many people worry that because I'm not partaking that I am judging those who do; that's how I would probably feel if there was one person who wouldn't get involved in something I was doing with my friends.
I find it a little frustrating that if I objected to cocaine people would agree and if I refused ecstasy many would respect me for it but when I refuse to drink people find it near impossible to  accept. It's ridiculous that it is easier to lie and say I can't drink or to make up a reason for why I don't because 'I'm just not into it' isn't good enough.
I wouldn't force people to live my way and I respect that people find that a few drinks or a smoke enhance their evening-for me I enjoy things just fine without the assistance of substances.
I wonder sometimes if this is a reflection of the influence of the modern culture of instant gratification-people have become so used to enhancing stimuli that they prefer the altered consciousness to the all natural experience.
I do not propose that people shouldn't drink-hell most people are more interesting with alcohol, I just wish that people didn't find it weird that I don't.