Fear

It spreads through your body quickly or slowly, never in between. Like an ice cube in your stomach, it radiates a cold numbness through your entire body, creating a lump at the back of your throat and a sense of vertigo; everything spinning around you despite not moving at all. As if it were happening to someone else, you seem to leave your body, hovering between one being and another as the reality-ironically, given your sense of escapism- sets in your mind. Maybe the reason your perspective on the world changes is because you don't want to accept the reality of your situation? Point aside, it's a feeling that I've become far too familiar with in the past few months, to the point where I can articulate it all too well, as previously done.

What's causing my fear right now, I'm afraid, I'm not at liberty to discuss. In my own self pitying cloud of fearful sadness, though, I sat alone in my room and thought about what had made me become so fearful and why, exactly, it was happening. Admittedly, in the past, I've been far from saintly and have, as I'm sure everyone has, done things that I'm far less than proud of...but does that mean I have to pay the consequences and sit in fear for an undefined amount of time until something, again, bad happens that makes me suffer again? I may not be the injured party in what I've had a hand in and I'm aware of that...but when does it stop? Where's the line that says 'Enough is enough, you've paid your dues'? Personally, I think I've at least met that line and, with what I've found out, could end up far beyond it.

Retribution is a strange thing though. Whether you've paid for what you've done or not depends entirely on who you ask and, for some, the debt may never be repaid whereas, for others, it may have been made up for a long time ago. In my own life, I try to apply a 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' policy, so I usually try to be lenient with people. One person can never truly understand how remorseful another is (or isn't, as the case may be) over a situation, but I like to have faith in people and- even if they've done wrong to me- try to see the best. That may be slightly naive of me...and I'd have to agree, but I think that everyone deserves the chance to do right by something they've done wrong...even if it turns out that they don't want to do right by it.

What does all this mean about my fear though? I'm not quite sure...this blog was mainly just a way to get down my thoughts and feelings. I don't know if anyone properly reads these, but it's when I feel like this that I just want help. Just a few years ago things were so easy, there were no fears of this magnitude, of the kind that I have now, that's the innocence of youth that we all lose eventually: That the world actually becomes dangerous. After a while, there's no-one to protect us, no-one to stop us making the mistakes that bring fear-inspiring danger to our doorsteps. It's to combat this, perhaps, that my naive mind decides to be so forgiving to others...in the hope that maybe someone will extend the same favour back to me. Call it what you will, stupidity, hope, all I know is that it's the one thing- sometimes- that keeps me going: The thought that someone out there might offer the same leniency towards me.

Memories

For a long time now I've been pestered by my Mother to get rid of some of the books that have, over my years of incessant buying, mounted up from being in the bottom of one cupboard to being halfway up said cupboard, a cupboard above my bed and under the wardrobe in the next room. Today, however, she made me fill an entire box full of books for me to get rid of and, honestly, I found it really difficult to throw away any of them. When I read a book so many things factor into what's brought up when I think about it or read it again. The place I was when I read it, the things I thought as I became engrossed in the story, events happening around me, even the music I listened to all play a part in my memories of reading a book. For example: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I rented it from the high school library and I read it every morning in the staff room of my Mum's workplace while listening to Tsukiko Amano. As a result, whenever I think of the Da Vinci Code, I get a musty, rich smell that only library books can have, I can feel the hard, leather seating beneath me, I can hear the soprano tones of a J-Rock artist singing about losing a loved one. For me, every single book thrown away was like a memory, a document of at least one moment in my life, that I was losing. Really, though, all the books themselves are is a trigger for my mind. The memories exist in my head entirely, there isn't a part of those books that co-exists with my mind...so why was I so reluctant to get rid of them? It didn't take me long, once arriving to this question, to come to the conclusion that I was afraid. The reason I didn't want to get rid of my books is because I was afraid of forgetting. My fear is that if I get rid of my books then I'll be getting rid of a way to remember what I might otherwise forget and, if I forget everything, I fear that might mean I'm losing myself. When I thought more, though, I began to realise that this is a more common fear than I first thought. In our lives, sometimes without realising it, we accumulate objects that we place meaning or memory to. If you decorate an apartment with a roomate or partner, receive a gift, make something special or even take pictures, what you're doing creates a memory of an event and, in the cases mentioned above, it's more often than not that you don't get rid of them...at least for a very long while. It's a compulsion that we, as human beings, have: To collect and put memories to things and it's my belief, now, that it may be because we know, deep down, that one day we're going to forget everything if we don't have a way of remembering things. The human brain is an amazing organ that processes information we're not even aware of and it can recall so much more than we first think...but that doesn't stop a person feeling debilitated if they can't consciously remember an event. What can I do about it though? Realistically, I can't keep accumulating things throughout my life...at least not at the rate I currently am, I'd have no room in any house! A part of growing up, though, is maybe to look back on parts of your life and draw a conclusion to them. I may have a lot of memories attached to each of my books...but that was so many years ago now, maybe the best thing to do is to look back on that part of my life as, generally, one that I enjoyed and move on to bigger and better things. There's no doubt that I'll have more things worth remembering and it doesn't mean I value the memories I already have any less, but it would make more sense to bring a close to one chapter in my life, clear the metaphorical table and let it become cluttered once more by this brand new chapter in my life. Who knows what it could bring?

Shades Of Grey

This morning someone held together two pieces of a broken sellotape dispenser to form a '69' shape and then said to me 'I need to grow up, don't I?' and my instant reaction was 'No, you're fine just as you are' but, I began to think, that for him to even ask that question then he must think differently towards himself in that aspect than I do. The conclusion, then, that everyone holds different opinions on different things is nothing new at all until you begin to look at opinions on different things in different situations. If we look more closely at my real life example, growing up, then there are so many levels of interpretation to what 'growing up' actually is. To some it's an age, to others it's a mindset, for some people it may be taking responsibility or independence in your life and, for the person mentioned above, it may be thinking with a mind that's in the gutter a bit less often. Listing examples of what qualifies 'growing up' is a relatively easy task though, the hard part comes at when people think or feel qualified to have 'grown up'. If it's a very distinct, clear point like turning a certain age, then you can set as a rule that you're now grown up...but do you feel grown up? Do others think that you've grown up? If you substitute the situation for the other conditions listed previously, then the list of questions just keeps going on and ultimately circles around the point of 'How can someone judge whether someone has grown up or not?' and the answer that I came up with is that, for the most part, you really can't. Like with a lot of situations in life (morality, in particular, has a good scope for this) the answers come in shades of grey with, sometimes, one being no more right than another or with no-one being able to distinguish what option may be better than another. If so many things exist in the world in shades of indistinguishable grey, then why do we seek so often to draw clear, distinct lines that force us to choose black or white of our options? The law, in particular, is flawed in this aspect, I believe, because although it seeks to do justice and be fair to everyone, every person and every case is completely different and has so many factors to consider that the distinct line between black and white can often become extremely unfair to many people. What solution would I suggest for this? I honestly don't know, but on a larger scale of life I would probably have to say this: In the world there exists many shades of grey, many uncertain decisions and questions in life that give you answers that answer nothing certain for you. In those situations, sometimes you've got to make a choice and neither are your preferred option. Whatever you do, after thinking long and hard about it, choose the option that you'll have no regrets about. If that means not making a choice at all, then so be it, but the way I see things is that if you have doubts or uncertainties over your choice then through life you're going to fill with so many regrets that the grey choices around you will only get darker until you can't see the lighter end of the spectrum. So be considerate to yourself, be smart and love the life you live, you might only have one depending on your outlook.

History - We learn from the past so as to not repeat its mistakes

It's a phrase that I've heard a lot in my life, whether rephrased or implied metaphorically, I've always thought that it's a lesson that holds true for everyone and that applies on many levels: If we learn from the things we have done in the past, we can avoid making the same mistakes again. The part of my interpretation that brought about this particular post was that it 'applies on many levels' because this week I managed to hopefully look at the past and stop myself making mistakes that would bring me a lot of disappointment. Once again, just to forwarn, I'm talking about my love life. In the past two relationships I've had (what I would probably call my only two other relationships) they have been with people that have seen me a very extensive amount and whom have been very talkative with me online or via text. The social interaction was good, I never shied away from it for the most part, and I became very used to it and comfortable with it. Obviously, given that they're former relationships, things didn't last and now, in the present, I find myself with someone who has a different level of communication with me. We don't see each other as much as my past relationships, nor do we talk online as much, and for a while this slightly bothered me and led me to message him to the point where I was worried that I was becoming annoying. The other night, though, I had an epiphany about the whole situation and realised something: It's not that he was interacting with me on a low maintenance level... it's that I was just too used to a high maintenance level. It began to dawn on me, as I thought on things, that the amount that we talk and the amount that we see each other is, although reduced due to certain events, actually very reasonable. If I text or message, he'll reply if I really need him to and- if it's not urgent- he'll reply in his own time. In a week we might see each other for at least 3 days and next week we're going away for a week (with family), so it's not like I'm deprived of seeing him on any level and it's this realisation that led me to the conclusion above: I've become too used to seeing my partners a lot. How this links into 'learning from the past' might not seem clear at first but, to me, the realisation in itself was learning from my past because, for all I know, the reason why those relationships ended could be because I saw my partners too much. It's very easily done to end up seeing someone so much you start to dislike them, we've all done it. This lesson I've learnt from my past, I hope, will let me make things better in my present because I know now that all I need to do is learn to relax a little bit with my relationship. Things won't crumble or fall if I don't see or talk to someone every day of the week, which is probably another good lesson for me to learn through all of this. I'm not under the assumption that if I change this one thing that I've found 'the one' or anything, that'd be a bit unrealistic and hard to determine, but I've got no doubts that if I change this one thing then I could be very happy for quite a while with him...and I know that wouldn't be a bad thing at all to me :)

Constants And Change

It's an irrefutable fact that, in life, things change. Your surroundings, your friends (both who they are and what they're like), your family, even your own body (both inside and out). It seems that the one thing in our lives we can't change is the fact that there is change. Change is, ironically, the constant in our lives.
What got me thinking about constants to our lives was the fact that there was so much change going on around me. I'm the kind of person that likes to have some control over my life, some kind of routine that keeps me grounded and gives me some sense of security over my life, and lately there's been a dramatically huge lack of that. Turbulent changes, events and experience have rocked the air cabin of my life and, although I still feel very much on course, it feels like my faith in the world has been shaken more than slightly. In my search to feel better about what I was doing I started to think about my life and try and find any comforting constants in there that I could seek refuge in. Of course, there were many things that had stayed the same in my life (I go to college, I come home, I go to regular, timetabled lessons etc.) but, for some reason, none of these situational constants seemed to be enough for me, as if I needed something big to make up for all of the constant change in my life and the changes that I know are going to happen later on in the year. Once it gets to September at college again, the number of friends I have is going to plummet drastically from around 14 to 4. Granted, most of these people that are leaving aren't going to university so I'll still get to see them but, within college, things are going to become quite lonely and it's going to take a lot of effort outside of college to still get to see all of the friends I want to. Whether I'd be able to handle that, I don't quite know, but that's the reality of what I'd have to do.
Coming back from my tangent, however, I found that the best constant in my life was in the form of a friend at college whom I've grown very close to this year who is also going to be at college next year. This may not be the epically gigantic constant that I was looking for in my life but, as I've learned many times from maths, constants can be very small or very large but, at the end of the day, no matter what happens they're still there. So although my constant isn't quite as gargantuan in magnitude as I had searched for, I think that the friend I have is exactly the constant I need. Someone that's going to be there, whom I can talk to and confide in, have a good laugh with and even bitch to about my problems. The same goes vice versa for her, of course, but at the end of the day what better constant in your life could there be apart from one good friend that you love?
As a message to everyone out there, something I try to do with my posts, I think the lesson here would be one that many people have heard before but never really taken on board: Often in life, if you look hard enough, you'll find that the thing you want most is often right in front of you and you completely miss it. In my search for a constant I ended up missing out on the one I already had, I don't think I'll be doing that again any time soon!

Pressure

In chemistry this week we've been looking at Equilibrium in reactions. An equilibrium reaction is one that acts in both directions until a point where both the forward and backward reactions are equal (until an 'Equilibrium' is achieved). Certain factors can affect equilibrium such as temperature, pressure or concentration that cause the equilibrium to shift to counteract the change it experiences (this, as a side note, is called Chatalier's Principle). One thing that rung with me, in my strange quest to compare my life or the events in it to whatever I can in a strange metaphor, was the action of pressure on an equilibrium reaction. When you increase the pressure on one side of an equilibrium reaction, it causes the equilibrium to shift and (in the example we were doing) more product from the reaction is formed.
My life lately seems to be increasing in pressure. The workload that I have never stops increasing, the demands of my work are becoming greater as time runs short to exams and concepts for work aren't clicking into place, there's drama among my friends at times and, recently, my boyfriend's been kicked out of college so it's going to become an effort on both sides to see each other. So all of this is having an emotional impact on me and, honestly, the other day I was prepared to just give up and drop everything because I'd had enough. Enough of college, enough of a life where I seem to do nothing but work, I wanted out.
Somewhere in my head, though, I knew better. As much as I wanted out, as much as I knew I wanted to just drop everything, I knew that this was just a part of what I had to go through to get to where I want to be in life. Sometimes the road in life is difficult and there'll be a lot of times where you just want to give in and go in a different, easier direction. As easy as that direction might be, though, it might not be the one that'll lead you to your dreams. If I had quit college then I would've been very, very, VERY unlikely to ever achieve my dreams of Medicine. So, if for no other reason than that aspiration, I decided to grit my teeth, whine, bitch and moan all I liked but, ultimately, just get on with it.
How does that relate in the slightest to equilibrium and pressure, you ask? Well, for me, to do what I had to do, I had to shift the equilibrium in my life. Lately I've been putting in a decent amount of effort into everything and getting a decent amount back, but lately (and for the next few months, thanks to exams) I'm going to have to put in a hell of a lot more effort to see minimal instant rewards. I'm going to have to shift the equilibrium of my life in order to cope with what I'm doing and be happy. It won't be easy, I'm not under any illusion that it will be, but bolster on I shall until I reach my dynamic equilibrium and I'm getting as good as I'm giving. When that day comes, I'm sure that all of my hard work will have been well worth it and I'm sure that can go for everyone if you persevere for long enough at something you really want.

'I Love You'

Three small words. I - To mean oneself. You - To mean someone other than oneself. Love - This is where it gets complicated.
In life you'll experience a lot of love in a lot of different ways. Love of objects (e.g. food, tv, film, books), love of friends, love of family, love of situations or feelings. The most difficult or awkward love to come across is the kind that has been written about for centuries, distilled through the years into plays, songs, art, sculpture: The romantic feeling of love towards a single person.
In my experience thus far (my rather limited experience, I feel I should point out) I've come to find that each one of my relationships has made me feel differently both at the time and afterwards when I look back upon them. The reasons why we love can be dependent entirely on the circumstances in our lives at the time. For me, perhaps a motivating reason is the fact that there are so very few people that I can love, up until late high school there really were no options or choices for me. So it's always on my mind that I may end up being in a relationship purely because I can...I don't doubt for a moment that I may have done this at some point.
The turning point in this methodology is college. I've yet to be at college a whole year but already I've found a surprising amount of interest expressed towards me, more than I was comfortable with at times. Naturally I dealt with it, though, and I became used to the situations I found myself in and, after a time, I found myself in a relationship with someone that I've liked for a longer time than he probably realises.
It's officially been a month today. Things are going well, nothing tremendously ground breaking has happened, I think things are nice though. I've never properly taken things slow before but I'm enjoying it, it's making me appreciate the relationship a lot more. That aside, though, the feelings that I have towards him are starting to mount up to the point where I think I want to say the titular statement of this post. We've said it multiple times when once drunk (hardly counts) and we've said it in Japanese (doesn't really count) but the difficulty I face is saying it in English when sober...and it's not because I can't say it, the part that I'm worried about is: Should I say it?
Perhaps I'm scared to say it, perhaps I'm just worried it's too soon, but there's a part of me that's holding back from saying those words to him because I don't want to scare him off. Maybe that's silly of me to think, maybe it's more likely that he'll not say it back, how am I to know?
All I know at the minute is that we both feel strongly for each other and we both have felt for each other for some time, though after a month does that really merit 'I love you'? Is it really a month though? Obviously I can't speak for him, but I know that I've had feelings for him since September, so does it count as six months for me? If that's then the case then it would count as seven months for me but only...two (maybe) for him? So am I ready before him?

Confusion. I'm confused. For once I think this is a situation that I can't really draw a clear conclusion to. Given how pretty much everything I've based my points on is based on pure feeling or speculation about another person's feelings, maybe the best course of action is to just take things as they come until an answer presents itself. Surely, in time, things will become more clear and I'll have my answer. Whether that answer is good or bad, is unknown, but I know which of the two I would prefer if given the choice.

-Aiden