Comfort

What is comfort? As far as I’ve been able to describe it in general terms, comfort is a feeling of neutrality or wellbeing in regards to a situation. When moving towards specifics though you soon realise that comfort is not restricted to a situation and it is not necessarily determined by how you feel but, rather, your feelings are an indicator of how comfortable you are.

For example: A man hands you a gun and tells you to shoot someone. The reason you (hopefully) would not shoot the person is because you have firm morals that tell you not to and you know it to be a bad thing and so you won’t do it. You will feel uncomfortable or negative about this situation but the reason you feel uncomfortable is because your morals disagree with the situation. Your feelings are reflecting your moral disagreement and this is uncomforting for you.

From this example we can take that morals are one deciding factor on comfort, right? Other factors I’ve found to affect comfort are obvious, expected things such as the feeling of things around you and conversations or imagery but there are some more subtle things that affect comfort such as mental outlook and health. What made me receptive to noticing these things is because, lately, I’ve been having trouble sleeping and I’ve found the entire ritual of sleep very uncomfortable and sleep to be quite distressful. The reason for this is that I realised not too long ago that I’d been having a recurring dream. It does not happen every night but it happens occasionally and it’s a dream that reflects my subconscious, I feel, or it coincidentally reflects some fears and insecurities I’ve had for quite some time now.

In this situation I’m feeling uncomfortable with sleep because it has given me bad experiences and I don’t want to undergo them once more, so fear here is a subtle factor for comfort. After this realisation I began to look out for more ‘factors’ of comfort and determined some of the aforementioned few.
For the curious among you, by the way, my dream is waking up covered in deep purple stretch marks all over my body. This is horrific, for me, because I can recall when I was younger and fatter and I wasn’t really aware of my body in the slightest…but then one day I noticed some stretch marks on my hips but didn’t think anything of it. When I got back from a two week holiday I looked at them again and they had gotten bigger, as had I, and there was a long, deep, purple mark on the lower part of my stomach. The feeling of embarrassment and shame for letting my gluttony consume me as it had will never leave me and, if I ever feel like I’ve gained weight, I still look at myself to check that I don’t have any. So it’s safe to say I have a few body issues, that’s true, but I had never considered it to be deep set enough to manifest itself as a recurring dream and it’s only when I realised it was a recurring dream that sleep began to scare me.

Relating all of my digression back to comfort, though, my discomfort with sleep will probably not go away completely until I’ve dealt with those underlying issues that are causing it. I suppose a good first step to doing that is actually admitting the problem I have: I have a recurring dream brought on by body issues. How I can deal with it after this, though, is not going to be as easy and I’m not entirely sure how I might do it. There’s only one way to do it though and that’s to try. So try, I will.

- Aiden

Relationships

It's inevitable that at some point you'll find someone that you feel strongly about. Whether it's a crush or actual love you may one day end up in a relationship or contemplating one and that's when things get complicated and confusing. There are a lot of factors to consider for a relationship, realistically, but there are also your feelings to think about...that's what's so confusing and turns what should be easy into a terrifying choice: Do you listen to your heart or to your head? Emotion or logic?
As human beings we have the uncanny ability to make split-second decisions and become so smart that we can do the huge feats of flight, planetary exploration and saving lives...but when it comes to love, everyone's a fool. I'd like to think that I'm a logical person and that I can present a well balanced argument to come to a conclusion that makes sense. Hopefully you noticed the words 'I'd like to'. Obscuring any specific details, as I like to for this blog, there is someone I like that likes me back and we have discussed the idea of dating (though not in such a business-like way as I seem to write it). After this discussion is when my heart and my head began to fight it out and, so far, there's no winner.
My heart tells me that love could be good, it tells me that I like this person and that I should, for once, go for love and enjoy what it might bring...but there's also the possibility that things might not turn out well, so emotionally I feel reluctant because I don't want to get hurt. Nothing's certain or factual, but it's emotional and emotions make up for a lot...so I shouldn't ignore how I feel.
Cardiac muscle aside though, my cranial cavity is toiling away at my conundrum to no avail weighing up the pros and cons. This person doesn't smoke, they don't do drugs, they live close by and we have similar interests...those are all things/qualities that I've said, for a while, someone I date must do/have. I get on with this person like a friend and I've always had the view that at the core of a good relationship is a great friendship, so I dunno if we've got a 'great' friendship but we have one and it works. This person has said that they like to drink, though, and that's when my doubts started to sprout. Drinking doesn't make a bad person, I know that, and I'd be hard pushed to find a teenager that doesnt like to drink, so I don't really have a problem with it... but this is where my heart and my head start to link, I guess, because although I know it's not a problem I can't shake a worried feeling about it. Whether I'm right or wrong, it's there, and it says something about me.
I've never been good at making big decisions, I overthink things, worry and doubt myself so much that it become impossible. So what should I do? It seems like it's another gamble. Should I bet it all and risk losing, or fold and stay safe? I just don't know.

-Aiden

Is it really worth it?

Upon writing this I'm slightly annoyed and frustrated, so I may regret some of the things that I write, but it's brought out a question in me that I feel is important:
Is it really worth it?
What I'm referring to here is, well, doing anything. Recently I've done exams and revision for my final GCSEs and the exams alone, for me, add up to around 20 hours of solid work so I dread to think what the figure is when you factor revision into it. It's fair to say, I reckon, that I've been doing a lot of work and, honestly, it's not easy. Fortunately for me I'm now at a point where I've got a week between now and one exam, so I'm taking this opportunity to relax for a bit while leisurely revising as opposed to tearing my hair out revising for 5 exams in just as many days. That's not to say that I've done nothing apart from revise and work.
Around the house I do the odd jobs that need doing, I wash up, I clean the bird, put out laundry, iron and try to tidy up in general. Obviously I don't do this every single day (well, the washing up I do most days) but I try to do at least one thing each day just because I feel I should. Admittedly I have my faults with housework, I may not do enough or I may not get around to everything as soon as my Mum wants it done, but I do it or I least make the plans to do it. That's a lot more than some teenagers I know do (none of my close friends, I hasten to add) and if I have plans to do it, but then someone does it before me, I personally don't regard that as a fault of mine. I could have done it the second I was told to and, when I can, I do, but the point of me planning to do something is because I can't do it there and then. It's constantly debatable whether I'm the wrong party or not in a situation like this, but that's digressing from my ensuing point.
The result of me not doing one thing that's asked of me as soon as it's asked of me, is that my parents get frustrated, angry and generally act unpleasant towards me for the day. I find that quite childish because I see it in this way, as biased as it may be: They've asked me to do a job for them, I've not got the time so I plan to do it later, they go ahead and do it themselves and then complain that I didn't do it. Surely if they were that bothered about having me do it, they'd let me do it as opposed to taking charge and doing it themselves before I've got the chance to. It's their reaction towards me afterwards that provokes the question:
Is it really worth it?
Is it really worth doing a job a day if, the one time I don't do a job, they turn on me? It doesn't seem that way.
Is it really worth doing all the work I do at school if at home it doesn't matter and no-one acknowledges it? It doesn't feel that way.
Is it really worth dealing with their reaction when I firmly believe I've done nothing wrong? No, it's not, which is why instead of arguing about it with them I'm pondering the wider implications of this question and letting them simmer down.
In previous posts I spoke about going with the flow and being who you truly want to be, so applying these messages to this question I think I can say this:
Is it really worth it? If it matters to you, yes. If you feel strongly about doing it and you want to do it, then yes. The work I do at school matters to me because I want to do well in life, so it's worth it. The jobs I do at home make me feel like I contribute and they do make an un-noticed difference, so it's worth it. It may seem self centered and/or self obsessed to have this opinion, but if you don't consider yourself and all you find is negativity to your answer...then sometimes you have to receed into yourself for comfort and reasoning to what you do.
Never be afraid to do that, it can get you through the hardest of times and make you realise that yes, it really is worth it.

- Aiden

Going Against The Flow

People have good intentions, that's something I try to acknowledge all the time. 'Good intentions' aren't always the best things for you though. Sometimes, to get what you want or to do the right thing for you, you have to go against people's intentions and wants of you as much as you, and they, may dislike it. This small revelation comes to me today after...well, I can't call it an argument because it wasn't, but it was an exchange of words between me and my Mother that made me realise this.
For a while now my career ambition has been Medicine and I've been very enthusiastic and determined about it. It's not the easiest of careers to get into though. Putting aside the AAB grades required at A level to do it, you also need do as much work experience, GP shadowing, weekend courses, volunteer work etc. as you can to show, basically, that you've made an informed decision and that you're in it for more than just money. That's important because when you've got people's lives in your hands you need to be motivated by selflessness and not money.
So I've been trying to organise volunteer work at a local hospital and, to do that, I had to name two referees that they would contact for references. The first reference was sent without a problem but the second took longer for a reason that I cannot fathom. After a while my second referee was contacted for a reference and he sent one off...but a month later I heard nothing from them and, after emailing, was informed that they had not received the reference. Putting aside my arguments of etiquette and common courtesy (because this blog isn't about that) I mentioned this situation to my Mother and she stated that 'If they didn't bother telling you they didn't have the reference, they're clearly not bothered'. It's a fair point to say, I admit, but the hospital scheme holds the power in this situation because of one simple thing: I need the experience, they don't need me. That's exactly what I said to my Mother and she replied that what I needed was money and a job that would get me it.
This moment was the realisation I had.
I'm not investing time into this volunteer place because I want to or because I like the way they're handling the situation, I'm doing it because I need the experience. It would be much nicer for me, I admit, to get a paying job at the weekend so I could have more money, I'd like that very much, but it's not going to get me any closer to realising my career dream.
So I've got to go against the flow. Go against the flow of my Mother, who wants me to get a paying job, and against the flow of my own desires to have more money. One day the tide will change and things will flow my way because I'll have the money that I need and I'll have a paying job that I love. Getting to that point will be the hard part and this is unlikely to be the first time that I'll need to go against the flow...but it's the first hurdle along the way at least.
Deeper thinking on this has, like with my other posts, led me to apply it to life in general and I've come to this conclusion:
Going with the flow can appease people and it can often be the easy way through life, but going against it can sometimes get you what you need even though it will be more difficult. In my opinion, putting in hard work to reap good benefits later is always the better option, which is why I'm happy to go against the flow for as long as it takes.

- Aiden

Friendships

In our lifetime we accumulate friends in our various social environments naturally and without really thinking. We do this, I believe, to make these environments more entertaining, friendly and bearable for ourselves so you could say that it's a defense or coping mechanism of sorts. When we leave those environments though, naturally we leave some friends behind. Sometimes we seek to keep these friends...but this takes a lot more effort purely because you're not going to see them regularly.
If the question is 'Will a friendship last?' then I've always been inclined to say 'Yes, if you put in the effort'...but I never took into account just how a friendship and the people in it can change over time. At the start you may be two naive, nervous year seven students taking their first tentative steps into the world of teenagehood, but by the time you're both in year 11 one of you has become a workaholic while the other is a slacker. The friendship that once was has now dissolved because both people have grown to be incompatible as friends.
Is this anyone's fault though? I personally don't think it is. It's arguable that people should do whatever is necessary to keep a friendship that means so much to them, but when it jeopardises personal development or results in one person being unhappy then should you carry on? That's the dilemma that I may be facing now.
For the past 2 and a half years I've had a friend and she's hilarious, absolutely hilarious. She's unique and very smart but she can also be a bit blunt when there's something she doesn't like. That's not necessarily a bad quality, it's better to be honest and up front sometimes, yet there's something about it that can make a situation very awkward. Over the past week in particular there have been some comments that she's made that have either offended me or annoyed me and it's made things awkward between the two of us. This is probably just a random phase that the friendship is going through, she may be having a problem that's impacting her or I may just be taking things too personally, but I couldn't help having the suspicion that perhaps at some point over the time we've been friends we've grown to be different people. There are some points I could make about how different we are as people but it wouldn't be fair on her to mention them. Putting finer details aside though it is a suspicion that I had and I didn't feel I could ignore it. If we had become so different as people that our friendship was suffering, what should the next logical step be? One option would be to end it, the other would be to work at it and hope that the problem solves itself.
Applying that question to all friendship problems though I began to question and consider the effect of both. By ending the relationship both people are able to independently be whoever they're truly meant to be but they may miss out on a friendship that would've been great had they decided to fix it. When you have a friend though, they tend to be part of a larger group of friends, so when you decide to cut them out of your friendship circle it has effects for others. To force others to have to deal with your choices isn't really fair.
On the other hand if you decide to stick with the friendship it is a big risk. If it works out you have a good friendship again, but depending on how you go about that then you may be losing a lot of your personality to try and make it work. If it doesn't work out though then you've put yourself through a lot and the whole situation may end up a lot worse and cause problems for other friends.
When you look at it, it seems to be a choice between protecting yourself as much as you possibly can or trying to do all you can to keep a friend. Either one has negative consequences, so if you truly have no preference but want the best for your friends is it then more of a choice on damage control: Which one will affect them the least?
It's a gamble at the end of it, do I get out while I'm still ahead or do I bet it all and risk winning or losing everything? The only conclusion I can draw to this question is that there's no real right or wrong answer and that the answer will vary on whatever situation it's applied to, but whatever the answer should be I think that ultimately you should never come to regret it. Friends can have a big impact on life, if you come to regret leaving one then you may have missed out something that you can't get back. At the same time if you regret not leaving one then you've probably missed out on becoming a person that you're truly more comfortable with.
What would you do?

-Aiden

Forgiveness

Around 3 years ago I first came out to one of my friends, whom I shall keep nameless, and after a while he started to make jokes at my expense about my sexuality to the point where it made a rift between us. In an attempt to sort this I explained the problem to him and after a while he started to send hurtful messages to me online. After this point all contact ceased and we never spoke.
Today when I went onto my Xbox I saw I had 3 unread messages and they were from him. The basic message of them was one of apology and a want, I believe, to be friends again. It caught me off guard, to be honest, and it set me on a spiral of thought about the situation.
With the amazing gift of hindsight I'm able to see now that back then the concept and reality of me being gay were two different things. In my head it was easy to accept and for everyone else it was easy to accept. The reality of it was different though. There was a certain learning curve to living with the scenarios and things it brought and at first it was difficult for me and when I thought on it I realised that it must've been difficult for him as well.
For me I had to learn to become comfortable with this new part of myself and that meant it was hard to talk about and hard to joke about. For him, because I was probably one of the only gay people he knew at the time and we were quite close friends... it was probably a shock for him and lead him to question things about our friendship. I'm not saying he was right or wrong to think that, if he did in fact think that, but I believe it was more natural than conscious. For that I can't blame him, it's just the society that we live in that brings about those thoughts, as I implied in my previous post.
After a long thing about the situation I felt I had to reply to him. To come back to something after 3 years and apologise would've taken a lot of courage to do and it's the time factor, I suppose, that leads me to believe that he's genuine in what he says. We'd gone 3 years without speaking so what would he have to gain from contacting me? Not much, if anything at all. So I typed out a reply to him that spanned 3 messages (it's very laborious typing over Xbox Live) to say to him that I was glad he apologised because it meant a lot and that, given how long ago it happened, we've both developed as people since that and become better people. Ultimately I ended on the point that I would like to be friends with him again. Some of you might think I was silly to do that, but I have a reason for it.
In the past I've been in positions where I've messed up something with a person, realised my mistake and was denied any chance to try things again despite having the knowledge to do it better a second time. Recalling those feelings of frustration and unfulfillment, I felt very strongly that I couldn't deny him the chance to make things better when he seems to genuinely be sorry. I've not got a clue where things may end up in this, but I firmly believe that people should be given a second chance if they're genuinely sorry for what they did.

Despite what I've just stated above though, I drew the conclusion that forgiveness is a tricky thing. Every situation where the issue of it is raised is different and the tolerance of forgiveness is different in each person depending on their experiences, nature and mood. As much as people might try to put rules on forgiveness, like I've tried to - to forgive a person in such-and-such a circumstance - forgiveness is not something that can be defined by rules. It's a state of mind and emotion that indicates that a person has worked through all the issues relating to a problem and that they can truly let go of it. It makes sense then why some situations are harder to forgive than others. If someone breaks a vase you may forgive them after 10 minutes but if someone breaks your heart you may take years to get over it. It's not to do with the sentimental value of something, but more the emotional hurt of the whole thing and how long it takes your mind to get over it and once you're truly ready to forgive someone, you'll know.

That's probably the best thing about forgiveness that I've learnt: You can do it the second you're ready.

-Aiden

Glee - Theatricality

The UK tonight aired the Glee episode that featured Lady GaGa songs as well as some scenes that highlighted issues that related to homosexuality that have always played on my mind a lot.
There are the characters of Kurt Hummel and Finn Hudson. Kurt is gay and quite flamboyent, Finn is straight and the typical 'jock' character and they are both in Glee club, a group of people at school that perform various songs by various artists. In this particular episode there are moments and related themes that I related to that helped me to draw a conclusion to something that will be explained later.
Finn's family moves in with Kurt's and the two are forced to share a room together and Finn is presented to be quite uncomfortable throughout this entire episode before snapping and ranting about how he can't stay in a room with Kurt because he's, basically, uncomfortable with him being gay and assumes that Kurt is in love with him. This stood out to me because it's something that I've had to deal with, though not in the same situation. Straight people uncomfortable by being anywhere near me because they assume that purely because I like their gender that I therefore like them. The problem? Its just wrong. If the situation is viewed differently it becomes clear how silly the whole thing is. A straight man likes women, but that doesn't mean they like every single woman on the planet. Using that same logic, why should I like every single man? It's insecurities that people harbour that are quite natural, really, but that give people doing nothing wrong a bad impression. That's the part that bothers me the most, I guess, that people will be put off by something as insignificant as sexuality and miss out on getting to know the person that I am.
On a slightly separate note for a moment, I find it very strange how modern and forward thinking our society apparantly is and how we single out and isolate certain minorities like homosexuals. Homosexuality has been around for centuries in wildlife and even in ancient civilisations like Greece and yet after almost 3000 years homosexuals are only just gaining the right to get married and are still hated by some people to the point of murder. To me sexuality is something that you can control just as much as the colour of your eyes, it's who you are and you should never go against it to please someone else and yet some people are forced to refuse it to save their lives. I'm glad that Glee approached some of those issues, to be honest, because most tv shows don't get to teenagers and kids and these are the people that will in 10 or 20 years be the adults of today. To me, presenting an environment and culture that casually approaches topics like this is the way forward to a very accepting and open minded world...it's just a shame that not everyone shares that belief.
Moving back onto Glee now, in this same scene where Finn is yelling at Kurt he refers to some of the things in his room as 'faggy' which prompts a scolding from Kurt's father about the use of the word 'fag' and I just wish I could've shaken the writer's hands at this point. Over here we don't really use the word 'fag' we use the word 'gay' but we use it in the same way that 'fag' is used in the US and the point that was proven was one that I'd been saying for so very long: That using the word fag/gay as an insult or negative reference isn't right. It makes negative connotations about gay people and being gay, so people growing up view it as a bad thing and thus view gay people as a bad thing which just further fuels a society where homophobia is common when it shouldn't be. This word has become so casually embedded into everyday vocabulary though, that when you try and make people aware of this point they couldn't care less and carry on using it anyway. It is a small thing, I admit, but it has such an impact greater than people first realise. It's like the 'n' word, really, it's just that we've not culturally moved on enough to view fag/gay as a word that's not appropriate to use negatively or at all in the case of 'fag'.

Those were the two things that stood out to me in this episode, but through these I felt myself able to deeply relate to the character of Kurt. My friends at school all say I look like him and am quite like him in some ways, but I fiercely refuse these statements. It used to be because I just genuinely didn't think I was anything like him, but after watching that episode it was as if a lightbulb went on in my head.
The character of Kurt, really, is someone that I would love and most probably aspire to be like. To have the confidence that his character does would be a gift beyond measurable to me, who's someone who doesn't have the confidence to raise his hand and answer a question in class. His openness about his sexuality and his ability to be flamboyant and truly not care about what people think, those are characteristics that I believe I lack yet covet in one way or another. Overall the character of Kurt has this one, huge and important message: Be yourself, no matter what.
As much as I try to do that and have tried to do that over the past few years, my lack of confidence means that I cannot truly exist without the need to validate myself by other people's standards and that means that I can never be myself...because I'm always seeking approval from others.
On another tangent, this fits in nicely with a collection of letters by the poet Rainer Marie Rilke that I recommend you read because he states that you should never seek to validate your work by others because people always interpret things differently and have different standards. So you should do your work to your own standards and not care what others think and you should only work if you feel you must... otherwise the work will never be any good.
It was a powerful message to me and I felt it could apply to anything in life whether it's a job or your dreams and it spurred me on to really grinding down with my schoolwork and career path, I highly recommend you all read those letters:
http://www.carrothers.com/rilke1.htm

That's all for me tonight, I think, I hope you all sleep well (it's late in the UK, 0:55 at this moment in time)

- Aiden