Stories

Recently I heard a song entitled 'The Story' on Grey's Anatomy (YouTube it if you like, I highly recommend it, especially when sung by Sara Ramirez) and the lyrics really struck a chord (excuse the musical pun) with me from just a few lines:
'All of these lines across my face, tell you the story of who I am. So many stories of where I've been and how I got to where I am' and, later on:
'You see the smile that's on my mouth, it's hiding the worlds that don't come out,and all of our friends who think that I'm blessed, they don't know my head is a mess.'
If not just for the wonderful way that they were sung, those lyrics really resonated with me and I began to think about their meaning for me.

The first line that I quoted reminded me of a time when I felt very self conscious, more so than I do now. I can recall constantly feeling exposed and hating myself, looking in the mirror and wanting anything but what I saw staring back at me and I can remember my heart pounding, both out of fear and nerves, when I looked at myself one day and saw that on my sides I had purple lines; purple lines that had gotten drastically bigger since I'd last looked. I'd seen them on my sister when she was pregnant, I knew that they were stretch marks and, for me, it was the defining point in my life where I went into overdrive with losing weight. Through overly restrictive eating plans, exhausting exercise programmes and whatever weight-loss tricks I could research, out of pure fear not to look at those marks again I worked myself to insane extents (I'd have one small meal a day, exercise non-stop for 5 hours and do an hour in the morning before school) to the point where I did have the kind of body that I'd dreamt of having for so long.

One day I was out with my Mum and she bought me a jacket, one that was meant to be tight fitting and when I wore it for the first time I felt nervous of what people might say to me- it was certainly different to anything else I'd worn before- but all I got were surprised reactions of people that were, literally, amazed at the weight I'd lost. Inside, though, I still felt like that scared person that needed to lose weight, so that's what I kept on doing. My parents and my form tutor (separate occasions) had both sat me down and said they thought I had a problem, though I didn't believe I did. From my point of view, I was perfectly justified to lose weight given how I thought I looked. Eventually, I stopped pushing myself to lose weight like I was doing, though, when I look back I still don't properly recall what it was that made me or helped me to stop. Lately, I'm not sure if it's a problem that's completely gone but, when I heard that line in The Story it made me think for a while about this whole thing.

The 'lines across my face' are the stretch marks on my body and, as I've shown above, just those marks alone 'tell you the story of who I am [...] and how I got to where I am' and, for me, it's a very personal story that made me relate to the second quoted set of lyrics I posted. Despite the happiness that people saw in me, the smile that I had when they complimented me on how much weight I'd lost, in my head I was always thinking that I could be better, I should be better, that what I was right now was still wrong. For a very long time, no-one knew how I felt or how strong my desire to change myself was, though I'm just glad in the end that some people did notice and said something to me...I may have been less than gracious at the time about it, but the help of people around you is something that I've come to appreciate greatly in life because not everyone gives it, unfortunately.

The lines on my body, although are now clear and no longer purple, will always be there as a reminder to me; a reminder of what I can do to myself (both with weight gain and loss), the emotional things I went through, the events that happened but, most importantly, they're a part of me that tells a story... one story of the many that I'll come to have in my life.

Chain Reactions

When one event triggers, directly, another event that then goes on, repeatedly, to trigger a series of events, we call this a chain reaction. In a physical sense, this could be a chemical reaction or a system of objects triggered through force consideration into acting in a certain way upon each other. We take most of these for granted in life but, if for some reason, one of these chains were to be broken then the results could be highly undesired. Take, for example, the chain reactions in the body. So many reactions occur in the body as a result of one another and each one has a vital role, if one of them were to slip up then it could throw an unknown multitude of things into chaos. So, for the examples I've encountered at least, physical chain reactions breaking can bring chaos...though I don't doubt that this is true for every case.

Emotionally, I believe, chain reactions can also occur. In my life I've noticed, in myself, a large amount of insecurity and self-doubt in my many areas of my life, particularly my confidence. It's resulted in me being caught up in, what I think, is an emotional chain reaction and it seems to stem from insecurities about myself. I would message someone online, for whatever reason I had at the time, but would- quite frequently- receive no reply. So, if it were a message to which I needed a reply or confirmation of reading, I would send a second message to ask if the first message had been read. With very little to react to from the other person, I started to get the impression that they were annoyed by my messages. This was the first link in my emotional chain. From this, I began to worry that from their annoyance they would then start to dislike me, from there I then worried that they would want nothing to do with my if I carried on. In some form of a vicious cycle, these last few thoughts led me to send further messages in fear of losing someone I care about.

It's no news to me that I take things to heart, read too much into things and often assume the worst possible scenarios, it's probably a combination of these qualities that has led me to the slight paranoia/fear towards the end of my chain. What's the best thing to do in a situation like this, though? I highly doubt that letting things run their course will go well, so then the logical conclusion would be so somehow break the chain I've fallen into...but how? If you're stuck somewhere because of your insecurities and your doubts in a place that will only lead to bad things, what can you do to save yourself? It would be convenient, really, for someone else- a friend, perhaps- to help you break your chain, though not everyone has that.

The best conclusion I can ponder for the predicament I find myself in is not an easy one by any means...but is, I feel, the best one that a person can have if they have only themselves in this situation: To have willpower. Have willpower and try to break your own chain, as strange as you may come across to others for what you say or do, if at the end of it you end up not repeating the same mistakes that you did before or thought you were bound to, then you'll have achieved something that you can be both proud of and more sure that you won't do them again. It's often very difficult to not hide yourself in regrets, despite how much I've come out of my shell in the past year at college I know I'm very much still self conscious and unconfident, but if you truly want something enough then you'll find the willpower in you to do what you need to do in order to avoid the worst. It seems that, emotionally, breaking a chain seems to be the better thing to do, contrary to the physical kind.

Boundaries

Boundaries can take on a variety of forms, mostly physical and emotional, and they can apply to many situations and for many reasons. People may set physical boundaries to protect themselves or others, to make themselves feel more comfortable or secure, whereas emotional boundaries may be set in order to emotionally protect people from harm. What happens when these boundaries are crossed though?

If you cross a physical boundary you may be chastised or you may be physically in danger, if you break someone's emotional barriers then you may offend a person extremely, hurt them emotionally or- potentially- put yourself in physical danger. Of course, this is all situation dependent and also depends on the nature of the person in question whose boundaries have been intruded upon.

What got me thinking about this was an event that happened to me last night. Me and my parents had gone to a family friend's house because she was having a party for her current partner's birthday; there was alcohol and towards the back end of the night I was rather drunk. I had not anticipated what was to happen next, but both my physical and emotional barriers were intruded upon by a man in his late thirties that took a hug- an act that to me is completely benevolent and innocent, an act that I would do to anyone and everyone- and groped me, touched me inappropriately and asked me to return his advances. At first all I could do was just ask him to stop, a night of vodka tends to leave one's head cloudy, but he didn't, so I had to physically push him off of me and tell him that I was in a happy relationship and wouldn't cheat. At the time I felt indifferent over what had just happened, all I wanted to do was sleep and keep the contents of my stomach in my stomach. Today, though, it's all started to sink in.
Physically, he crossed a boundary and touched me in an inappropriate way that I felt uncomfortable with. The act itself, however, also crossed emotional bondaries that, even now, I'm still registering.

I feel violated, like someone has invaded me without permission and taken something from me, but at the same time I feel like I'm the one that's done something wrong, like I've cheated on my boyfriend and betrayed his trust despite the fact that I logically understand that I've not cheated on him. Just very recently, I concluded that I feel like- and this is a terribly blunt way to put it but nothing else quite describes it as brutally well as I feel it- a whore, I feel physically dirty in an emotional sense. What can I do to make this go away? I've honestly not got a clue. A sense of duty came across me today, though, and I felt that my boyfriend had a right to know about the incident. I told him what had happened and, honestly, I expected him to be mad at me and even consider breaking up with me, but he didn't. He said that it was good that I told him but that, if I hadn't, he wouldn't have held it against me. I can't vouch for his emotions but a part of me thinks that he was just glad I was okay. Not in any way did he think that I had cheated, not in any way was he mad at me...and yet the feelings I had still persisted.

This leads me to think that, when you cross boundaries, you risk causing-in a sense- trauma to someone that can last for a while. Trauma seems a very strong way to word how my mind is but, when you look at it, is it not just an extremely mild form of it? Despite what every logical instinct tells me, despite what reality has told me, my mindset has refused to change and is in a worse state rather than a better one.

Boundaries, then, could be seen as a very important protective device that people have developed over time to stop themselves being damaged or thrown out of their comfort zone to a point where they don't feel safe, where they feel vi0lated, prostituted and like they've done wrong. Once this device has been breached and someone does, for instance, feel how I do, how do they then stop feeling like this? My suspicious is that, as with all wounds, time is the best healer and that, over time, I will stop feeling how I do and just look at what happened as an unfortunate event and try my best to ensure that it doesn't happen again. Until then, though, I think I'll be a lot more careful about how much I drink and whom I hug under such circumstances.

Pathways In Life

It's a biological imperative that, within a species, variation exists. Variation, consequently, means that some people are better suited to certain things in life than others due to natural variation from person to person in aspects such as charisma, intellect, strength, obedience and a plethora of various other personality traits that make up a person. To survive in our organised human society it's become a necessary part of life to get a job and work in order to support the lives we lead but, annoyingly, despite there being all of this variation between people- people that originally make these jobs available- the requirements for jobs tend to, on the whole, don't seem to have much variation to them.

From a young age we're now told to have a very clear idea of what we want to do with our lives, so clear that we must know what qualifications (thus courses, places to study said courses as well as other training it might require) we need in order to get to that job in our lives. I can clearly recall in Year 9 at high school being asked to choose what GCSE subjects we wanted to do in Year 10 and having this immense pressure to choose subjects suited to our ideal careers because they mattered so much and were the first step towards them. For 13-14 year old kids (barely teenagers) this is a truly unfair weight to place upon them but, unfortunately, this weight doesn't let up in high school. Further pressure is placed on students through the next two years of their education to consider carefully their next steps into higher education; what type of course; what course specifically; how to apply; when to apply, all the while still placing on a pressure that seems to scream 'If you mess this up, you will live a terrible life'.

The reality of it, though, is that most kids- a fair amount of adults, for that matter- have no idea what kind of career they want to pursue in life, let alone what courses they'd need to go through in order to get there. So these people- a few people I know fall into this category- go on to do either whatever courses they feel like doing or ones that they feel will give them the best prospects for a job once they've completed them. These people, I find smart, because they're working to give themselves the best chances they can despite not knowing anything specific about what they want to do.

The job driven world that we're living in now and the youth of today seems to be, for the most part, like trying to put two completely different jigsaw pieces together and- today- it dawned on me that in today's world there are seemingly so many opportunities but just as many closed doors. Someone I know has been at college and they've worked hard for a year and a half, gritting their teeth and bearing with it as best as they can despite disliking it. Instead of throwing in the towel and just getting a job, they decided to apply to a different course in September only to find out that because he dropped out of college as late as he did that they're reluctant to accept him. This person can be very committed when they want to be and they're also quite intelligent, why is it then that for perservering with a college they don't like and still wanting to do well for themselves by applying for another course their reward is a turned down offer? To me it's not fair and it doesn't make sense. Will this person continue to, yet again, apply for more courses to improve their future applications? I certainly hope so but, honestly, I could very easily see why they'd be opposed to doing that.

It seems that whatever you want to do you need to be the best at everything and have insanely high qualifications to match unrealistic standards. Even then, if you do have the qualifications, comes the annoying and petty thing that is past experience. Given the current economic climate, there are few jobs that won't accept you on without experience but, if you're fresh from education, you don't have any...so where are you going to get experience from if nowhere's hiring you because you don't have experience?

It's as if the world's standards are set at a certain point, a fixed point, and with so much variation in people, variation in how well they perform, what they want to do, if they even know what they want to do, I think it's insanely unfair to set uniform requirements for people. In the effort to gain good, hard working employees and continually raise the standard of work, the working world is alienating the next generation from being able to support themselves at all and, obviously, this will not end well.

I only hope that, in time, things start to become easier on the job-front in life because, if it didn't, then the person that I mentioned above may end up losing their fighting spirit towards making way in the working world. To me, if even one person loses the will to work because of unfair standards, then that's a travesty that should be on every governmental official's mind when they make radical changes to the education system that pressures people into considering their lives in 10, 20 or even 40 years when they've barely lived even a quarter of it by average life expectations.

Emotional Flagellant

Last Friday I went to the coast for 5 days with my Mum, Dad and my Boyfriend for my first holiday in a long while and, honestly, I enjoyed it completely. Usually on my holidays we end up having one family argument or another, the weather's bad or another unfortunate event happens to come our way to stop me enjoying my holiday completely but this time was different. I can honestly say that from start to finish I enjoyed myself...and that's where my problem starts.

In life we come across many theories of how the world works in a cosmic sense. We have the karma theory (that good deeds are rewarded with good events or good 'karma', while bad deeds are rewarded with bad karma) and the idea of 'balance' (where good and bad events happen complementary to another to keep a neutral balance in the world). Logically I believe that neither of these theories are true, however the side of me that has faith likes to believe at least partially in both of these theories. By the karmic theory, my good holiday was a reward for good deeds I had done in the past, however by the balance theory I am now due a bad event happening to counteract my good holiday.

As silly as my mind is and as irrational as it sounds, earlier today I ended up working myself up into a paranoid mood where I was convinced that something truly awful was going to happen to me because I'd enjoyed myself on my holiday. In the past, I've felt that whenever I've had a string of good events that they've then been followed immediately by bad ones that have brought me back down from any happy high I may have been in at the time. This happened last month when certain events that I'm not at liberty to discuss unfolded. So I've become irrational and paranoid that bad things are going to happen to me, I expect badness in my life whenever I have good things. Is this really a way to live? I didn't think so...and yet at the same time, my fear of losing people or things close to me stopped me from relinquishing this dread that bad things would happen.

Upon further thinking in the bath- as all great thinkers work well in the bath, you should know- I mused that, in a way, I'm a bit of an emotional flagellant in this scenario. For those of you who are unaware of what a flagellant is, a flagellant is a person that physically injures themselves in the hopes that God will take pity on them and bring them fortune. In this scenario I'm emotionally hurting myself, inducing paranoid spells where I'm almost yearning for bad things to happen so that I can once again resume with the good that I want in my life, and that my God here is the theory of cosmic balance. Basically, in a way, I was making myself feel bad so that I could have the universe take pity on me and let me go back to having good things.

Don't we all have these superstitious/religious/spiritual beliefs about the world that hold us back at times, though? Surely I can't be the only one? Whether it's religion, zodiac signs, spirits watching over you, old wives tales or even my friends karma and balance, we all harbour some belief or another...but why do we do it? If we can so easily classify them as 'superstitious' therefore not real then why do we still believe in them? Is it through fear or hope (the thought of what if...what if they actually are real?) or maybe it's a desire to control the uncontrollable? In the world so many random things happen in random ways to random people at random times in random spaces, maybe it's a desire to seek some kind of control (maybe a desire fueled by fear? A fear of not having control?) over these events that leads us to create superstitious systems such as Karma and balance and what, furthermore, allows us to at least partially believe them despite our logical minds telling us they cannot be true.

So what if I were to disregard my paranoia and my fear and go on, starting tomorrow, boldy proclaiming whenever I were happy and enjoying every minute of it. If something bad then happened, would that prove the balance theory? Would it just be eerie coincidence? What if, conversely, nothing bad happened at all, does that disprove the balance theory?
Maybe there needs to be no proof at all, the emotional comfort that these superstitions provide to so many people justifies their existence enough. For me, at least, I think that it can be both a hinderance and an aid at times because, like now, I'm expecting bad things to come my way but, if the situation were at the other end of the spectrum, then it would leave me content that good things would come my way once more.

As a general rule, then, maybe the most exact thing I can say about superstitions is what I've said about religion for a while now: Whether they're true or not, they give people faith in their lives that they otherwise lack and in some way it helps them to function better. Not everyone needs it, but some do more than others, so for them it's a good thing to have in life.

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?