socially inappropriate girl

It’s exciting, it’s scary, it’s inevitable

We are constantly changing a little bit at a time. Moving forward, improving, making mistakes and going back and taking a different direction with ourselves, layer upon layer, creating complicated and undefinable human beings, each of whom are working through their personal natural selection to be their best possible version of themselves.

That is, if you are open to change.

Change is scary. You build yourself a nest and become completely comfortable in it, moulding it around yourself. So yeah, its scary when that nest is taken away. Suddenly you’re attempting to exist as you were in a space that doesnt fit you quite so comfortably.

Our attempt to grow requires our willingness to accept change and to go through change ourselves. Like natural selection, it is those who are best able to adapt that continue the longest and most happily.

I think we all realise this. Our environment changes and we need to move with it or be left behind. It’s not easy for everyone, those who so require their nest to remain intact feel threatened by their neighbours who can more easily fly with the wind, just as those restless neighbours can find their homely counterparts to be commonplace.

Relationship selection at work?

‘friend’ is a word which I think we all toss around too much. More often than not I find its more of an umbrella term 

acquaintance companion relative associate colleague side-kick therapist neighbour agony-auntconfidante instructor aide com-padre backseat-driver parent crony adjudicator competitor antagonistexpert analyst savant buffoon speculator learned-doctor 

but my favourite of the moment would be this one

Critic

-noun

1. a person who judges, evaluates, or criticizes

2. a person who tends too readily to make captious, trivial, or harsh judgements; faultfinder

Just me? Please tell me it’s not. 

Now, I love my friends. Cliche, yes. True? Yes again. But there’s a small collection of them that I find very hard to likefrom time to time. I know that sounds awful, but hear me out.

You know that voice in your head; the niggling disparaging one that doubts everything you say and do? The one that when you go “oh! what an excellent idea brain! how very good you are!” it replies with “well, I really don’t think that’ll work. As in it won’t at all. It’s stupid. You should probably just crawl into a hole and think about how useless you are for the rest of the day.” You know the one? Well that voice is these friends of mine. It’s live and it’s loud and it’s in public for all to hear & concede with, and it’s pretty much constant. (now you should know that I’m “soooo dramatic” so you probably shouldn’t pay attention to a word I say, by the way). Although yes, I am exaggerating. A bit.

Everyday I doubt myself, most of us do. I’m not meaning to whinge or whap out my violin here (trust me, you do not want to hear either of these things. I am not what we would call vocally or musically gifted.)  but it’s very hard to overcome your inner self doubter when those around you more or less parrot her on a daily basis. Ahhh, you say.Surely there is truth in the doubt? If these outer and mystical inner critics agree on this critique which they are critiquing upon you? *

Well, maybe so. But it doesn’t mean that I want to hear it. 

These friends of mine are all beautiful, strong willed, opinionated and intelligent women who I am completely in awe of. Bless them, more than likely they think that they are looking out for me by routinely degrading my choices. People like this tend to have opinions on how other people are living their lives; and that’s okay. I have opinions on there’s! But there has to be a line. Something I’ve learned in my time of being an outspoken gobby shit is that even though you have an opinion, sometimes it is vastly inappropriate to give it without permission. And that’s what I mean here.

The last few months have seen me make some big changes in my life. From changing anti-depressants, to upping them, to downing them; to booking a volunteering excursion; to giving education one last shot; to dropping out of uni completely in the pursuit of nothing in particular; to finding a passion; they have voiced unwelcome opinions on them all. And yes, some have been lovely. The majority, however, have been the perpetual lambasting of my personal choices of which they have no particular knowledge nor are they affected by. 

I know, I know. I know I should bring it up with them, this being my strength of feeling and deepness of hurt etcetc, instead of pointlessly hammering my troubles into the blogosphere. I know that I have nothing to complain of, am educated straight white individual experiencing some first world problems and probably am just feeling menstrual. I do realise all of this. But the problem is I am stubborn. And my friends are stubborn. And we are all stubborn to the point that we would bite off our own noses to spite our faces (but then probably wouldn’t just to prove a point). 

So instead of doing the mature, worldly-individual action of sitting over a cup of green tea and discussing my problems, I am committing them to teh internetz for my friends to find one day and further lambaste me some more. And because it’s better to just do the sensible thing and bitch about it behind each others backs. And because I want to. Because I’ve sat here so long now that my arse has gone numb.

*ironically, language is not something which my friends nor my mystical inner doubter criticise me for

Another day; another ideological argument with my peers which leaves me red faced and tearing my hair out in frustration.

This happens way too often. It’s on gone past the point of just picking my battles. August saw me swear off my opinionated self ever again purely for my own sanity, only to return again all guns a’ blazing about three days later. I have taken to only indulging my opinionated self with those of whom do not fall into the lost causes category. You know, the ones so far up their own arses that no amount of rhyme nor reason could ever possibly sway them from their precious foundation of ignorance (yeah, you know the ones). Unfortunately, too often into this category fall those who prefer to just bury their heads in the sand, something which is both saddening and maddening in equal measure.

Now we could all wax lyrical about how if more people gave a shit we’d have a lot more shit to throw at those making things shitty for everyone else (and by giving a shit, I do not mean literally handing someone faeces. I mean caring about something outwith your own immediate environment). These people infuriate me no end purely because of their commitment to blissful ignorance. The fly.in the ointment, however, is that I used to be one of them.

Hearing the news day to day used to depress me. There was a whole lot of bad stuff happening that I could do a whole lot of nothing about. So instead I’d tune it out. I stopped listening and I stopped reading. When anything remotely concerning came up in conversation – not to do with The X Factor or that-bitch-said-what-now - I’d toss my hair and laugh that I knew nothing of the world around me and haha what an airhead I am. I made myself not care. This was completely something defensive for me and there’s no one event I can pin the change on except the simple fact that I gained some self confidence and stopped being so afraid.

The problem with awareness is that it leads to further awareness. One minute you’re just realising that some fluffy bunnies probably died after being forced to ingest the hairspray you’re applying liberally to your already stiff head and the next your naked in a field, drinking fair trade coffee out of a recycled mug toting Marxist banners and smoking marijuana with your vegan friends. Not that this is a bad thing, obviously. 
But awareness is a scary thing and you cannot unlearn just as you cannot unsee. Having your eyes opened to the world and it’s ills is disturbing and is rage inducing. I challenge anyone to investigate the true extent of human trafficking and to not feel anger; to learn the degradation and squalor of the sweat shops which supply the vast majority of our collective wardrobe and to not feel guilt; to allow themselves to realise that actually it’s not the lazy and promiscuous working classes/those pesky immigrants/The Daily Mail’s flavour of the week that is the reason our country is fucked but rather the fault of our corrupt government with their hands in the corporations pockets, and to not feel wow they sure pulled the wool over my eyes disgust. It’s horrible to recognise the intense atrocities that are allowed seemingly unknowingly to continue around us; the bystander effect on the biggest of scales. Denial and attempts to deflect responsibility help to ease the guilt, the fear that it could be you next. But by far the most effective of all is to turn your blind eye. What you do not know cannot hurt you. 
So many times I have despaired with myself: why do I care? This doesn’t affect me. And if I had a penny for everytime someone else asked me that question I’d have…. hmm, about a pound to put in my non existent savings ( thanks, Tories (or alcohol, whichever)).
So should people care? Well on the basis of humanity, morality and basic compassion I’d say yes. But on the basis of making life easier for yourself? I’d say no. 
So often I am completely exhausted due to being emotionally invested in things which don’t directly affect me. Couple that with the constant criticism and anger based purely on your being a person violating people’s sense of well being by merely having an opinion. Add to that the stigmatism of actually having awareness of societal issues (see naked-field-coffee-Marxist-marijuana-vegan above) continually perpetuated by the media as irritating clueless hippies and it’s bloody difficult to even get people to listen to you, much less concede with what you’re saying. Too often I have had to bite my tongue, to leave a room to stop myself going bat-shit crazy. Too often I have ended days in tears of frustration that any efforts of mine have been in vain. It’s no wonder people are afraid of awareness, when those who arn’t are so attacked by the rest. When they are told to just forget about it because it’s just making life difficult for themselves.The fact is I can’t. Because of the person I am, because I’m in too deep, because I realise that giving all my shits and helping people is something I want to do for the rest of my life, I can’t 

It doesn’t make life easy, this shit giving thing. Sure, the more people that do the easier it will get, but I realise that if everything continues exactly as is right now for the next few decades then there won’t be any massive change in my lifetime. But that’s only if we all continue to turn that blind eye of ours. So I hope we won’t. 

Hopefully I’ll see you soon, knee deep in all the shits we give, naked in that awareness field. I’ll be sure to share my fair trade coffee with you when I do.

raised £155 ish so far! Unbelievable. people’s generosity is overwhelming sometimes

so far raised £80 towards my trip! Can’t believe that there are people giving me money so I can volunteer in India. I appreciate it so much. Even the smallest amount is unreal; its just so amazing that people would actually give money so that I can help other people. Times like this that restore my faith in humanity and reassure me that there is actually a point in trying to make the world a better place

“I am sure every girl can recall, at least once as a child, coming home and telling their parents, uncle, aunt or grandparent about a boy who had pulled her hair, hit her, teased her, pushed her or committed some other playground crime. I will bet money that most of those, if not all, will tell you that they were told “Oh, that just means he likes you”. I never really thought much a

I fucking love these words.

No other word has the ability to convey such anger and meaning in a single syllable. Except maybe “Scum”; although its a tad Jeremey Kyle.

Cunt. Not as in Vagina. As in morally reprehensible, stomach churning, repugnant, disagreeable, boak-inducing individual. As in David Cameron (Cunt), or Westboro Baptist Church (pl. Cunts).

And the look of shock and dismay from surrounders when the girly blonde girl says either: priceless. Almost as thrilling as the words themselves. 

Cunt. Fuck. Cunt. Fuck. Fucking Cunts. Cunts Cunts Cunts. Fuck.

Cunt.