George and Izzie

Sometimes pain that you think has faded shows it's ugly face once again. Some things I guess we're just not meant to get over.

My 2011

This is the first time I have written this on the first day of the new year, I usually sit down an hour or so before getting ready for a party or a night at home with my brother and his friends, this year however, I approach this slightly differently.

You could say the way I start this reflects my 2011. New.

It has been a year of new adventures, of falling in love, of finishing one story and starting another, of saying goodbye to friends, both positively, negatively, expectedly and unexpectedly, of growing my hair and then getting it all cut off, of dying it on a monthly basis, and of betting not to dye it again until Christmas and finally of facing my fears of growing up.

It started in a ten bedroomed house, filled with friends and strangers, kissing two of my lifers at the stroke of midnight in a 3 way kiss before heading out into the garden to watch the cheap fire work I'd bought just hours before. It ended in the living room of my new (yet never replacing the original) family, watching the fireworks on the BBC and toasting a drink to the new year.

It has been a year of finally getting the courage to speak up - or rather, finally allowing my friend to medal in the way she had wanted to for months! Of stressing out over the final essays I will ever have to write, of watching best friends fade out of my life and of saying goodbye to others with the belief that we will, at some point, cross paths again.

It was the year in which our uni house got broken in to. One of those moments that you always imagine you'd to act one way should it ever occur, but when it does happen you soon find you act another. Crying down the phone to 999 while a house mate gets hit over the head with a brick from your own garden and your boyfriend gets punched while trying to push strangers out of the house they have just broken in to, followed by a month or so of living in a house only accessible by a wobbly cracked back door with two boarded up windows and a boarded up front door covered in the forensics finger print dust.

It was the year when a tutor told me my dissertation wouldn't even pass for an essay, let alone a dissertation. Where I saw a performance that gave me back a little bit of the passion for acting uni had previously beaten out of me, of watching my house mates enjoy the pleasures of the paddling pool situated right outside my patio doors, only for me to ever go in it once, fully clothed, during a drunken game of truth or dare. It was the year we all finished our dissertations and sat in the appropriately named, Dive, celebrating and showing each other pictures of the finished product. And finally it saw friends pack up their rooms for one final time as we each took the plunge to move, not only out of our student houses, but out of our student town.

I started writing my blog on one of the last days of my first year of uni, sat on a friends bedroom floor surrounded by boxes, silently crying to myself. That memory seems like a life time ago. It seems so surreal that I shall never experience that sense of moving ever again, that I shall never be with those people on such mass ever again. That is a story, a long list of chapters, that finally came to an end in 2011.

A month later however and I was back in Worcester, living in the University halls I had three years previous missed out on as I embarked on a new job, teaching and supervising young people during a five day summer school. Next I set off to Spain for my best girl's hen party and three glorious days in the sun, followed by her wedding where I was blessed with the position of bridesmaid in a strapless dress with, amazingly, not a strap mark in sight!

My summer then continued with the possibility of me performing one last show in the West Midlands with the company that has played such a prominent role for the past 3 years. I decided however, to turn down this opportunity in order to spend a week sleeping on my friends sofa, fashioning a teepee, watching films, walking the dog, making doughnuts and eating a picnic indoors before I finally set off on my new adventure of moving in with the boy who kissed me in January.

Moving day came, as did the nerves. Nerves of moving 200 miles across the country, nerves of saying goodbye to my friends and family, nerves of living with someone else's family, nerves of living with a boy, my best friend, my boyfriend, after just 9 months of dating.

Within a week I had got a job at a pub that I hated and was volunteering at a charity shop, wishing I could only get paid for it so I could leave the pub. Little did I know the answers to those wishes were just around the corner.

In the mean time I spent some wonderful days in Brighton, went back to Worcester for one last time to graduate and to see the friends I had had to say goodbye to a few months previous, and spent an afternoon with some owls, flying, petting and feeding them one-day-old chick heads.

And finally in November I got offered a paid position with the charity I had been volunteering for, I handed in my notice to the pub and later found out that they had just found the unopened answer to their questions as to why I hadn't been to work for the past two weeks.

Christmas 2011 was very differently from last year. Last year it came with the shock, upset, worry and gratefulness of Mom having and surviving a stroke. This year it came with me wining the bet and getting to dye my hair pink in time for Christmas, mainly in the aim of annoying my Nan, followed with me away from my family and all the friends I had spent New Years 2010 with, as I instead spent it with the person 2011 had most of its adventures with.

And so as I write this, a day later than usual, 2012 begins with the rain pouring outside. It is, I am sure, going to be a year of even more adventures, of saying goodbye to even more people, and of welcoming even more people into my life, of making plans for the future and of beginning to see other plans start to take shape, of visiting friends and of making the most of the sadness that comes from leaving uni for the last time - that now I have lots of new places across the country to visit!!

Hello, 2012.

I never knew being deleted could hurt so much

We're all used to it, being someone's 'friend' until suddenly one day you go to cyber stalk them and you suddenly have no access, you've been deleted, removed, and yeah you feel a bit put out because you'd been looking forward to this little nose since you and a friend had had a gossip about them a few days previous, but in the end no real harm is done and you forget about it and move on. But what about when the person who deletes you was once one of the most important people in your life, the person you would quite honestly call your closest friend, the person you did everything with and told everything to. What do you do then and most importantly, how are you supposed to react?

I should have seen it coming, we haven't really spoken since May, and that was the first time since about January, so even though I knew we weren't the friends we had previously been I still knew that we had some form of connection into each others lives, that there was still hope, and although it hurt to know that I had lost one of my most treasured friends, it gave me that little bit of something to keep me hoping.

Today I lost that bit of hope.

A text from a friend informed me that she had been deleted, part of me felt that I should be exempt from such an action, but I soon found out that I was not. I too had been deleted.

Words cannot describe how much that hurts.

I know it may seem dramatic and over the top, to react so emotionally to someone deleting a person off Facebook, but this wasn't any old aquantence, this was my best friend.

He was the person who on the first night of meeting offered me his bed to sleep in when I had nowhere else to go, the person who offered his food to me, who would drive me round aimlessly whenever I got my heart broken. He was the person who I always knew I could call any minute of the day, the person I drove over 30 miles with at 4am in the morning just to get a McDonalds. He was the person I went to stay with in the summer, and who came to stay with me too, the person I took walks in the snow with, and gave the rest of my drink to. He was the one who when my Mom had her stroke I asked to drive me the hour journey home so I could see her, even though the friend I was already with had already offered; it was him I wanted there. He was the person I text in January when things were getting on top of me, just to say that I needed my friend there that night, and he was the one who showed up and watched endless Greys with me despite the awkward few months we had previously had and he was the person I went to first when we got broken in to that same night.

He was the person I never had any doubt about being best friends with until the fateful day when life escapes our bodies.

And he is the only friend it has hurt this much to admit I've lost.

I know that old saying about some people are only meant to pass through our lives for a brief moment, but I never expected him to be one of them.

I'm not sure where it really all went wrong or why we became this, but I do know that he is the friend I will always tell my children stories about because even now, even today, with all this hurt, he is still the one friend I can't stop texting other friends about talking about old memories.

My time with him as a best friend will stay with me forever, and if one day he sees this, or has a change of heart, I will always be waiting with open arms to let him back into my life, because even now I find it hard to believe that we have amounted to this.

I miss you, Jake. I only wish you knew how much.

Blame the folks who sold the future for the highest bid

Whatever happened to childhood?
We're all scared of the kids in our neighborhood;
They're not small, charming and harmless,
They're a violent bunch of bastard little shits.
And anyone who looks younger than me
Makes me check for my wallet, and my phone and my keys,
And I'm tired of being tired out
Always being on the lookout for thieving gits.

I was going to write this blog a month ago, when the events were actually happening, however I decided to take a back seat to watch and read about what was really behind the headlines before committing to some ill-informed blog post.

It still upsets me a month on hearing some of my closest friends talk about the 'chavy scum' and 'opportunist lowlives' who for five nights controlled this country, and how they would gladly see these people shot by police and 'given what they deserve'.

It was very rare to find articles about these riots that try and look at the bigger picture and try to unravel what really caused the August riots of 2011. I guess not many people want to even try and conceive that there was a bigger picture than the one they were being faced with, because to do that they would have to admit that in some respect we were to blame also. I am not condoning the actions of the people involved in these riots, nor am I saying that they should not be punished, because what they did over those five nights, the rate at which it spread all over the country and the lives and livelihoods it took were all wrong doings; but these wrong doings started long before the first window was broken, before the first fire was set, the first punch was thrown and even before the shooting of Mark Duggan which spurred the original peaceful protest. This is something that has been growing for a lifetime.

We can't solely blame our current government for the birth of the angry society we currently live in, but we can't ignore all the little bits of icing they have so effectively put on the top of the cake that has been baking for decades.

Of course some of these rioters were 'opportunist' and many, maybe even all of them, didn't even know what they were rioting for, but the fact that people in such numbers felt the ability to come out for five nights and break, loot, and set fire to peoples homes and businesses without any sense of wrongdoing must raise the question, WHY?

Why do they feel so unconnected to their own community that they can go out and do these terrible things? Only once in the whole of the new coverage did I hear this question asked, when really this is the most important question that should have been asked. WHY? Why did they do this? Why did they feel no remorse or guilt at the chaos they were creating? But most importantly, how can we prevent this from happening again?

An answer, in short, is that they don't feel as though they belong to any society or community, they feel no connection to the places they destroyed over those five nights so in turn they felt no guilt. You can't gain respect from someone without first giving respect, the same goes for a community.

Like I have already said, this is a cake that has been baking for decades. Jobs have been cut, house prices have gone up and hours have gone down, education doesn't really mean anything any more because so many people have degrees now that they don't really mean all that much and the majority of kids in schools these days are destined to fail before they even get their first school uniform purely because of some statistics someone wrote up however many years ago based on a postcode. But statistics do not see the individual, and unfortunately, not many people do either any more, we see a few kids together and automatically presume something negative and feel the need to lower our head and walk faster. Nobody believes in these kids any more and nobody really believed in their parents either. Children learn by example, but to some degree so do adults. How do you expect to raise a child knowing the difference from right and wrong when so many of the most powerful people in this country are corrupt? Endless people in government stole money, made claims for their dinner or their second home or their third car to be covered by expenses and all a lot of them really got was a smack on the wrist. People hacked into peoples private lives to sell a newspaper which in the end was closed down and went on to get jobs straight away working with governors and other highly recognised newspapers. It seems there is one rule for the rich and another for the poor, so no wonder the poor finally snapped.

I'm not from the richest of families, nor am I from the poorest either so I am not going to pretend that I know what these peoples lives are like, but I am going to stick up for them when it comes to the unjustness this country is now hitting these people with in terms of prison sentences, such as the girl who got two years for stealing a bottle of Lucozade.

Something needs to be done, but it shouldn't come in the form of punishment, it should come in the form of rehabilitation. But before we can rehabilitate the poor, the rich must first take responsibility for their wrongdoings and lead by example. That would be a first in history I'm sure!

We're all wondering how we ended up so scared;
We spent ten long years teaching our kids not to care
And that "there's no such thing as society" anyway,
And all the rich folks act surprised
When all sense of community dies.

And it seems a little bit rich to me,
The way the rich only ever talk of charity
In times like the seventies, the broken down economy
Meant even the upper tier was needing some help.
But as soon as things look brighter,
Yeah the grin gets wider and the grip gets tighter,
And for every teenage tracksuit mugger
There's a guy in a suit who wouldn't lift a finger for anybody else

You've got a generation raised on the welfare state,
Enjoyed all its benefits and did just great,
But as soon as they were settled as the richest of the rich,
They kicked away the ladder, told the rest of us that life's a bitch.
And it's no surprise that all the fuck-ups
Didn't show up until the kids had grown up.
But when no one ever smiles or ever helps a stranger,
Is it any fucking wonder our society's in danger of collapse?

this isn't how i expected it to end

two years ago i was writing my first blog. about the people who saved me, the ones who gave me floors and beds and showers and food. the ones i knew would be there for life.

one year ago i was writing about moving out of my first home from home. about the pain of letting go and beginning a new chapter, and about leaving behind the memories of the past for the better. my lifers had changed slightly but there were still those few whose friendship i never doubted would leave.

this year i write about the end. the actual end. about leaving behind the life i have known for three years, about the lifers who actually turned out to just in fact be yearers, there to keep me on a certain path for so long before trailing off and finding their own new paths, which in the process of doing so left me alone, confused and emotional at their depart.

losing the best friends you never doubted would leave is a painful process. it makes you doubt everything you thought you knew, it makes you doubt things more than any boyfriend leaving ever could. because the best friends, the lifers, they are the ones who are supposed to stay. always, regardless, eternally. that's the whole point in them being 'lifers'.

this past year i have lost too many lifers.

too many have become yearers.

too many have become acquaintances.

one has become a stranger. and now i fear soon another lifer shall add their name to the list of people i used to know.

three years ago i never would have doubted how this life would end.

i would have not believed that my lifers would in fact only be with me for the student life.

i would have bet everything i knew that they would be my lifers even after moving from this place. but now i fear that what i thought i knew three years ago and what i know today are chapters on two completely different pages from two completely different books.

but, just in case, if you are reading this, know that i would gladly take you back and have you as my lifer again. i miss you.

And your past, it knocks on your door and throws stones at your window at four in the morning

Miss independent said, oh she fell in love

I'm a little left off centre
I'm a little out of tune

Sometimes, being the girl that i am, i get a little irrational.

Sometimes, that time of the month gets to take over. If only for a second.

Sometimes, i get that feeling, and i worry without cause.

Sometimes, i need to force myself to switch my brain off.

Sometimes, it won't.

This is like nothing that has ever gone before, i don't feel upset, i don't feel paranoid, i don't feel as though the expected unexpectable is about to happen. I'm not second guessing and i'm not losing faith. I am simply falling. Falling, so incredibly fast into this amazing thing that i have wanted to be a part of for such a long time. Falling, into something that i never want to end. I am falling so fast that all i am wishing on is the future. That is the problem.

I'm so absorbed in this incredible feeling that i am forgetting to take time. I'm thinking so far ahead, about next week, next month, next year, even beyond that, that i am forgetting to experience the now.

Sometimes, i feel that i am so excited by the prospect of the future, that i miss the present.

Sometimes, i feel that i am currently so happy, that i am blind to the negatives.

Sometimes, i feel that i want so badly to be a part of this, that i am losing my independence.

Sometimes, i fear that i am so involved in being half of a pair that i forget how to live on my own.

Sometimes, i have to fight with everything that is in me to simply 'not care' just as much as i do.

My weakness is that i care too much <3