Adulting: What I’ve learnt and what I got spectacularly wrong

Just over three months ago I moved out of my family home where I lived out the fantasy of childhood, the agony of being a teenager and the downright confusion/bewilderment of the last few years (click here to revisit my post on moving to London). Against various bookie predictions, I have made it – I am alive, well and have also managed to learn a few things (hurrah!). So without further ado here is what my time as an undercover child in the adult world has taught me:

#adulting?

1. Want to fit in at The Big Smoke, i.e. the shining metropolis, i.e. London? Literally all you have to do is pretend to be in a rush to do something really important. Look at your watch and sigh in frustration when waiting for the tube/the bus/the loo. Walk with deadly purpose, preferably in shoes that make a satisfying noise and vitally, you must never stop, stopping is for tourists.
2. Adulthood is mostly about touching things that you really don’t want to. Get your mind out the gutter; I’m talking about slugs, spiders, mould, your life savings. Basically all the things you would beg your parents to do instead of risking your precious pale aristocratic hands.
3. It’s a terrible idea to drink two bottles of wine. This doesn’t need explanation, just don’t do it, learn from my implied tale of woe.
4. The government doesn’t want you to have anything nice. With almost £50,000 of student debt I kind of knew this already, but in trying to live a normal life I have once more attracted the wrath of ‘the man’. I earn minimum wage, but this is apparently still enough $ for the government to think I might be able to buy myself something nice, and so to put a stop to such nonsense they demand a nice slice to put towards stuff like Buckingham Palace’s restoration.
5. Lies always get found out. Every friendship group is simultaneously a collection of people who just like to hang out together and master spy ring.
6. Chiswick is not the kind of neighbourhood where it’s the norm to wash the filth from your oven at 10pm, in pyjamas, on the street. People walk small dogs around here, that’s how you know it’s nice, and incidentally not the place to do this kind of thing.
7. Canapes are terrifying. It seems fancy chefs everywhere have entered into a secret agreement that canapes must consist of at least twelve components; none seem to go together and at least one is so fancy it might as well be made up. The most terrifying thing? You eat canapes all in one. That’s right, no sample nibble, it’s all or nothing. Now there are three possible outcomes: the canape’s great so you enjoy it, it’s vile so you go for the gag and spit, or the middle line – it’s nasty but you swallow it down all in one like some kind of canape python.
8. Everyone gets lonely sometimes. It’s just a sad fact of life I think. There’s inevitably times when everyone is busy so you’re physically alone, and even if you’re surrounded by people you can still feel isolated. But the real ironic kicker with loneliness is that you’re not alone – it happens to literally everyone, and thankfully for most of us it’s just a brief stint.
9. Family Whatsapp groups are spaces where the standard rules of grammar, reason and sense do not apply. This is the real twilight zone, leave it for two hours and there’ll be 42 new messages that are absolute nonsense but require you to urgently call home to discuss something you casually mentioned three months ago.
10. Always say yes to everything. Yes, I know I’ve talked about this before but it’s still true and still the most important thing. To my joy it’s still been possible even when adulting 9:30-5:30, hurrah!

Nobody's baby, everybody's girl

I think lately I've been worried about saying important things and making bold statements in case they turn out to be wrong. Perhaps it's a symptom of starting out in a new place with new people, I'm not sure. Regardless, it's cowardly, and there's nothing that I hate more than a coward. Maybe one day I'll look back at this blog and think God how wrong I was about x, but I don't think that's a good enough reason to stop saying honest things, how they appear to me at the specific moment – I ain’t got the answers. So hold on tight kids, it's a big one this time.

So, I have this theory (and ample evidence) that I can be anybody's perfect girl for roughly two weeks. Now this of course has certain restrictions; the men who are attracted to me, as well as 'perfect' not meaning flawless - it means being right in that moment. I should also explain that I'm under no illusion about my faults and merits, I know where I stand. I desperately want to dispel this theory, to find evidence to the contrary or another explanation, so this is my way of working through the options I guess. Welcome to the ride.

Convincing fake relationship (still give it 2 weeks tops)

I wonder sometimes maybe if the men I've been involved with have seen me as an embodiment of the life I lived at Cambridge; perhaps they wanted a piece of the glitter, of the fun, of the (often slightly idiotic) abandon. Every romantic involvement that has been of any kind of gravity has begun with tumbling intensity, snatched moments and urgency, urgency. The reflection of myself I could see in the mirror of them is beautiful, it's me at my best. Suffice to say I'm not perpetually at my best, (especially spending 50% of my time hungover). It’s just not possible to run around all the time, to constantly have arms open to the air - one has to catch ones breath between the laughter. Thought: volatile living attracts changing minds? It was always in the quiet moments when I could feel them slipping away - it's easy to make someone want to keep you when you look like you might bolt any second, harder in the stillness. Waking up in the mild mid-morning to find them already awake and staring at nothing, me waking next to them perhaps more hard work than they'd bargained for. 

One person who I was involved with told his friends that he'd "found the kind of girl he wanted to spend his life with". Now there are two tell-tale red flags that arise from this statement; firstly the wording - "type", what type am I? His type? The type? Can anyone actually accurately be described as a type when we're all such walking balls of contradicting, ever-changing chaos? Nah. Secondly this happened the morning after the night we met. This is where my part of the blame begins to sneak in - I unashamedly love a love story, so when one is offered to me, regardless of how temporary and how ill advised, my god I will take it. Is it my fault for being so naive or their fault for offering me a grand romantic narrative they can't live up to?

To be honest I don’t think that assigning blame is all that useful in solving ye grande riddle. These guys don’t know what they're looking for, and before being sure, they think they've found it in a sweet little package, so throw everything in because that seems like the right thing to do - I don't think I could ever blame anyone for doing this, it's the way I believe life should be lived, and this is why every time I’m so willingly complicit. My flatmate suggested last night that this happens to me so often because I expect it to – I attract these difficult guys because I subconsciously anticipate things being difficult – like I said, I love a love story and aren’t all the best ones difficult? Yessir. But I don’t think I distinguish very well between things that are worth the fight and things that are best left alone, (I’m from the north, everything’s a scrap). In the end I need to accept that for some people I cannot be the answer; as both Bob Dylan and Johnny cash said; it ain't me babe. If people try and make me into their answer, into their perfect girl, of course things will unravel, of course I can't live up to what their questions demand, I cannot be enough for them if I rightly demand to keep some of myself, for myself.

____

For throwback to past blog tirade of relationship-based outrage click here

It's not about you, it's (about) me

Starting at the end of exams and continuing over the summer I went through a phase of reading autobiographies. Prior to this I’d never been keen at all on non-fiction, even less so on autobiographies, so I don’t really know what triggered the sudden switch. From a psychological point of view maybe I was subconsciously desiring to see how other real lives had played out, given that I was on the cusp of beginning my own ‘real life’ (we all know Cambridge doesn’t strictly count as real). During this period I read three notable books; I’m With the Band by Pamela Des Barres, Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher and Wild by Cheryl Strayed – all of these books are incredible and I cannot recommend them enough. I finished all of these a few months ago now, but like a bad breakup, I’m still not over them, I can’t stop turning them over and over in my mind. Perhaps as a result I’m finding it difficult/near impossible to engage properly with fiction at the moment, a little voice in my head won’t stop saying; ‘yes but do you actually care what happens, it’s not real, this didn’t happen’. These autobiographies came along at just the right time; during the last months of Cambridge and for a little while afterwards I felt more awake to reality and more in touch with my place in it than I ever had before (disclaimer: I did not take LSD) – this was not a moment for fiction when the real world was so utterly compelling. 

A common idea about fiction is that it’s our tool to escape, I believe autobiography as a genre is the exact opposite of this. Because the events being recounted actually occurred, we are forced to face them with the author – the most human and genuine problems presented to us by a genuine human voice. The best autobiographies are written with unflinching honesty, at certain points we should know that the writer is uncomfortable with what they are telling us, that they are offering to the world a self-confessed uncomfortable truth about their deepest selves. This is part of the bravery of self-narration and also part of the catharsis. 

I originally started this blog in order to reclaim my own narrative that I felt had been taken from me (see the sass that started it all here), since then I guess it’s become an autobiographical space of sorts. At the beginning I was so so scared of writing about myself - I didn’t want to do something narcissistic. I was also worried that what I had to say wasn’t worth saying, because who am I but another 21 year-old dot on the planet. FOOL. Why would I ask who I was to write about anything when there was only ever one possible answer anyway: myself. I exist within a narration and have a voice to share it and, given these two very fortunate circumstances, it would be almost rude to keep myself to myself. The women whose autobiographies I’ve read have led incredible lives, but that does not make mine any less extraordinary – in any autobiographical narrative the same things crop up, and this is because they are the things which make up the crazy experience of a life being lived.

Still not a narcissist

Even though this is bad marketing, possibly encouraging competition in blogland (got ma eyes on you), I wholeheartedly recommend that everyone do a bit of self-narration, don’t let anyone tell you your life isn’t interesting enough to be recorded – it damn well is. Though this cry is universal it goes out especially to women; men have been navel-gazing for years, writing women for centuries, dominating the autobiography for bloody ages – create your own narrative, come and claim what’s yours.

Adulting (kind of)

So the blog has been v quiet for the past few weeks but I do have a very good excuse, I promise – last Sunday I moved from Sheffield to London, then the day after began my new (and first proper) job as Online Intern for House & Garden magazine. It’s been an absolutely insane whirlwind which has had me jumping for joy one minute and on the edge of a nervous breakdown the next. But not to worry – after the first week I love love love my job and am happily settled in my little flat.

Home sweet home

The most stressful part of the whole business has been finding somewhere to live – I had two weeks to find a place within budget, with a decent commute time, that I could make feel like home. Naïvely I thought this wouldn’t pose much of an issue: London’s a big place, must be full of places looking for tenants right? Wrong. It is a jungle. JUNGLE. So after my shitty experience I thought it might be good if I shared what I’d learnt so that it might help someone else avoid the renting nightmare:

1. If it looks too good to be true it probably is. So obviously try and familiarise yourself with common online scams so not to fall victim. Scams aside, some listings have other less criminal, but just as pressing issues. I got my hopes waaaay up about a beautiful, lower-end-of-budget flat in Camden. It hadn’t actually been built yet.

2. Go and view the places in person. Another obvious one but again v important – one place I went to see wasn’t the room advertised, instead of a spacious double it was a teeny tiny shoebox room.

3. Trust no one. This sounds a little extreme but it’s unfortunately necessary. Confirm and double confirm everything, take phone numbers, call agents, send endless emails. I had some landlords completely neglect to turn up to viewings and others who were uncontactable until I saw them in person. Some people literally do not give a shit about what happens to you so expect to feel a bit bashed about.

4. This being said, it doesn’t mean you should be a shit back to these people. Yes be tough, be sassy but also be polite, be nice – in a land of whiny Frodos be a Sam (sorry not sorry).

***

Most people would call my moving away a ‘fresh start’, an opportunity to remake myself, to start from scratch in a new place. But I don’t see it like that at all. The last time I made a true fresh start was three years ago when I started at Cambridge. I needed this opportunity to start again desperately, I wasn’t the person I knew I could be and needed a chance to reinvent myself urgently. Long story short, I did, and managed to graduate happy with who I was. But this time I have no old self to escape from, I don’t need a fresh start but nevertheless I’ve been given one, and in all honesty I don’t really know what to do with it.

Trying to force who I’ve been as a Cambridge student into the stencil of London working life will be near impossible without making some changes, and I suppose this is what I’m scared of – losing who I am when I’ve been so blissfully happy. I’ve managed to crack the code to looking like a native Londoner – look busy. But I don’t want to become someone who never has time – I think that’s how you really lose sight of yourself. I reckon this semi-identity crisis is coming from a combination of golden-age syndrome and fear of growing up. Stay tuned to find out how long I can resist the demon adulthood.

Optimism and the Domino Effect

Just over a week ago I was in Edinburgh watching a production of Rent. Now, Rent has been my favourite musical for years but I’d never seen it live and indeed, hadn’t listened to the full soundtrack for a good while. Even though the production was really rather average (soz), it did remind me of why I love this particular musical so much. There’s a moment in the second half of the show when one of the characters, Mark, reflects on the series of consequences that initially bring the characters together: ‘why did Mimi knock on Rodger’s door and Collins choose that phone booth back where Angel set up his drums, why did Maureen’s equipment break down, why am I the witness?’. This idea of consequences has been something I’ve been thinking about for a while, it probably has a proper name but for now I’ve termed it the Domino Effect.

Flash forward a few days and filling in (yet another) job application I was asked what my best two qualities were. I decided without hesitation that my optimism and resilience were the best things I could offer (they’re kind of the same thing, shhh). My optimism comes directly from my belief in the Domino effect; my belief that basically the world is a weird place where weird things happen that lead to even weirder things. In this way nothing ever actually ends because the consequences, even if they’re dormant for a while or not physically measurable, go on kind of like a ripple effect.

My being in Edinburgh began with me sitting in the wrong seat at formal months ago – even things that seem like nothing can spiral so quickly into something. This is why I live in the slightly erratic way I do, trying always to say ‘yes’. The seeds of these small beginnings are out there, and the wonderful thing is that we have the option to choose to be present, to allow the chances to take hold and to set off another line of dominos. I’m optimistic because the next chance encounter is always just around the corner, the next weird circumstance is about to happen, I’ll be in the right place at the right time sooner or later.

Suspected by only one person of being in the wrong seat that night

I think cynicism has become fashionable because it’s easier. Being optimistic and believing in a positive outcome means you’re exposing yourself to the possibility of being let down, we’re expected to be embarrassed if this happens, even told we’re fools for hoping. Admittedly being optimistic has gotten me into trouble before; I sometimes believe in people a little too much and effectively scare them (lol..?). But the wounding I get from this is only temporary, so I’ve never truly regretted being optimistic – with optimism that is acted upon there is never ever a ‘what if’. I think openly investing in the hope of success is one of the bravest most truthful things one can do.

So always hang on in there folks, in true optimist style, I genuinely believe everything will work out just perfectly.

Five Weird Post-Graduation Habits

1. Taking on overly ambitious Pinterest projects: ‘Impressive yet so simple’. WRONG. The first time I made the samples pictured below I put in a tablespoon of salt rather than a teaspoon. But this time I am older, more sophisticated and most importantly know the difference between tsp and tbsp. However the disaster is aesthetic rather than taste-based; the dough bore an attractive resemblance to sludge so was impossible to spiral. And so I present to you the biscuit metaphor for my life:

How you think you look vs. how you actually look

Our most disturbing face-swap

2. Resuming the Great Sibling War: This is a battle fought on two fronts.

i.) Firstly we’re engaged in a game which everyone with a sibling will be familiar with, but unfortunately has no name. I can only explain it in very rudimentary terms: when one is looking at the other, one of us will make a particular hand gesture and the most recent one to have seen said hand gesture wins. The other is in a state of shame and humiliation, which may only be broken by tricking the current winner into seeing them make the hand gesture. Because there is no visible end point we can only presume its like Game of Thrones – you win or you die.

ii.) The second tactic in the war is creative insults, which needs no explanation, only an example: ‘I’ll pull your ears off and shove them up your nose’.

3. The Fleetwood Mac Coefficient: So this is a routine thing, every job application must take no longer than the length of The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac (two hours and twenty-one minutes). Every application is appropriately begun with the song ‘Monday Morning’, which is good, yes, off to a good start. By the time we get to disc two things are getting weird with the odd pairing of ‘The Chain’ and ‘Don’t Stop’ – the twitchiness of ‘The Chain’ followed by the optimism of ‘Don’t Stop’ has me appropriately panicked/pumped (always treading the line) for the home run. If any potential employers find Fleetwood Mac lyrics embedded in my CV, I am terribly sorry, blame Stevie.

4. Saying ‘Hiiiiiiiiiii’ to my dog literally every time we make eye contact: In the mind of my dog I am at the bottom of the family hierarchy because I went to uni first and he hasn’t forgiven me. He likes to literally push me around and pointedly ignores me, so saying ‘Hiiiiiiiiiiii’ is a bit like the Great Sibling War (see 2). Except I always win. Because he can’t speak. Heh heh.

Hated since 2K14

5. Running: I recognise that this is not what one might describe as an odd habit, but unless I am being chased, I do not run. Cannot run. My body has what can only be accurately described as an allergic reaction to running. Not only does my own nature disapprove, nature ITSELF has shown its discontent – the first time I ventured out I was stung on the lip by a mysterious flying insect. Swelling. Horror. SWELLING.

The Wild Freedom of the Dance

This may sound incredibly stupid, but one of the things I legit miss most about Cambridge is the opportunity to dance like an idiot twice a week. My history with dancing has been rough to say the least. I danced pretty consistently at weekly classes until I was about 14, and by consistently I mean consistently badly. Being a bit shit would fly in most amateur dance classes, however, the dance school I was at was ran by the most fierce octogenarian I have ever, and most likely will ever encounter. Honestly, it was a good class if there was only one kid crying at the end. And so began my fraught relationship with dancing.

Skip a few years and the possibility of dancing in a nightclub has become a very real threat. I must unlearn everything years of dance classes have taught me. The pros are clear: there’s no one to shout at me if I go wrong. But the cons are also evident: there’s no routine, I have to make up a creative, non-repulsive way to throw my body around to a song I might not know. A moment of appreciation is due here for ‘The Cha-Cha Slide’ and ‘Macarena’ – two songs which THANK GOD come with instructions – they have saved many an awkward dance floor-occupant from complete disaster. Anyway, my unlearning/relearning process was proving more difficult than I had initially expected. One friend’s advice was ‘bend in the middle’, yes, it was going that badly. Enter the hero: a bottle of wine. I wake up the next morning expecting to have been made into a meme. But no, I am unscathed from my dance experience, and after a few more clammy club nights I have become as Abba might put it, the Dancing Queen.

The song ‘I Get Ideas’ covered by M Ward (my favourite version, video below) has the best opening few lines: ‘When we’re dancing and you’re dangerously close to me / I get ideas / I get ideas’. Now I know that getting with people in clubs is not the traditional image of romance, but I genuinely think that there is something just a little bit magical in the dance together beforehand. These are the single most hopeful few hours of any entanglement; nothing can go wrong in the dance, there are innumerable sparks at the prospect of what might happen next, and best of all, you don’t know each other in the context of romance, so even if it’s just for one night you can believe that you’re both perfect. The haze will probably clear in the morning to reveal you’re both dickheads, but in the moments before the plunge you’re standing so high that the hangover and awkward encounters to follow are so worth it.

I miss miss miss the fun, wild absurdity of dancing. One of my favourite poets Gary Snyder has a poem called ‘What You Should Know to be a Poet’ which is literally a list of things he believes one must experience before laying claim to the title of poet. One of these experiences is ‘the wild freedom of the dance’. This is one of the most truthful lines I’ve found in poetry. If we accept that to be a poet is to be a witness, participant and scribe for the deepest movements experienced by the human race, then of bloody course ‘the wild freedom of the dance’ is essential to a poet’s understanding. Something happens that is genuinely electric when we let go and dance without restriction. Speaking is unnecessary. The movement is all. It says I am here, I am physically real, I am worth celebrating, I am both individual and part of this collective act that has always been such a basic human impulse.

'The wild freedom of the dance' captured spreading from left to right.

And I said, what about Breakfast at Tiffany’s?

The germ of the idea for this post began whilst I was engaged in that most reflective of activities, clearing out roughly five years of crap from my room. Being sick of the Spotify adverts (“Don’t you love this song?” *elevator music*) I was listening to my iPod from which a song has never been deleted since 2008. This of course means that there are an awful lot of terrible songs living in there, but thankfully there is also occasionally gold. Cue ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ by one hit wonder Deep Blue Something. FYI if you don’t know the song then the rest of the post might be a little difficult so video is below: (it’s really quite fun, I forgot how much I liked it)

SO, being reflectively tidying as I was, I got to thinking about having something ‘in common’ and how the idea plays out in romantic relationships. You see I’m not sure if having stuff in common is all it’s cracked up to be. When you ask someone ‘what do you have in common with x?’, what you’re asking for are what I shall refer to as surface points. These are the things you could talk about with a near-stranger quite comfortably. For example, I once had a great Tinder date (I know right) with someone who had so much in common with me it actually bordered on the bizarre. We liked the same music, films, books, hobbies – basically name anything you would consider a surface point and we had it in common. However, the great unexplainable ‘it’ wasn’t there, and after asking myself repeatedly what was wrong with me, I’ve come to conclude that the reason behind the absence of ‘it’ actually had nothing to do with me being odd/soulless. The thing is, we had so much in common that I wasn’t at all intrigued, we were way too similar and I DO NOT want to date the male version of me. Having different tastes and interests means both parties get exposure to different things – there is so much music that I love now that I wouldn’t have heard of if I hadn’t been introduced by exes. One of the worst questions I’ve been asked is ‘what do you two talk about?’ – I genuinely don’t know what kind of answer is expected here, there isn’t some kind of conversation menu. Having dated only science students for the last three years, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at actually enjoying talking about science for which A-levels had previously given me a burning hatred.

Of course it would be ridiculous to date someone whose fundamental life views are opposite to yours (anti-feminists of any description need not apply), but I think that matching up surface points is a poor way of measuring the potential of a relationship. Maybe it’s a safety net to stop us from asking the big questions – we both love Scorsese films so his attitude towards commitment doesn’t matter etc. etc.

‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ opens with the lines ‘You say we’ve got nothing in common / No common ground to start from and we’re falling apart’. Well Deep Blue Something, whoever the hell you are, good news is that you don’t need anything in common, bad news is you gotta find something more fundamental than Breakfast at Tiffany’s to base a relationship on.

Love Letter To Cambridge

Seven days ago I graduated from Cambridge and six days ago I packed up my room and left college for the final time. In the rush of the final few days there were so many people who I didn’t get to say goodbye to, some of these people I will see again, others I won’t. Though not a love letter in the traditional sense, this is addressed with love and thanks to a great many people who have shared my time at Cambridge and who have touched my life. So this is my proper goodbye.

There are a lot of different notions of what home is, but for me it is clear. I have a happy family home which I was incredibly lucky to have been born into, I’ve always been comfortable, but it’s never quite been the place for me. Homerton and in a larger sense Cambridge has been everything to me that a true intellectual, spiritual, social home should be. Unlike my family home I was not born into Cambridge, or indeed with the odds in my favour of getting there. But being a stubborn bitch I did, I built the foundations of this home myself, and therefore I’m going to break with habit and say that I’m actually terribly proud of myself.

Coincidence would have it that on this day five years ago I had my Year 11 prom. Being a precocious 16 year-old, I of course thought that this event marked the beginning of the rest of my life and that the me presented on that day would be the me I would take forwards into the world – my best self. Obviously I was an idiot. I was bitterly shy, unsure of myself, viewed boys as another species, took a lot of shit, hated talking to strangers and still thought I was going to be a vet. How times change. I realise that in another five years time I might feel the same way about myself at graduation: a stupid 21 year-old, still precocious and perhaps overly optimistic. But what I can say truthfully now that I couldn’t five years ago, is that I am closer to being the woman I want to be than I ever thought possible. It doesn’t look exactly how I thought it would, but the fact remains that I have reached a point where I know that I’ve stopped wasting time feeling inferior, I’ve stopped being scared – I am exactly who I want to be at this moment  and that is thanks to a great many people.

Never before have I felt that I’ve had such a large safety net of wonderful people ready to catch me should I fall. You are what made Homerton and Cambridge my home; bizarre, nonsensical, loving, wise, stupid – you have been the best friends and the best people I have ever known. You taught me to be good, to be strong, to be weak when I had to be, never to settle, to seize the day and most important of all to always know that I am never alone. Without you I would not have come so far, not laughed so often, not danced so ridiculously and not experienced my full capacity for happiness. Thank you for being there and consenting to live as violently as I do – things were never done by halves.

You have given me the best three years of my life, I love you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

***

This list is not at all exhaustive but special thanks go out to the following people. No matter how long or short our acquaintance, no matter how long since we last spoke, you have been and still are important to me.

Hollie Blockley, Luisa Callander, Phil Colbran, Ed Crowther, Anton Evans, Callum Fleming, Andy Goodwin, Miranda Hewkin Smith, Nick Jones, Ruby Keane, Jack Lawrence, Jo Lloyd, Libby Majumdar, Will Morris, Elena Natale, Geraint Northwood-Smith, Alex OBT, Louise O’Neil, Eleni Pahita, Steve Pickman, Danielle Poole, Isabel Power, Ria Sanders, Ben Spurgeon, Hanna Stephens, Nicky Watmore, James White, Alex Wills, Sam Wiseman, Susanna Worth, Jenny Young.

I separate my English pals because they deserve a specific thanks: I am convinced that it is because of you that my love for literature has not died a painful death. Talking about literature with you has kept it interesting and enjoyable – you saved me from becoming electively illiterate, thank you.

Finn Brewer, Freddie Cooke, Bryony Glover, Kirstie Green, Zoe Green, Lizzie Humberstone, Jen Hutchings, Lizzie Mahoney, Bryn Porter, Naomi Pyburn, Flo Sagers, Miranda Slade, Jess Wing, Toby White

The Measurements of Self Love

Ever since the ‘A4 Waist Challenge’ surfaced a month or so ago I’ve been thinking about how we find it so difficult to love ourselves. For anybody who doesn’t know, the ‘A4 Waist Challenge’ involved posting a picture with ones waist eclipsed by a piece of A4 paper being held shorter side to the top. Many questions spring to mind, first of all: who thought of doing this? Yes a piece of paper has various uses, but a template to measure the human body against has not previously been, and should never have become one of them.  When did we become so insecure that we had to seek validation from an object outside of ourselves? 

The more you think about it, the more it becomes clear that this isn’t really a new phenomenon: God knows how many lengthy battles have ensued with the scales, trying to get them down to that magic number. Calorie counting is a similar kind of validation which has existed for years: many a time I can be found willing myself not to snack, just to stay within the holy 2000. Revelation time: even though this might seem obvious it literally only just occurred to me writing this – 2000 calories a day is bullshit. It works out that it’s the amount of calories a moderately active adult female weighing 132 pounds would need to consume in a day to maintain her current weight. Who is this woman? Cos it ain’t me and it’s probably not you either, there are a million different circumstances that would change the calories needed: if I’m stressed, if I’m more or less than ‘moderately active’, if I’m on my period (hallo Cadbury’s), metabolism and even the kinds of foods I’m eating. At the heart of the matter is the fact that in general, we know when we need more food and we know when we don’t – we shouldn’t need these numbers to validate our feelings about food.

I don’t think anybody is innocent of uploading a picture to Facebook and waiting with eager anticipation for the likes to come rolling in. The number of likes obviously then takes its effect on our self-esteem for better or worse. Same thing with Tinder matches but this time you don’t even know these people, they just become part of a reassuring statistic.

I think in an age where we live so much outside of ourselves, throwing our image about on social media and being so constantly occupied with what everybody else is thinking, it’s hard to find time to consider how we might actually learn to love ourselves properly. Coupled with our obsession with numbers (50% chance it’ll rain today, 3 new notifications I woke up to) there really is no wonder that we’ve lost the ability to love ourselves organically from within, without seeking outside validation that can be quantified. So though it will inevitably be difficult and take a decent amount of time and effort, it’s would probably do us all a lot of good. 

Me, Myself and My Anxiety

Prior to Lent term this year I'd had three panic attacks in my entire life and all of them were fairly minor - I stepped outside and knew that it would be over in a few minutes, so never took the time to think about them or why they happened. Coming back to Cambridge after Christmas this all changed rather suddenly: my panic attacks went from lightweight occasional occurrences to regular severe episodes. But this didn't make any sense, I had no extra commitments this term and no extra stress, so where was this increased anxiety coming from? Other than the anxiety itself there was nothing that anyone could mention that would trigger the anxiety: my only new anxiety was about my anxiety. Just my luck.

I am very lucky in the way that my anxiety doesn't largely impact my day-to-day life. The best way I can describe it is everything is fine until it isn't. There is no large build-up to my anxiety attacks - about ten minutes of anxiety then a further fifteen to thirty for the actual episode (I swear I'm not scheduling them like '30 minutes reading, 20 minutes anxiety'). Afterwards I'll be tired and emotionally drained but re-balanced enough to operate as my normal self again. An attack feels like the atmosphere around me becomes thicker and presses in on me. Whatever I'm thinking about, no matter how serious or trivial, seems inescapable at that moment. This is what makes anxiety such a lonely mental space; the rest of the world seems kind of unreal  in these times of pure panic, one or two thoughts are all I can focus on and the worries attached to these thoughts are completely unrealistic so I experience detachment. I'm lucky again in the fact that I have wonderful friends who regardless of what time it is, will speak to me either in person or through messenger to pull me back into a state of control - you're the best guys.

When these things started happening to me I was hesitant to diagnose them as symptoms of anxiety because compared to severe anxiety disorders, what I was experiencing seemed negligible. But what I failed to understand is that anxiety is a spectrum - it manifests to different degrees of severity in different ways for every sufferer. Leading up to exam season everyone is likely to feel anxious to some degree, but if you're experiencing sudden intense bursts or anything that is negatively affecting your ability to live day-to-day life, then maybe do some research on anxiety. It isn't just a quirk of Cambridge students or something you should just expect to occur at some point. Even though it is common, it is not inevitable and therefore should not be treated as a given or trivialised in any way. I don't believe there is a threshold for when feeling anxious becomes anxiety - if you personally feel like you're experiencing abnormal or damaging levels of anxiety then you are, nobody can deny you that experience so don't be afraid to name it.

Even though the world is a scary, anxiety-producing place, try to stay brave because (for want of a better simile) anxiety, particularly attacks, are a bit like the Cindies queue: it's dark, miserable, you're not sure how you got there or how long it'll last, but you're surrounded by pals and once you're past it you're going to have the best time.

If anyone wants to ask me any questions or has any comments then please feel more than welcome to message me or drop me an email: leanne.walstow@hotmail.co.uk

Scared of Commitment? Bullshit.

I'm willing to bet that we've all either received or given an excuse for walking away from something that has centred around commitment: ‘I'm not ready to commit’, ‘I'm scared of commitment’, ‘I need commitment’, ‘what’s even the point in commitment?’ And this isn't just with relationships. It’s with plans, jobs and even (as I know all too well) dissertation topics. At our age I think commitment is something we simultaneously crave and flee from. It’s a difficult relationship and it’s about time we acknowledged the truth of it: we’re all ‘scared’ of commitment, but we all secretly know that when we say this, we’re bullshitting.

Declaring yourself as scared of commitment is such a tired trope. Perhaps that’s why we meet this phrase with outrage rather than pity, with an eye roll rather than a hug. It’s become so common that rather than a genuine fear, it’s just a part of the character of our age group. It’s a fear we all have, same as being scared that we’ll never be able to afford to own our own house – but I can’t see people giving up on this pipe-dream because they’re afraid. You have to realise that having a fear of commitment does not make you special – you’re not a free spirit, or a damaged yet charming fixer-upper, and you are not a lone wolf. You’re like the rest of us trying desperately to figure out if commitment is a question or an answer.

I think to solve the commitment conundrum we have to ask ourselves what we’re actually scared of, because it’s not the commitment itself; it’s what might result from it. Unfortunately these realities do not make the inoffensive sounding excuses what we might hope for. I don’t want to commit because: I think you’ll trap me, there might be someone better, I suspect you’ll turn out to be a dick, I'm still into my ex – none of these are particularly comfortable things to acknowledge because they’re the things we are genuinely scared of.

Being scared of these things is okay, not wanting commitment is fine and wanting to be on your own is also completely understandable. But for the sake of everyone’s sanity, explain these things and the reasons why, rather than playing the get-out of-jail-free card of ‘commitment fear’. We’re all scared of things we associate with commitment. So rather than using it as an alienating shield maybe try and think of it as the opposite: something in common.