Red eyes, blue heart

So I haven’t posted in a few days, kind of trying to stop being so negative but honestly I’m not exactly feeling positive just yet so that means just kind of keeping my feelings inside. And sleeping at every given opportunity… which leads to a lot of nightmares, fyi!

I have actually had a rather busy week which was good cause every distraction is welcome! But I was mentally exhausted by Friday night and cried about four times in the cinema… twice before the movie even started. I feel like keeping busy should be helping me to move on and switch off my brain but it’s still always working overtime in the background. It’s like on the outside I look fine, and I’m functioning and I’m smiling but inside I’m being eaten alive by the seven dwarves: Doubt, Self-loathing, Loneliness, Misery, Malaise, Rage and Despair. (BTW if anyone is interested, I saw Straight Outta Compton in the cinema – amazing! Go see it!)

The thing is, it’s really hard moving forward when I don’t know what I’m advancing to anymore. I wasn’t exactly happy before I met him. Even as a child I remember being sad, lonely, lost, nervous, self conscious and feeling like I was waiting for something to happen. This feeling of waiting just became more and more overwhelming the older I got and I tried to abate it with drugs and alcohol (which of course does not work). Then all of a sudden I fell for him and that was it – it had happened. I was now as happy and confident and downright euphoric as I had been lost and lonely for all those years. Don’t get me wrong I still had bad days, and weeks… and due to a multitude of things 2015 was a bad year but in general I was happy. I was happy with myself, with my life, with my relationship, my routine. I was a happy person, I wasn’t waiting for something anymore, I was living it, it was happening.

So now I can’t take comfort in the idea that “oh you were happy before him you’ll be happy again!” because I genuinely wasn’t. But even then I had the hope that whatever it was I was waiting on (I had no idea at the time that it would be him) would come. Now… it’s come and gone. What if I have peaked? What if that was it? What if it isn’t all OK in the end? What if we just tell ourselves that so we don’t all fucking top ourselves when we have our hearts crushed beyond repair? What if I’m nothing special and I don’t deserve shit (that none of us deserve shit), it’s all just pot luck and circumstance and this is the card I’ve been dealt and there’s nothing that I, or anyone else, or the universe can do about it?

I’m keeping busy, I’m focusing on other things, I’m doing the things I’m supposed to do but I’m not happy – just distracted. My eyes are still full of tears every single day even when I’m smiling, and my thoughts are still fucking full of him.

This blog was supposed to be the place where I just pour my heart out without worrying that I was inconveniencing people because, well, if you get sick of it you can just stop reading (you lucky ducks) whereas if I’m talking to an actual human being it’s a wee bit harder for them to just slowly walk away while I’m mid-rant. But with a few regular readers and knowing that a couple friends read my shit too, I’m now even worrying about leaving my feelings here! But I have to do something with them ’cause carrying them about all day is so fucking tiring. They’re heavy – writing this, in a strange way, is kind of like putting them down for a little while.

I don’t even have a point with this post; I’m not able to round it up to any general consensus or humorous conclusion. My head is fucked, my eyes are red, my body is heavy and every time I dream I can still feel just as much heartache as when I’m conscious. There’s still no relief and it’s hard pretending that it’s getting better and there’s only so long people can sympathise with you for and I feel like a fucking dick.

Now I’m going to watch Celebrity Big Brother (my very, very guilty pleasure). At least I’m not as big a dick as that Teen Mom Farah chick, ugh she’s insufferable! Sorry to anyone who’s sick and tired of me being sick and tired…

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P.S. He liked one of my Instagram pictures. Like, what the fuck?! GET OUT OF MY LIFE YOU DEVIL

Note to self

When you inevitably wake up in the morning with that familiar weight on your chest and tears in your eyes, remember that you caught yourself smiling three times today.

Get out of your head more often – it’s too cruel in there.

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Negative thought for the night

When is trying not enough anymore?

How long can a person try their best before other people give up waiting for them to be good enough?

We’re always told ‘as long as you try your best’, but in real life, trying your best doesn’t always reward you. Sometimes it just screams at you ‘YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH’, and eventually your chances run out. Even if you’re improving, even if you’re slowly but surely becoming better, time does run out. Then what does it even matter if you’re better? You’re still not enough.

I didn’t have to try very hard at school. I could get a B in most subjects with minimal effort. One year I had to study Spanish. I didn’t like my teacher and that year I was too concerned with feeling feelings and overthinking about them to care much about anything else. You all remember what those teenage years are like… A blur of hormones and underage drinking. At the end of the year we were all sitting in class when we received our final grades. A lovely big E plonked itself on my desk – I didn’t give a shit. The bubbly, preppy, gorgeous, looked at least 3 years older than the rest of us mere children, highly intelligent, super friendly, all singing, all dancing (literally, she was both a singer and a dancer), head-girl to be leaned across to me to ask my grade. I don’t think you need me to tell you what hers was… I showed her my E, not proud yet unashamed. She gave me a kindly, sympathetic look – though how she could sympathise with a bad grade I’ll never know! Maybe she came 2nd once in a Britney impersonating competition and could remember the sting of not being good enough. “At least you tried your best!” She said.

Ehh, no I didn’t. I didn’t try in the slightest. If I had of I would’ve done just fine. In fact I even went on to learn Spanish to A-Level standard in just one year at uni. ¡Te lo dije!

Fast forward to adulthood and I have to try every fucking day. I tried so hard to be good enough for him. He didn’t believe me. I was constantly trying to reach a point that was too far away for me to even see; I just kept going in the blind faith that the finish line did in fact exist. I didn’t reach it on time. He had enough of me trying my best and he will move on to somebody who doesn’t even need to try. Does that make them better for him than I was?

Now I feel as though I have to try my absolute hardest to make myself so good that he regrets his decision one day, be it years from now. But what if I never get there? When I’m laying on my death bed is ‘oh well, at least I tried’ really going to comfort me from the fact that I know absolutely, wholly, 100% that I’m not and never would be good enough?

Sometimes I think I’d feel better if I were sitting back at my desk in Spanish class, satisfied in the idea that I could have if I’d wanted to – whether it was the truth or not. And yet still I’m trying, exhausted, still trudging toward the supposed finish line. Why?

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Falafel

UGH I’m trying SO hard to remain positive this week, but missing him is really getting on top of me. I can’t put him at the back of mind even for a second, he’s at the forefront 90% of the day – and the other 10% he’s like, in the second row. It’s driving me insane (dreamt I was a sniper last night, picking off the ‘baddies’ one by one from a seven-storey window; Most relaxing dream I’ve had in weeks).

But I’m not giving up!! It’s only Tuesday for fucks sake, I can at least go half a week without a break down, right? So here is a rambling, rather superficial list of things I have to smile about:

• Planning a trip to Budapest with my friend
• The McGregor-Aldo fight, wherever I end up watching it
• The fact that I have falafel for lunch – fuck yeah
• Checking out a new gym this week with some friends
• Potential trip to southern Spain to learn free diving, if I stop being such a scardey cat – not kidding, I react to water the same way a very fluffy, very angry cat does.
• Legends – the new movie about the Kray twins. Tom Hardy x2?! Yes please!
• Saturday night plans with friends, wine and a big, dirty take away
• My granda’s getting an Alsatian that puppy I can play with
• One of his ponies is also expecting a FOAL!!! Who can’t be happy around a new born foal stumbling around like bambi?!
• Online shopping. As my unemployed brother is always home to let the delivery man in, guess who doesn’t have to fuck around with Tesco anymore? *smug grin*
• An invitation to stay with my friend in London – although she has informed me that our usual drug and alcohol fueled binges will be on hold until she completes a 10k run in November. Ugh.
• Friends who spontaneously send me messages like this to get me through the day: 
• VERY exciting work opportunities
• New shoes – I may not be able to walk in them but I CAN look like a damn queen in them.
• My little black cat (my familiar!) who sleeps at the end of my bed every single night
• A tidy room. Used my half day yesterday to clean up and finally I can see the floor again.
• Spying an awesome bracelet on an American site and finding out that they offer free shipping to Northern Ireland! Like, what?! Some English sites don’t even offer shipping to auld norn iron!
• Unexpected text from a friend inviting me out for coffee tonight

Now that’s a good list! If I don’t cheer up I’m gonna need somebody to hook me up with some Prozac… Not kidding.

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**Sidenote** I wonder how many more hits this blog post would get if I titled it ‘Baby animals & Tom Hardy’??

Sweet emotion

  I’m far too sentimental. 

I’ve previously referred to myself as a walking paradox; I’m either totally apathetic towards something or totally passionate about it. But I don’t always want to be so passionate about things. As we’ve previously established, I (stupidly) managed to completely lose myself in my relationship, but it’s even the little things that I struggle with…

Since moving into my parents spare room I’ve had all my stuff packed in boxes and there is just SO much. And you know what? I could count on 1 hand the number of things I’ve actually needed out of those boxes over the last 3 months. So much of it is stuff that just means something to me, brings back a memory, even just a small, silly one. Do I really need all those memories? Let me give you an example…

Somewhere in a box within a box, probably within another box (I have a thing for boxes) I know that I have 2 rocks (yes, you read correctly, rocks) from… I wanna say Sicily? Which a boy brought me back from his holiday when we were about 13. We sat beside each other in class (it was alphabetical order) and I can’t even bloody remember the significance of the rocks, but there was one, and it was really funny at the time, so I’ve kept these rocks for over a decade, from a guy I haven’t even spoken to for the majority of that decade. I realise I sound like a hoarder, but as long as it’s tidied away it doesn’t count, right? 

I am still gutted about my laptop that gave up the ghost out of nowhere and took years of photos with it (bimbo here didn’t have the sense to back any of it up). So, of course, I still have the laptop – despite being told that there’s no way to access the photos, I keep it just in case of a technological miracle. I even went as far as to start a fight with the ‘tech whiz’ who gave me the bad news (and charged me £18 for it may I add) when I bumped into him after faaaar too much prosecco. Luckily he saw the funny side when I made fun of his eyelashes (they’re very long and beautiful) *hangs head in shame*. 

But my problem extends past hoarding and fighting with pretty men. Remember when I said I had the time of my life on Saturday night? Now I’m even mourning the loss of it! I’m genuinely pining for that night, that feeling of being on top of the world. Instead of just being happy that I had such a fantastic time, my heart has to feel sad that time didn’t stand still. Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard? 

I read all this self-help, self-love, finding peace crap (which is often super contradictory) and everyone says ‘you have to learn to let go. You have to let go of the past. Be thankful for it and move on.’ Like, yeah, ok, I’m smart enough to know that’s what I should do, I think most of us can figure that part out by ourselves. But it all fails to teach me how to let go. My head is on board, giving me two thumbs up, braced and ready to go. My heart on the other hand is the moody teenager spending a sunny day in a darkened room, impossible to get it excited about anything! 

I used to hate my apathy. I was always waiting for the next thing to come along to fall in love with, to day dream about, to give me the goosebumps and euphoria I cherish so much. Lately, I’d love to be able to just turn down the dial on my emotions. 

The grass is always greener eh? I just need a good slap!!!

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Sidenote

  

Just went for a walk to collect my car in black silk pyjamas because I am both hungover and stylish as fuck. 

Sunday nights really have a way of making you question your life choices amiright? I need a job that doesn’t have Mondays! 

Sweet dreams to everyone else who doesn’t know what they’re doing with their life and doesn’t get enough sleep xx

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Too much

There’s a blessing in the storm

I wouldn’t call myself an optimistic person, I think of myself as a realist. But sometimes if you don’t search (sometimes really hard) for a silver lining, you’ll just want to give the fuck up.

My family and I have had a rough year so far, with my dad losing his job and then a couple of bereavements, among other things. It truly has been one thing after another and it’s been really hard to look on the bright side… I tried to cheer up my dad by reminding him how lucky it was that he was home to support my mum as my granny passed (he worked abroad). We all coped with our grief by focusing on the fact that it’s brought our family closer together and even ended a feud between some. But for other things, the ‘blessing in the storm’ has yet to reveal itself. It’s not still stormy, but it’s not sunny either… Just kinda grey and dismal.

I tried to tell myself that something good to take from my recent heartbreak was that I will ‘grow’, learn from it and become a better person, a better girlfriend for next time. You know, the usual clichés. My head believes it but this miserable heart of mine doesn’t really feel like there’s any benefit at all. And yet, something is happening…

Focusing on my blog and my Instagram page (a wonderful distraction from a painful reality) has begun to open some doors for me – exciting, beautifully styled doors that I really, really want to go through, in my highest heels no less. I no longer feel obliged to stay in my shitty office job that forces me to wear lilac (*gags*), just to pay the rent. I’m spending time with my friends, I have so many travel opportunities (which I cannot decide between!), I’m not worrying about money for the first time in years (except for when I spend £100 on an outfit just to get covered in beer, whoops)… And last night, I had the time of my life! You know one of those nights that are just so perfect, with the best people, where you feel on top of the world? I couldn’t have had that night if we were still together – despite the fact that I didn’t do anything that any boyfriend should be upset about, he still wouldn’t have been happy about it. Stupidly, today I still feel some guilt over it, but at least I don’t have the fear of him berating me (and threatening to leave me) for it.

There is good in this utter shitstorm, but why doesn’t it feel like it? My head can see it and recognise it and type it down for you lovely readers but my heart still disagrees. I think I would give it all up to have him back… They say we’re all fools in love, well, I am your Queen. Queen fucking idiot.

Everything is just so conflicted right now, I have so much to consider, decisions to make, and my heart doesn’t seem to be on my side! It’s all too much (I admit the hangover doesn’t help). Can I just pay somebody to give me all the answers please? Is that how therapy works? Should I go see a psychic? Can the powers that be please send an epiphany my way? Perhaps a vision in my tub of ice cream?

Anybody else feel like this or am I just a hungover mess? On a side note I do think that I should go raving more often… And drink a little less.

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Seriously?

So I was at the hairdresser today. Just less than a year ago her partner of 10 years, whom she bought a house with and would be marrying in a few months, came home and told her he was leaving. No warning signs, no fighting, nothing to suggest he was going to change his mind after he proposed to her. So naturally we spend my appointments bitching about our breakups.

Now, whereas I have a small circle of friends who haven’t really gone through a serious breakup (I say serious as we were living together, planning to get married etc), my hairdresser has a lot of friends, who are usually a bit older than me. She was able to tell me two stories today of friends whose fiancés had called off the wedding last minute, just like hers had. Now, I know shit happens. I know that the seriousness and stress of a wedding can give somebody cold feet and I know that men sometimes feel pressured into marrying before they’re 100% sure… But, really guys? Can you not recognise your reservations before making these kinds of commitments?

He and I had just agreed on the tenancy of a new place – not the most serious of situations, but to help him out I paid all of the security deposit. Days before moving in he calls it all off, I’m out £600 and have to explain through hysterical crying to the estate agent that they have to find a new tenant (he couldn’t even have saved me that embarrassment and told them himself). He didn’t lose any money. I doubt if he even lost any sleep over it. He just moved in with his mum who doesn’t take any money off him and has given him her fucking car… He has it made. Meanwhile I couldn’t even go to work, therefore losing more money. My hairdresser’s fiancé did the same. Expected to walk away from the wedding and the house they bought together (for which she paid the full deposit) with only forking out for a minor fine to get out of their mortgage agreement. She’s had to get her solicitor involved.

I’m making this sound like it’s about the money but it’s not… It’s about the utter clueless-ness of these men. All of the stories had these three things in common:

• The men had made a commitment and waited until the last minute to be honest about their feelings
• They broke our hearts and forced us to restart our lives
• They don’t seem to have any grasp of the gravity of the situations

How can they be so clueless?!?!

Is it a man thing? I don’t want to tar all men with the same brush but is it possible that the majority really have that hard a time recognising and acting upon their feelings? Are they too ‘hardened’ to realise how they’ve broken us? Or is it simply a case of, until you have your own heart broken, you’ll never understand the power you hold over someone else’s?

The real kick in the stomach though is how they act afterwards – like they want to be friends. What planet are they on? Seriously? You want to coast along, paying no attention to how you feel or what you want, commit to somebody, decide last minute to take a look at your life, realise you actually don’t fancy the commitment thing after all, shit all over your partners heart then send them smiley faces in an email and ‘hope you’re ok’ texts. NO! That’s not how it works! Ugh. And yet no matter how angry I get it never lasts. I’d forgive him in a heartbeat if he asked.

Fuck it – I’m just gonna get a sex change and live in la la land with all these other men. I’m done with feelings. Somebody get me a dick STAT.

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Girlfriends

Lately I’ve been thinking about soul mates…

As I said a couple of posts ago, “I’m into spiritual shit”. I believe in souls, I believe in soulmates. I believe that you can be in love more than once in life, but there will be ‘the one’, who means more to you than everybody else you’ve ever been with. But in light of recent events, I think that, sadly, when you find ‘the one’, you might not be their one.

It’s only been a couple of months since my breakup so I understand that my feelings may change, but I also feel like I know myself pretty well and I expect that he will always be my one. Although I’ll (hopefully) find love and happiness with someone else, given the choice it will probably always be him. I have an ex, the one who came before him, who told me I was the one. He was not my one, I always knew that. Over 2 years on he has not met anybody else and, when I saw him recently (after barely any contact at all since the breakup), he told me that he will always have feelings for me. He looked at me in a way I hadn’t been looked at in a while… It kills me to think that our breakup may have left him feeling the way I do currently, even just briefly. I wouldn’t wish heartbreak on my worst enemy (and I can be vengeful!).

I used to think that ‘the one’ and your ‘soulmate’ were the same person but as I scroll through Pinterest and Tumblr reading romantic quotes to dwell in my heartache, I’m starting to question that. A soulmate is somebody who knows your soul and accepts you for who you are. They love and support you, they appreciate you, they fight for you, they fight with you, they are there for you no matter what, they don’t try to change you. He didn’t do that for me…

Our relationship had a complicated start, but once we realised we were falling for each other I tried to start things off on the right foot. I was honest with him about my past, my mistakes, misjudgements, regrets. My bad habits, issues, weaknesses. I don’t regret being honest, but it didn’t reward me the way I expected it would. He held all of these things against me. In the end, it came out that he had never trusted me at all because of a mistake I had made years ago, before we even knew each other. He judged me harshly, he criticised me, he didn’t support me through the hard times, he thinks I’m bad. Although, I still believe he loved me, in his own way, in between the criticisms. (Before I paint him as a villian, it’s important to say that he treated me like a queen a lot of the time and I, of course, was not perfect.)

On the other hand, my girlfriends have stuck by me through everything. They have never given up on me no matter what fights we’ve had; never judged me no matter what mistakes I’ve made; never tried to change me and always supported me. What did I do to deserve them? Throughout the breakup, and my consequential break down, they have recognised that I’ve completely lost myself in him. I hate myself because I feel like I am what he thinks I am – bad, untrustworthy, manipulative, controlling, despite how hard I try to be good! My friends have been trying to build me up, telling me he’s crazy. I don’t know who to believe, but either way, I am so damn lucky to have them fighting my corner. Holding me up and holding my hand.

Many of us will be familiar with this quote from Sex and the City:

Maybe our girlfriends are our soul mates and guys are just people to have fun with.

I think Carrie may be on to something. He will always be my ‘one’, but my friends are the ones who have lived through ALL of my bullshit, forgiven me, accepted me and loved me. That sounds like a soulmate to me.

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Q & A

So, the lovely Life is Bello! has nominated me for a Liebster Award. Thank you very much, I’m really pleased you’re a fan of Angry Blonde. I’m not sure where I’m going with this blog but I’m just excited to connect with like minded people; For some reason it can be hard to open up to people we’ve known for years, people we see everyday, people who already think they know us.

Anyway…

As a newcomer to the blogosphere, I hadn’t heard of this until now, so I’m going to do a little copy and pasting from lifeisbello to explain:

The liebster award is a marvellous little thing that connects bloggers and audiences alike for blogs that have less than 200 followers…

So, onto how it works:

• Link back to the person who nominated you
• Answer the 11 questions given to you by the nominator
• Display the Liebster award logo in your post
• Nominate up to 11 other bloggers with less than 200 followers
• Create 11 questions for the nominees
• Notify all nominees via social media/blogs

Seems like a nice way to show support to the blogs we enjoy! Here are my answers:

1. What/who inspires you the most?

I’m inspired by everybody I meet. We all bring something different to the table, we all have our individual strengths and we’ve all overcame hardships. Although I don’t show it anywhere near often enough, I find something inspiring and admirable in every one of my friends, family and colleagues. And now I’m finding a whole online community of bloggers who inspire me with their honesty and rawness.

2. If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?

This changes with my moods. I quickly typed up my answer late last night when I would have liked to be sitting in a particular spot on the grass out the front of Sacre Coeur in Paris, looking out across the sea of city lights. But today I’d go to Budapest to spend the weekend in a very luxurious apartment. It’s a toss up between somewhere familiar and somewhere brand new.

3. What could you absolutely not live without?

Passion. And sushi.

4. Cats or dogs?

Cats.

5. What is/would be your signature song?

Oh this is a tough one. Honestly, the first few that spring to mind, when I consider the lyrics, are too fucked up to share with you. Let’s say I’m still trying to figure this one out.

6. What’s your favourite season and why?

Autumn. Cold, crisp nights, crunchy leaves, scarves, boots, hot chocolate, candy apples, Hallowe’en, fireworks, sparklers… There’s always a feeling in the autumn air like something could happen. New beginnings. Autumn is my spring.

7. What do you value most in a person?

I value different traits in each of the people closest to me, it’s hard to pick just one. Trust, I suppose. Trust and loyalty.

8. What would you say is your best quality?

Eh… I throw a good punch?

9. If money was no object, what would you do?

Whatever the fuck I feel like! And spoil my parents like crazy. They deserve it.

10. Sweet or savoury?

Sweet.

11. swanky apartment in the city or cosy cottage in the country?

Swank in the city.

 

Here are my nominees:

Ash in search of…

sweetsaucysoulful

sincerely, kaytee

London Girl Big Dreams

emilyovershares

3 Days After 3 Years

leavingthesun

And here are my questions! I’m looking forward to reading your answers 🙂

1. If you could go anywhere in the world right now, would it be to somewhere or to someone?
2. Do you believe in ghosts?
3. Are you currently in love?
4. A memory that always cheers you up?
5. Do you think you could kill somebody (with a reason to, obviously)?
6. Favourite food?
7. Are you a jealous person?
8. Sex or money?
9. Have you ever been in trouble with the police?
10. What has held you back most from doing/being what/who you want in life?
11. Something you hate about yourself?

Away you go x

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