The Mountains are Calling and I Must Go

So - it's almost here - 15 more days and I leave the UK for 6 entire months! I have been getting a lot of love from all of you readers lately, and I cannot tell you how much it has spurred me on. You're probably all wondering what the hell I got myself into during the last couple of months and without spilling the contents of my personal life everywhere, I can tell you that it was a fleeting, toxic relationship that almost lead to me losing my identity and being left completely used and alone - it almost lead to me sacrificing this ski season that I have worked towards for the last couple of years (I know, I was clearly brainwashed.)

My promise from here on out is never to lose myself again - I'm back with my mental health intact and my mojo very much revived. Now it's time to get restless again, to travel, to meet new people, and on the more concerning side - fit 6 months into 20kgs worth of hold baggage.

I feel as though it's all finally happening, that my life is on the edge of beginning, I'm about to experience quite possibly some of the best days of my life, ever. So, to make sure I do this the right way, I've managed to compile a to-do-list with a sentimental twist.

1. Proper Goodbyes

I know I'm not exactly moving to Fiji for the rest of my days, but I still feel it's important that I say goodbye properly to those I will miss most. I'm spending more time with my family and making time to see old friends, it's always important that we make our loved ones feel loved, regardless of any time apart.

2. Organisation is Key

Yes, I'm a control freak, and Yes, I'm slightly OCD so, boring things like health checks, a good ipod update and making sure all of my information is correct will put my mind at ease before I travel.

3. Home Comforts

So this is the one that's freaking me out slightly - WHAT WILL I DO WITHOUT MY OWN PILLOWS? I am not materialistic or precious but when it comes to my latex foam pillow I am incredibly protective. (Still the best relationship I've had to date). Also, I'll be packing things like photographs, branded toiletries, lots of Ribena, my dog, my campervan, just the basics.

4. Addresses

So it's not like I'm going Bear Grylls on everybody and cutting myself off from the outside world, but I am making sure that I compile a list of addresses of those I will write to during my stay - even if it is just to send a smug Christmas postcard to the restaurant I work at (HA). 

5. Dropping off the baggage

Not only will I be doing this at Manchester airport at about 6.30am on the 17th November, I am also shedding any emotional baggage that I don't want to take with me. I'm 20 years old and I am about to embark on my first great adventure, and I am doing it completely carefree and wide open to anything thrown at me, youth is a time to be selfish and I'm currently realising just how important that is.

6. Get Excited

Finally, when all the above is done - I will allow myself a good few days to be beside myself with excitement, I might even squeak a little bit.

It's funny, how the American outdoor enthusiast, John Muir, had no idea how iconic his words would be when he penned a letter to his sister. He also had no idea how perfect it would summarise my current situation - the mountains are calling, and I must go, I have spent the last 15 years in solid education, I have been in serious relationships since the age of 14, I have just finished an intense, accelerated law degree. The mountains are practically bloody begging me.

In all seriousness, what is calling to me most is my own instinct that this is going to be the start of something amazing. A work colleague said to me that I should go on this ski season because 'that is you, that is what is inside of you, and you can't be ready for anyone else in your life until you have done what it is that makes you yourself' and I couldn't agree more. Work and relationships can wait - putting myself first can't.

A Lesson Called Heartbreak.

So, I knew that I was pretty lucky to get to the ripe old age of 20 without having my heartbroken. My own impulsive choices and reckless acts went unpunished and I often turned my back on things without a second glance because there was something new, something attractive and shiny dangling in front of me.

I have never had to play the broken hearted girl, until now.

But the thing that saddens me the most in all of this is how I have made other people feel - I have broken some people and left them to pick up the pieces - and that makes me feel like a monster.

So to you - the ones that I tore apart, and to everyone who has ever had to nurse a broken heart - I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the tears you shed wishing I would call. I'm sorry that I turned my back on you so coldly. I'm sorry for every night you thought the loneliness might choke you, for every night that you prayed for the sickness in your stomach and pain in your chest to stop - even just long enough to get to sleep. I'm sorry that I didn't care enough to check how you were getting on. I'm sorry for every flash of white hot optimism you had when you got a text. I'm sorry for the hours you spent looking at my old messages, wondering if the words were really true. I'm sorry if I made you question what love even means. I'm sorry for those truly desperate, desolate hours where you dreamed I would show up at your door.

I'm sorry, because, now I feel it too.

Being heartbroken has not made me bitter - it has not made me believe that love isn't real. It has made me realise that acts have consequences, that fairy tales don't always have happy endings and it has also made me proud of how strong I know I can be. I was alone when I penned this post, alone, desperate, tears flooding my face and sobs reverberating from my chest. I gagged, heaved, praying that some of the nausea would leave my body, but it didn't - and it still hasn't. Healing anything takes time, and this is something that will take a while.

I have cried, I have collapsed into my bed, I have practically had my parents and sister put me on suicide watch. I have pulled myself together, smiled into the mirror, reminded myself that I am more than this, more than how I was treated. I have put on some make up, showered and cleansed my skin, I have listened to 'Boss Ass Bitches That Could Destroy Your World' playlist on Spotify (seriously recommend if you're going through hell) and I have remembered that time will always pass, that I won't feel like this forever.

Finally - to the one who has broken me, I hope that you can one day stop lying to yourself and everyone who tries to love you. Thank you for making me momentarily weak so that one day I can be stronger than ever. I know that hope is a dangerous thing but I will always continue to have hope that we will all meet someone capable of returning a love that makes us forget any suffering we faced at the hands of others.

Room 351

I love you.

I miss you.

I need you.

Three things we all long to hear. Three things that, when said, erase all doubt, suspicion, desperation. These things move through your ears and straight to your heart, they bypass the brain completely, they slip through the lips like honey. Three things that shouldn't be said lightly, or half-heartedly, or manipulatively.

Three things that can be full of empty promises.

I can handle someone who cheats, I can handle someone who argues, I can handle someone who is cold, but I can't handle a liar. Lies are the most toxic thing we can do with words. Lies fill you with false hope, false security, lies make you delusional, crazy, psycho. As soon as someone is prepared to lie to you, you should be prepared to walk away. Don't get me wrong - I've been naïve, I've encouraged dishonesty and welcomed it, accepted it almost.

I understand that just because someone lies to you, doesn't make you love them any less, if anything, it can make you love more fiercely. Nothing in this world weighs as much as a heart that knows it is being lied to, and I have carried a heavy heart around for some months now, and it's time that it was lifted. It's not something that is going to happen instantly, and I don't even know how long it will take but what I do know is that I need to set myself free. I've been lucky enough so far in life not to have my heartbroken, and the real ironic thing is that, even now, I've done it to myself.

Just because love feels like the best you've ever had, the most passionate, beautiful thing you have ever experienced, doesn't make it right for you, doesn't make it healthy. If I stay in the place where this love has brought me, I know that I will be torn apart even more than I already am.

We have to make decisions in life, we've always been making decisions since the second we were born. Big and small, easy and difficult. Some of them are the easiest we will ever make, some of them we make without even realising it - and some of them will change us right to the core, they will make us weep for 40 days straight, will make us instantly regret what we've done, but eventually, we will thank ourselves.

Self worth is something that comes above love. Self worth is something that comes above every single 'I miss you, I love you, I need you' - we have to remember that. When I fall in love, every part of my being falls with me, my brain, my soul, my body, everything changes, everything wraps itself around that love, I become consumed by it - and so far nobody else has matched that level of dedication. You deserve someone who is infatuated with you, who would move mountains for you and who would call at 4am just to hear the sound of your voice. We all deserve that. But we also must be prepared to give it back.

I'd like to think that one day, someone will make me fall in love without me giving up my own self-worth. Someday, someone will be infatuated with me, someone will adore me, protect me, empower me and honour me with nothing but truths.

Solace in the City

I've always told myself I hated London - I went for one weekend at the end of the summer a couple of years ago and found it congested, oppressing and stifling.

Then I managed to land myself a work experience placement at a very popular UK magazine (I don't know either) in London.

And now here I am, falling hopelessly in love with the dynamic, exhilarating capital. I left home yesterday under some heavy circumstances and sat staring motionless out of the train window for the entire 2 hour journey down, but by the time I was hustling my way out of Euston station I finally felt alive, lifted and almost happy - it was good to be in a different place again. I have missed travelling like I would a lost limb, I have missed being a stranger in a strange place.

Life recently seems like a series of badly timed events - I find myself awestruck by the ability of fate to leave me blind, deaf & dumb at what it throws at me, but when I walk the streets of London I feel all of my senses coming back to me. The heart of the city beats along to my footsteps, the people are diverse, beautiful, interesting. There is noise and colour at every corner, opportunity awaits every person who dares to seize it. This trip comes at a peculiar time of my life that I never anticipated - I had stalled at a crossroads and now I find myself taking a welcome detour into the city. It is undeniably a welcome distraction, a bustling hub of electricity that has no time for sadness or reflection, it's exactly what the doctor ordered.

I take comfort from being alone and surrounded by strangers - us humans are living, breathing proof that life goes on, despite adversity, the world keeps turning, the trains keep running, the sun still rises everyday. It is nice, sometimes, to be nothing but a spectator in a world full of performers.

As for my work experience, I was apprehensive that it was going to be a Devil Wears Prada remake and I would be running around with Demelza's Chai Half-decaffeinated Macchiato (nope, that's probably not even a thing) with tears in my eyes and some bitch on my back; but the awful truth is that everyone has perfectly normal names, is absolutely lovely, and drinks tea. I even got to write a few pieces that will hopefully go up on the company website. It was amazing, to actually work doing something I love, researching, contacting publishers, checking facts and asking for high resolution images. At one point I was writing an article on slippers, and I promise you, nobody has ever been so damn excited over slippers.

I can see now how easy it is, to lose yourself in a career - like a relationship, when you find the right one, you just want to go further and further into it, hoping that it turns out to be a lifelong passion.

I'll admit, with every high comes its low, and I have had an awful, suffocating sinking feeling when I have returned back to my empty apartment (as nice as it is - it has a HAMMOCK) but most of this is down to what is happening in my life right now and how much my heart longs for the comfort of someone. Being alone in a city full of people gives you a true sense of irony, but also of solace. I know that the streets are there, just down two flights of stairs and out of my front door, the tube (chancery lane) is a two minute walk away and then about 5 minutes (if that) to Oxford Circus, where I can be surrounded by people and noise and life and bustle and forget what it was that was weighing me down.

Life hasn't been easy recently, and the worst isn't quite yet over, but I am now forever in debt to London, I have found a soho state of mind here, I have found solace in the city.

The Lost Art of Letter Writing

When did we become so lazy with communication? When did we lose the desire to make an effort with our words? There is nothing sweeter than receiving something in the post, handwritten, feeling that person reach from the page in the creased, worn paper, hearing voice in the sloping of their scrawls. A text message - albeit instant - is not quite the same, electronic words on an electronic screen with no personality, no warmth. Letter writing, like every other romantic gesture, seems to be a lost art.

The greatest love letters of all time are handwritten - have you ever heard of a text or email that went down in history as one of the most heart wrenching, warming texts ever created? No. And that's for a bloody good reason - it doesn't matter if your a world renowned calligrapher or if your handwriting looks like spiderman flicked his wrists all over the page, the first step to showing someone how passionate you are about them is writing it down.

Arguably the best love letter of all time comes from Johnny Cash, who wrote to his wife June on her birthday:

"Happy Birthday Princess,

We get old and get used to each other. We think alike. We read each others minds. We know what the other wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit. Maybe sometimes take each other for granted.

But once in awhile, like today, I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met. You still fascinate and inspire me. You influence me for the better. You’re the object of my desire, the #1 Earthly reason for my existence. I love you very much.
Happy Birthday Princess.
- John"

Just imagine for a second, how it feels to receive such a gift. A persons' most intimate thoughts and feelings written down in their hand, for you to keep forever.

Sometimes a letter is also the best option for declaring something other than love - Ghandhi even wrote a letter to Hitler that questioned his savage acts, and appealed to him to use his power for the better, This was futile no doubt - but the power of a letter is knowing that the other person has received it - has seen the words written in your hand and forever has the proof, forever has the message in their mind; regardless of whether they choose to respond or not.

Writing to an old friend is something I like to do. Someone whose personality jumps from the page in their similar language and words, so much so that you can hear them in the room with you - tell me, can a text do the same job? A letter is something sacred that you can carry forever, and draw comfort from the pages when you most need it. People find comfort in the familiar scrawl of those they love, just like they do in a scent or a song or a place.

These letters don't have to be a scripture of undying love, you don't need to rewrite the constitution of the United States of America. Sometimes just leaving a post-it-note in the most suprising of places with a quick quip can be enough to remind somebody that they are the centre of your universe. What i'm trying to say is - somebody somewhere loves you, be it your lover, your best friend, your parent or maybe just the crazy old lady down the road, so every once in a while, leave them with something that they can hold on to.

Night Running

With the black skies of winter now firmly pressing down on me, it's safe to say that come 8pm I am dying to get out of the house and feel some fresh air, some life. It's been about 2 years since I've ran regularly but last night the natural desire, drive and instinct all came back to me in a burst of adrenaline. I had to go, get out and run as far and as fast as my feet could take me. I wrote this shortly after I came back, (on a slight serotonin high so please embrace the poetry I conjured out of just going for a short run).

Tonight I ran

I ran into the black night

Furiously, determined

Chasing my demons away

Under a starry chandelier.

Running used to be my escape

When I run there are no headphones, just the rhythm of my feet hitting the floor and my breathing fluctuating.

There are no walls, no blocks, no boundaries, my feet can take me wherever I wish. My mind isn't focused on anything but the finish line, my mentality is to get through the space between my moving body and that place. 

I ran in an athletics group for a while and found the competition as stifling as the four walls that drove me to running. Running is my escape, I don't do it for medals or for glory, I do it for sanity. I used to hate it, back when I was competing, it was me against the clock, me against the person next to me, hearing their breathing just as practised as my own. That's the thing, when I run I fall into a rhythm, the breathing and the pace come back to me like old friends, the familiar circuits I do welcome me at every turn. Of course I time myself, to keep an eye on my own personal fitness, but the real reason I run is to clear my head with the fresh air, to get out of the four walls that lock me in every day, to see how far my feet can take me before my legs buckle, to test my body and my mental strength. 

I choose to run at either the crack of dawn during the summer months, or late at night during the winter. It is during these hours of the day when everything is still and sleepy, even if there is something slightly horror movie-Esque about a young woman running late at night (you would reinforce this point also if you ever saw my hometown and its inhabitants). It is a time when most of the world is sleeping, or safely inside but yet there I am, wide awake, alert, mind focused and sweat covering my body, happy, elated and alive. I see the things at night that nobody else sees, I hear the first song of the birds that nobody else hears. I think it's important that sometimes we do things that make us feel like we are the only person on the planet, because in our own lives we are number 1 - and I don't think we can never really appreciate that unless we isolate ourselves every now and then. 

5 Weeks//6 Months

If someone were to say to you, how long do you think it would take for your life to change forever? I'm guessing you might say one second, you might say one year; depending on your answer and the imaginary circumstances surrounding it.

From raw, recent experience, I can tell you that it took mine about 5 weeks.

Slowly but surely I lost the firm grip I had on my life and spiralled into all sorts of emotions I didn't think I was capable of feeling. Now I'm left in a confused mess wondering what the hell to do next, waiting for my life to feel normal again. Nothing is at it was, and won't ever be the same again.

I fell in love with every fibre of my being. I fell in love the way you fall asleep - without protest, helplessly and easily - without even really realising it.  I can hear your thoughts - this girl has just come out of a relationship, this screams rebound blah blah blah - but I can tell you that this feeling is entirely new to me, entirely different.

This love is one that shouldn't have happened - on paper we are so wrong and there are so many obstacles in our way but somehow we have made it to this point and I have gone through things in the space of 5 weeks that most people don't even go through in 50 years. It has been a love I have come close to losing, a love that looked like it had no future, a love that brought me to my knees with tears down my face and dangerous thoughts in my head. The circumstances surrounding this situation have made me 10 years older overnight, I have experienced emotions and scenarios that really required me to put on a smile and get on with things when my world was upside down and inside out. I have stayed awake all night with the darkest fear that the light of the morning might not ever come, I have felt a sense of euphoria that I didn't think possible.

So now, the question is - Do I pursue my ski season and disappear for 6 months, as if nothing ever happened? As if my whole character hasn't been changed or altered in any way? How can I now walk away from something so precious and delicate?

If I were to explain all of the circumstances to this scenario - I can confidently say that 9 out of 10 people would probably urge me to leave the country for 6 months - they would probably say that the timing is ideal - and I know this, but I also know that leaving will shatter my heart beyond repair.

During this particular 5 weeks I found myself in hotel rooms and sat in my car in the black of night, praying that everything would be okay, praying that this love would be strong enough to even make it through another crazy 24 hours. I'm not overexaggerating when I say that at times it has been a matter of life or death. How can I walk away from that, from everything that has happened, for half a year in a different country?

I know that I am like a wild animal - if you lock me up, if you try and contain me, try to keep me in one place, then I will break out and react and never come back. I know that I have just got out of a 15 year struggle in education - I know that 6 months surrounded by mountains is probably something that I need. So why did fate put me in this place? Why, on the most desolate of days, when I was leaning against a bookshelf attempting not to cry, did I look up and see my Nanny's very rare name emblazoned across a book in front of me? What does this all mean?

I feel like I need a sign, I feel like this decision is not one I can make myself. I know that I'm being weak here, but all I've done for the last two years is make all of the decisions, call all of the shots - and I'm tired of that. I feel like I want to throw things into the wind and see what comes back to me.