Monday 23 June 2014

The Other Side


It's a week today since my last exam. I've spent my freedom reading, thinking and going out 'til 4am with my friends. I guess, at 18, I finally feel like a proper teenager. But all these late nights have finally caught up on me and I'm tired all the time. I guess it's good I decided to save the late nights until after college. It seems I have this weird thing where I think I'm different to how I actually am. I think I'm better and I ooze that confidence when I'm out, but it doesn't fit. It's not my personality, but my looks. I just can't decide if it's a good thing or not?


We will never be able to see ourselves, only our reflections and pictures - to me, that seems really strange. I wouldn't ever say I'm the best looking person, because I'm not, I've never thought that, but I do always think I'm better than I actually am. When I walk down the street, I don't think about my chunky thighs banging together, or my round tummy wobbling. I imagine myself as someone else, someone that doesn't exist, someone with a lot of confidence, who can get up in the morning and leave the house with a smile on their face. I don't do it in order to do those things, I just naturally picture myself like that. Sadly, you can imagine my disappointment when I expect so much but get so little because of my imagination.


You can imagine my shock when I see photographs of myself, or I look in the mirror. But even then, I don't hate myself. But I don't change myself when I know I can and probably should. I have one life, or so they say, and this is what I'm trapped in. I think this persona I have in my mind is me, just not who I'm projecting.  Sometimes I feel like unzipping this current layer and stepping out as the person I assume I am - but it's never that easy. It seems this is similar to the 'fake it 'til you make it' saying - perhaps this is what I'm doing. Or maybe I'm just mental.


Perhaps I don't ooze this confidence, but I feel like I do. I'm an introvert, sometimes. It always depends who I'm with. With my friends, I breakout of my shell and this is when I'm this 'other' person. I do like to think that this must be the real me. I feel like this is what Allen Ginsberg was like, or maybe he really was just a confident, pretentious twat. Or the same with any other poet, writer. I feel like you need this other side of yourself because without it, will be ever have art with meaning? If people were fully their confident type, art would be selfish. Without confidence, we would live a lifeless existence without literature to get us through it.


Well, I don't know where my mind is going with this. I didn't plan for that ending, that's for sure. Maybe it's because I recently finished an amazing book (The Song Of Achilles by Madeline Miller) which I think you should all read. If you've read a really good book recently, please recommend it to me, I'm in need, now I've finished my book, I don't really know what to do with myself. Also, now I've finished with my a levels, maybe you'll be seeing more of me...or maybe I'll still be stuck in my writer's block. Either way, keep sending me messages to inspire me please.

(Just had to, look at that moustache - oh and relationship like Paul and Linda's please: favourite song at the moment.)