“New Normality”

It’s difficult, this time that I’m in. So a bit about myself, I speak French and Spanish and I have recently managed to somehow complete my degree in both languages. A very proud moment of my life, yet during a global pandemic there are many downsides. I spent 5 years of my life leading up to this moment, a time of celebrations and fancy grad ball dresses and photos being taken to celebrate one of the proudest moments in my life. Yet I am faced with nothing, no grad ball, no celebration, no photos being taken to celebrate one of the proudest moments in my life.

I managed to get myself a job in France working as an English Language Assistant in a primary school. It was all planned out; degree, summer and then move to France. Sadly with my asthma and the ever-growing number of new coronavirus cases that France has, I had to withdraw from the job and stay in Scotland for the time being. I wouldn’t have minded that too much, or not at all to be honest, there are people dying, me not being able to move to France for a year is nothing. That being said, what’s most difficult is that everyone else in my life is getting back to this “normality” while I’m stuck in a job that I hate with no friends near by and no hope for a near end to this crap.

All of this isn’t to say that I’m not happy for everyone to be getting back to their form of a new normality, but it makes it so much more difficult for me when I see everyone getting what they want, moving abroad, finding new relationships while I’m stuck with the routine of waking up, doing house chores, eating and then going back to sleep. The hardest part of all is that I can’t tell anyone about how I’m feeling. I have friends and I have family, but I don’t have anyone who truely understands what I’m going through. Lock down was so difficult for many, but for me it was a great time filled with constant messages from friends and a full house every day. Now all my friends have moved back to their lives of adventure and romance while I’m stuck in the same boring routine.

What would be the point in telling anyone how I am feeling, all it would do is either make me look like I’m jealous or not supportive of the people that I love and their lives, or it would make them feel guilty for being happy and that’s not a feeling anyone should ever feel. I recently confided in one of my closest friends and they replied saying that my situation “could be worse” and that hit me like a brick. It made me feel like the way I am feeling isn’t justifiable and that I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. People just don’t understand how shit this is for me right now. I know that some point in the future I will be able to get back to my new normality, and from now to then I just have to ride it out, things can only go uphill, but it isn’t easy.

Anyway, that is my blog for tonight. I may not be able to tell my family and friends how I’m really feeling, but at least I can write down my feelings in a blog and send it out in the world for the odd person to glance over.

Stay safe xoxo

Extremely Vulnerable

“Extremely vulnerable”. I hate that description. “Vulnerable” on its’ own I was okayish with but “extremely” makes me feel like I’m incapable of anything. Or “extremely vulnerable” to what? That’s what you call a woman in a room full of horny men. Not what you call a 22 year-old with two shitty lungs.

I read a quote which I’m sure many people have heard before but I’m going to write it anyway because … well because I can.

“Same storm, different boat.”

I don’t know why it’s so beautiful…it has so much meaning. We are all looking towards that wave that is in front of us, waiting for it to tumble down on us and crash into our boat. However depending on the boat you have the outcome will be different. You have that one couple that end up with a hole in their boat, however everything else is fine. That family who find their boat has completely washed away, but they all still have each other. The group of friends whose window has been shattered by the wave but no other damage. That rich old guy in the massive boat who hasn’t been affected in any way at all. Same storm, different boat. And that’s not to say that the couple with the hole in their boat is worse off than the group of friends with the smashed window. But it is to say that their circumstances are completely different. It isn’t also to say that the rich old guy doesn’t invite the stranded family onto his massive boat. It’s an interesting way to look at life to be honest. We all have to go through it and depending on your circumstances, your motivation, your opportunities you could be in any one of these 4 boats.

So since I was about 5 years old I’ve had asthma. It’s a special kind of asthma; i’m not constantly wheezing and puffing at my inhaler. In fact I’m actually relatively healthy with relatively strong lungs. I can swim the whole length of my local swimming pool there and back under water. I can climb up hills (I mean…it’s a struggle but that’s more to do with me being unfit and not walking up hills regularly). But as soon as my wee lungs catch a virus or an infection, boom…prednisolone, antibiotics, hospital, needles, fun times.

See I started this blog tonight wanting to talk about asthma and shielding during coronavirus, yet the more I write the less I actually want to talk about it. Maybe I’ll be ready to talk about it in other blogs, or maybe I’ll write snippets within blogs so that you can gradually find out more about my situation. Now I have to try and think about a topic to talk about.

William Wallace. First thing that came into my head so here we are…on a Tuesday night at 21:23pm writing in my blog about William Wallace. I’ve had a mini obsession about him in the last week or so. Basically when I was younger in schools we would learn all about the history of Scotland and how them dirty English scum (sorry I don’t mean that) came over and tried to take our country. However I never really liked that era of time with the swords and the instant death so I didn’t ever take in any information or facts from school. I feel like all we would ever learn about was about people dying on the battlefield or people randomly murdering people just because they had pissed them off. And then I had a couple weird dreams about someone with a sword chasing me on my school field, but then him not actually chasing me but chasing Captain Jack Sparrow, stabbing him in the heart and him dying and me waking up terrified of swords and this instant death that was so common at that time. Anyway, so last week I watched Braveheart for the first time and oh my god, I have never felt so patriotic in my life…which is a confusing feeling considering I was born in England and moved up to Scotland when I was 5. My excuse is that half of my English side were Scottish and I moved up way before I actually learned anything so technically I am more Scottish than I am English. Anyway so I was watching Braveheart and feeling all so patriotic so I then decided to research more into that era and ended up watching Outlaw King which is a more accurate representation of what would have happened during that era after William Wallace had died.

He was born in 1970 in an unknown region of Scotland and died at the age of 35 (ish) on the 23rd of August 1305 after being hung drawn and quartered by the English. He was a mad man according to some and a heroic knight according to others. Whatever he was he stuck by his country and fought until his death for freedom from the horrid grasp of the English reign. To be totally honest with you, the way the government is going right now, we’re in need of a William Wallace type figure to break us free from the grasp of the English into a world of independence.

Sorry if there’s any English readers out there, I promise I have nothing against English people, especially being from there and having many friends from England. For some reason I’m just feeling extremely patriotic towards my Scottish roots at the moment. Can you really blame me?

Anyway, I’m not even sure what I have spoken about in this blog tonight…Covid-19, William Wallace and patriotism. What a fun read this must have been. But I need to stop writing now because my leg is getting all tired and twitchy.

Stay safe xoxo

Travitude

2020…a headline to cover all

So I started this blog about a year and a half ago after a friend suggested it would be a good read… Since then so many things have happened yet for some reason I haven’t managed to bring myself to sit down and write about what I have been feeling. Part of that is to do with who I am as a person and for the fact that I know myself well enough to know that I will start this and maybe it will go well for a few weeks. Maybe I’ll even hit that magical month mark, but after that I will find something else to do and move on to the next amazing new thing I want to try.

I sorted through my clothes the other week to find all those clothes with holes, grease stains and other random characteristics which qualify them as being no longer good enough to be worn and I decided to make them into new clothing items. I started with a shirt that I have had for at least 6 years, probably more. I made it into a lovely checked vest top and I really enjoyed doing it too. I spent my free time measuring and cutting in order to get the perfect outline. I even taught myself how to use the sewing machine. My favourite part was the night I assembled everything. Window open. Rain falling. Wind blowing. Harry Styles playing. The faint sound of my parents watching TV in the background. The odd plane flying over or train passing by. It was a peaceful and relaxing night where I thought about no one or nothing, my only focus was the task at hand; not getting my hand stuck in the sewing machine. But anyway the point of this rambling is that I started this task which I was actually good at and enjoyed, yet if I look to my left I can see the pile of material on my bedroom floor on top of the sewing kit waiting for me to find another spur of motivation and actually carry on with a task for more than a few lousy days.

I was never good at sticking to a task for a long period to be quite honest. If you look under my bed right now in the plastic box closest to the heater you will find it packed with diaries. Every year Santa would bring me a beautiful empty journal book awaiting my words of wisdom to pour out and fill the umpteen pages, yet to do this day I never actually made it past January, if I wrote in it for longer than a week then that was a good attempt..

Bipolar disorder. ADHD. According to the many teen quizzes and google pages, I have either bipolar disorder or ADHD. I mean…whether or not I actually do is not exactly proven, however it makes sense. For example just there I was in a whirlwind story about my teenage failed diaries and I glance at my Facebook browser and there is a message notification so I go check it. Then from there I end up checking the weather and then going back onto Facebook to finally remember that I was sitting writing an attempted blog not 2 minutes before. I just get distracted so easily and once I think about something I can’t do anything else without constantly thinking about it.

Anyway…this chapter is labelled 2020 yet I actually have yet to talk about it. Maybe I’ll get to that part in my next blog.

Stay safe xoxo