creative-daydreams

[creative-daydreams]

Hope

I searched for you in morning light,

When sunrise kissed the stones.

Turning over tiles and tarmac,

But no mortar here; no home.

Next, to the basement of that bar,

Beats pounding, feet stuck fast.

I thought you’d save a drink for me,

But there’s no laughter for the last.

Then, my calves burned up the hill,

(Sweat streams, I’m on my knees)

I thought you’d show your new face here,

But nothing’s more silent than a scream.

So quietly (and just for me)

I resigned my heart to bed,

Pushed all of you from all of me

And let the rain fall in my head.

And suddenly I heard you!

Between bushfires and scrub-soul soap

A whisper newly dawning,

A burning chorus: Hope.

[creative-daydreams]

you

You soar around my mouth, 

Weaving between teeth and tantalising my tongue 

Before bursting out 

in a cacophonous celebration of candy and cab sav and 

champagne candlelight kisses. 

You are a smoothness, a rich chocolate daze melting onto my skin:

Pour yourself over me,

And never untangle your web from mine.

Let you and I 

live together in rhyme 

and forever in time 

mingled together with cherry cola tequila lime.

I love you,

Oh you,

it’s you that I love! 

You are my favourite evergreen

(you are my forever fit, like a daydream),

your fingerprints are tattooed along my spine,

a golden touch to lighten every crease, 

Lighten every line that ends with you.

[creative-daydreams]

Forsythia Tree 

A memory of small,

A memory of sweet,

A faded photo on my wall

Of the forsythia tree. 

-

Warmly nestled beside her

And wriggling with glee, 

Tiny hands clutch tigers

Under the forsythia tree.

-

This garden is our castle,

And she our Queen Bee,

She warmly stops battles;

Crowned by the forsythia tree.

-

She is our nurse and doctor,

teaches us to laugh, loves to teach,

Radiates strength and wisdom,

Under the forsythia tree. 

-

She taught us to love without fear,

To solve sadness with a cup of tea,

To buy tiles as souvenirs

(But we didn’t learn that by the forsythia tree).

-

Time has taken away the flowers,

And I’m now the tallest of us three,

But this love is immeasurable in hours -

It’s captured here, a forsythia memory. 

-

This photograph of small,

This memory of sweet, 

A bond to outlast them all:

Us, under the forsythia tree. 

[creative-daydreams]

Ctrl eX

It’s an inevitable choice

To delete your voice

And memories from my life.

~

Thought I’d bypassed pain

By letting you back again -

But it only led to more strife.

~

You made decisions and messes,

Leaving breadcrumbs of guesses,

And lost friends over one reckless night,

~

But this ride is now ending,

I’ve chosen healing and mending,

And that’s only possible with goodbye.

~

It’s a necessary evil,

A step towards freedom,

To remove you from my heart.

~

No more cheating or tears,

No trust issues, no more fears,

Control X; I’ve cut us apart.

[creative-daydreams]

Body

My skin is a roadmap of constellations,

shifting speckles and stars:

a paint-by-numbers jacket,

my lifetime’s work of art.

~

Look! Here’s the water slide that sliced

my elbow

twelve long years ago,

young blood diluted by chlorine -

a watercolour splashing the snow.

~

And over here’s spontaneous Sydney,

(Six kilogram Sydney!

Sliced-my-finger-need-six-stitches Sydney!)

A postcard of sunshine,

South of thirty three degrees.

~

This toe doesn’t sit right

(broke it after an airport fight),

my smile grins at my nose

where the butterflies never closed,

and there’s a Greek island’s map

stamped in coffee across my back.

~

But lurking behind these engravings and layered grains of sand,

there’s a new tattoo burning, and it’s shaped just like your hand.

~

We used to dance through our days with a semblance of ease,

but now I glimpse a distance baseball cap and my ears scream, ‘believe me, please!’

~

And then,

and then -

~

It’s two am, again.

Your darkness swallows me whole,

horror hits my heart, engulfs my soul,

cold in my ears in my back in my chest

ice clutched in hands invading lands shaking legs-

~

hoping it’ll stop.

hoping you’ll stop.

hoping this life is a fiction,

hoping it’s a dream...

But the true nightmare here is being awake, it seems.

~

Eyes blindly vacant and staring wildly at me,

yelling, “I’d never hurt you, I’m trying to show you affection, G!”

~

(But it’s all about what you don’t see, you see,

and getting acquainted with the fact that you knew I was asleep).

~

My body is my canvas,

but you peeled apart my paint,

destroying kaleidoscopes and constellations,

all for what you call a ‘mistake’.

[creative-daydreams]

Disposable

Your ring circled my finger

and promised my heart

that you would never

forget.

Now I trace down my fears

with fingers stained by tears

that used to trace the rosette

on your neck.

~

You -

oh, You,

You grew

fake flowers in her eyes,

a castle built on lies,

infinity forgotten in falseness.

~

Synthetic bloom

I can’t help but wonder if

you

were bitten by her,

too,

and if I was too far

for your lens to focus.

[creative-daydreams]

Smile

You once kissed my laugh in the city’s

swirling ocean of energy,

but now you flinch

as I drown in grief’s tsunami,

your Pain

transforming my teardrops into

grenades

for you to batter your brain with.

~

Oh, clockman’s son.

We used to hide from time,

spending hours slipping through

seconds and secrets,

laughing and leaping in liquid sunlight -

electric daydreams,

Now night.

~

A dark prison of memories -

slashed - stained -

black - cold -

bleeding in from the edges of the polaroid frames like

the thorny knots erupting around my

Heart

(And forever around your arm).

Pull me in and

erase the slideshow of

What once was,

and what it has now become.

~

Boy with the forest green eyes and stumbling smile,

Won’t you come hide with me

In an hour outside of time,

and forget about your bombs of mistakes,

and forget about the broken frames...

We could lay there, for a while.

[creative-daydreams]

Cosmic Connection

I really miss him right now.

It’s a really bittersweet hurt. It’s so beautiful to have found someone like him. Someone who understands me. Someone whose mind connects with mine in a cosmic connection. Shooting stars link our minds like interstellar neurones. We have an electric understanding; we share the same current. It lights up our brains in different but complementary ways - like two pieces of art, beautiful alone, but when layered they become a masterpiece. He is the glowing embers to my hearth. He makes me feel warm and magical and breathless and breath-full. It feels like I was in the shadows and have collided with a universal sun. His light touches my skin and lights me up, lifts me up, his cracks complimenting and enlightening mine until we are twirling and swirling in a golden orb of cracking and pulsating synchronisation. Our flames leap and swim around, babbling and playing together, luxuriating in the company and casting a light into all the shadows, lighting up the world in burning, blazing colour. The entire universe becomes a possibility and is laid out in front of me like a map of my life, with the compass right beside me.

...But it hurts. It hurts in a ‘the stars are quietly hanging in the sky and I’m lying alone in a double bed with my phone screen dimly lighting up my face’ kind of way. The two stars that came together in such a burning brightness are ripped apart, the seams splitting and being wrenched from each other. The beads of light that connect our minds become silvery-white threads connecting one phone to another, one call to another, one voice to another, one heart to another. The threads are firm, but they cannot compare to the gold ropes that could connect them. The golden ropes that did connect them. The golden ropes that will connect them one day.

My heart bleeds a little more every day. Part of it is across on another continent, across another ocean: across another world. It is crying out for its missing piece in a way that desperately bleeps across the silvery-white threads in a cosmic yearning. The message is sending, delivered, received, echoed back along the wires...

The worst thing that I could possibly imagine is the threads being snapped. It would be like turning off the sun and losing the sight of the map of my universe and all its colours and crawling back into the shadows. It’s like a knife has been stabbed into my chest when I even contemplate the idea of sailing the universe without him. I go cold at the thought of him not being on this planet with me. I constantly hope and pray to the forces around me to keep him safe, to keep him breathing, to keep his heart beating alongside mine.

I miss him so badly I can barely breathe. He is a daydream; a hope for the future; a god-given gift for the present. I want his midnights, and his four o clocks in the afternoon, and his sleepy morning sunshine smile. He is the character that I always wanted to write - the character in the story of my life that I all the previous chapters led into fruition. He is the stream that I want to join with mine forever. He is the key to pieces of me that bring me true happiness. He might even hold the key to my soul.

I’m missing my other piece; the harmony to my soul; the cosmic connection to my sky.

[creative-daydreams]

Memories

I. Nottingham.

The man at the too-crowded and too-hot post office frowns at the neatly filled in customs label that I have just handed to him. His eyes narrow slightly as they flick between it and the old woman standing uncomfortably closely behind me. I can feel her lemon-drop scented breath tickling the back of my neck, and I silently implore the man to hurry up. Finally, he throws me a bored glance, and drawls, “that everything?”

I nod, and dive into my too-full bag and habitually pull out my Australian debit card and try to use it in the card machine. Shit. The old woman tuts loudly from five centimetres behind me, before sighing in exasperation as I consequently drop the contents of the aforementioned overstuffed bag all over the floor.

“Oh FUCK - shit, sorry, didn’t mean to swear!” I garble, scooping up receipts and red lipstick and the ring that my mum gave me for my 21st birthday as the old woman glowers and the man at the desk raises his eyebrows. I then notice a small, neatly wrapped present has joined the crap spread across the floor. 

“Ah no, can I shove this in the package as well, actually?”

I think that the old woman may actually explode. Her face is rapidly turning the colour of the post boxes around us.

The envelope is reopened, then resealed, then resigned, before being stamped and thrown without even a semblance of delicacy into a large bag marked ‘International Post’.

“Might get there in time,” the man grunts, shoving a receipt with a tracking number on it across the counter and watching me being promptly shoved out of the way by my new elderly friend.

It is 5pm.

I leave the post office and wander down the hill it’s situated on. The clock on the council building chimes five times. I draw my scarf closer to my face and shove my hands in the pockets of my new-but-not-new yellow coat.

It’s snowing. The air has a bite to it, its cold grazing my cheeks and shortening my breath. It catches in my throat like the snow has sapped through to my very soul. It feels practically alien to me; its thin, sharp prongs couldn’t be more different than the warm, thick Australian air that I have left behind. The summer-infused Australian air. The ocean-scented Australian air. The Australian air that was all-too-recently perfumed with the clouds of his cigarette smoke and his warm-breathed laugh. 

I can’t help but wish that I was travelling the path that the parcel I have just posted will soon be taking - winging my way across Europe and the Middle East, flying across oceans, deserts, forests, and cities until reaching my favourite city of them all…

Two realisations slam into my brain at the same time, their truth at once dazing me and forcefully demanding my attention:

I miss the city.

I miss him.

Snowflakes drift down from the sky. Children in bobble hats and scarves scream and laugh as they dance around the Christmas markets. Couples, hand in hand, share mulled wine and mince pies. Students in ridiculous Santa outfits shout and stumble their way around the armies of shoppers brandishing huge carrier bags and pushchairs. 

I wander around a home that doesn’t feel like home anymore – not now. The crowds are jostling around me like the memories that are pressing themselves against my skull, filling my brain and shooting across my synapses.

Memories.

Lost in the memories.

Drowning in the memories.

Aching for the memories.

Memories.

II. Melbourne.

I remember the first time I met him. That’s a lie, actually; I don’t. The beginning is veiled by a mask of vodka; page one an indecipherable blur. I remember what I was wearing (aided, of course, by the photographs and snapchats of that evening). I remember the curls in my hair. I remember carefully applying red lipstick, and I remember drinking in my bedroom under my ceiling of fairy lights in the place of stars. What I distinctly don’t remember is seeing his face for the first time. I wasn’t aware that I would one day try to memorise this face that had, for now, been lost to the mists of alcohol and heartbreak. I wasn’t aware that I would meet him two more times after this forgotten meeting of streams before even remembering his name. I wasn’t aware that, three months later, he would be writing me a poem about this deleted scene whilst sitting under his fairy lights in a room that I would one day dub my favourite room. A room that came to contain a beginning that I never anticipated; its walls forever encasing the moment that two wandering stars collided. A room that encased the memories.

I remember the first time he kissed me. Alcohol spilling, cigarette smoke billowing, laughter echoing, words lingering… Lips colliding. Worlds colliding. Dreams being realised and hopes rising. Pieces falling into place - a place that they didn’t know they were meant to be in. This place, this pounding music and dim red lighting, is a place that I never expected to fall for him in. It is a place I never expected to even be in. It is a place I never expected him to kiss me in; but here his lips are, gently grazing mine and smudging my nervously-applied red lipstick. A behind-the-scenes kiss.  A secret moment in a crowded room that I will always remember. A memory.

Dancing, tumbling, kissing, whirling, talking, swirling-

I remember our first date. A Saturday date. A lunch date. The memories are flashing into the foreground in quick succession, like a slideshow or a stop motion film. The summer, bursting through the windows of the car and out of his eyes, filling my entire body with a thick, bright happiness. Me, watching him driving and smiling secretly to myself. Me, sliding into a seat in a cute corner café and wondering where he’s gone. Wondering why he’s taking a while. Wondering why he’s left me on my own. Wondering when he’s coming ba-. Oh. Oh my god. Him, handing me flowers to match the daisy around my neck with a smile so pure that it swirls up the darkest parts of my soul and paints them gold. Him, kissing my hand and smiling that same pure smile and sending me into some kind of happiness overload. Me, a single tear escaping down my face, putting my hands over my mouth and wondering if this is even real, if this kind of happiness can be real, if this boy in front of me can be real. It is a first date that feels like my last first date. A memory that lasts beyond the flowers.

I remember a magical midnight; the New Year’s Eve of midnights. The brink of a new beginning. His eyes were shifting like the embers of a fire - from hues of green, to hazel, to brown and back again, all the while casting my reflection in a golden chrome. I’m talking, laughing, twisting a lock of hair around my finger, listening, and then…whispering. Whispering secrets. Whispering feelings. Whispering who I think he is. This makes his eyes shoot from embers to flames to fireworks. They’re blazing with a fire of disbelief, yet flaming with certainty. It’s a look of great intensity, like oceans crashing against the rocks in a moment of chaotic triumph, or like that hug when you see someone you love after not seeing them for months. He whispers that nobody has ever said these things to him before. When he crashes his lips to mine, it is a kiss of intense longing and inevitability. It feels like the first kiss that signals something deeper than surface attraction. It feels like a moment that occurs in an hour outside of time that I want to remember for all of time. It feels like worlds and souls colliding. Exploding. Merging. Remembering.

 I remember sitting on Southbank with him at 4am. The city lights are dancing on the surface of the water, making it glimmer with shades of blue and pink and purple. We were dancing not long ago, but now we sit, hand in hand, heart to heart, and mind to mind. I start to believe. I believe that his laugh will forever echo off the surface of the Yarra river, mingling with the city lights and flying high with hope. I believe in a forever that began in a moment, and I believe in his hand encasing mine. I believe that this memory will last me a lifetime.

I remember an ordinary day. The last ordinary day. The last day. Kisses on my shoulder and secrets spilling over frozen coke and Justin Bieber blaring in the background. Laughter and a suitcase and Netflix and a passport and his hands in my hair and mine wiping away tears and… A strange sense of knowing that something was ending, right as something magical was really starting to begin. Ending, ending - not falling, but mending. Red bull kisses and forever pending. My future is changing and my timeline bending, but for now, time slips away. Five more hours, then just four, then three, two, one… 

I remember leaving. His hand, squeezing mine three times in a queue full of strangers and gently leading me forwards to hand my bag in - leading me into leaving him behind. His voice, pointing out my dimples when I finally crack a smile, and telling me he can’t forget me when the smile drops again. His eyes, holding mine when I can no longer hold his hand. They watch me, my own eyes misty with tears but shining with certainty, walking through the barrier. My feet, tracing the path away from him that they so desperately do not want to take - a path that begins at two metres apart, and ends up at ten thousand miles. Ten thousand miles of memories.  

 I remember drowning in memories at the airport. Traces of him like golden dust follow me from the check in, through security, and through the terminal. I slump over in a corner as the memories echo and bubble around me like living ghosts. They make their way into my diary, into my language, and into my soul. He makes his way into my soul; a piece of him accompanies me away from my favourite city and back to where I came from.

‘Back, back, it’s time to go back to you know where…’

Dancing, tumbling, kissing, whirling, talking, swirling-

Ghosts of summer. Ghosts of memory. Ghosts of you.

[creative-daydreams]

The Beginning

The beginning of something - a creative essay, a novel, a lyric poem, or maybe nothing at all. 28th August, 2017. 

One

I was in the post office and didn’t mean to look at how much the blonde lady in the green t-shirt was spending, it just happened. $202.74. A box of 200 dollar stamps. Four parcels; one “might not fit through the letter box, it’s a new product”. The man behind the desk smiles through his teeth; he clearly doesn’t give a fuck. Her card is declined, and then - oh, it’s me. 

Five stamps for air mail, please, to go to the UK, you know? Thank you very much - where’s the post box? Ah I see. Thanks. See you later. 

Catch you later. Catch my breath later. Post them later. Deal with it later. Get over him later...

Now. 

Deal with it now. 

Deal with yourself now. 

Begin the healing process now. 

Two

The healing process begins with a trip to Sydney. An off-the-bat, ‘may as well book it now’ flight. 7 kilogram Sydney. 6am Sydney. Spontaneous Sydney. 

It begins still drunk at 4.27am, in last night’s make up, last night’s music still blaring, and last night’s miscreants still roaming around. I down a too-warm cup of tea and inhale some too-dry toast and head for the car, whose driver is blasting ‘Man I Feel Like a Woman’ as he pulls up. I excitedly, and perhaps a little too loudly, enthuse about how “Taylor Swift is doing a thing”, send a tweet, grab my bags from the boot, scan a boarding pass, sit down, stand up, sit down, take off - 

It begins with the most beautiful, aerial  view of a city at sunrise that I can remember seeing. 

It begins with us - us being the wonderful group of friends who stumbled into each other and never quite stumbled apart again - collapsing next to an Anzac memorial in another Hyde Park, eating a hastily clubbed together picnic and bathing in the sunlight as the seagulls bathe in the pool. 

It begins with a once distant dream of travel being thrust bizarrely into the foreground, the colours of the Opera House and the sunrise it is silhouetted against burning brightly into the horizon, and my hair burning a burnt red in the Sydney sunlight to match. 

It begins with accidentally stumbling across the Harbour Bridge, the dream not even gently coming into focus, but creeping up on me and then leaping out at me in colour and coffee and confusion. The iconic image of Australia, right there. In my eyeline. In my life. I can’t quite believe it and leap around with Matt, excitedly smacking each other on the arm and taking one, two, three hundred photographs. It’s like standing in front of a photograph of the real thing. It doesn’t feel quite tangible; it’s like I’ve stumbled into a dream. We walk along the quay, past overpriced coffee shops and Chinese tourists, and suddenly see the Opera House. 

It begins with a loss - but not the loss of him. It begins with a loss of language. I can’t speak or think. All I can register is an immense sense of being. That I am living in a dream that I never thought I could make a reality. That I have made the choices that have led to my narrative being shaped in this way. That I have moved ten thousand miles away from everything that I know in pursuit of a happiness I have always wanted, and I’ve just found a slice of it. It’s a feeling of pride. Bravery. Awe. Utter light, like the sunlight has infected my soul, leaping along my veins and dancing across my synapses. All of my genetic code at that moment felt like it was being blasted apart and was in the process of being written, the letters rearranging themselves; ‘The End’ suddenly becoming ‘The Beginning’.

It begins with laughter. Laughter colours that day, as well as a god-awful tiredness. We laugh as Matt carries all of our bags through the Royal Botanical Gardens (The Sydney Royal Botanical Gardens! That in itself merits a laugh of disbelief). We get hysterical over the amalgamation of a list of tired things we said - ‘Tired Travellers Trash Talking’. Laughter echoes around the park as we mimic the poses of the statues around us, and as we do forwards rolls down a hill as Tab films us, her giggle permeating the film’s soundtrack forever. The laughter drops for a few hours as Kate (on zero hours of sleep and doing remarkably well for it) sits to type a last-minute assignment in the NSW state library. I remember thinking that the library was a strange variant of the one in Melbourne - it was like knowing something but not quite knowing it, like when you love someone but you’re not sure as to why, or when somebody exhibits character traits that you recognise in another friend but you can’t quite place which one. The newsreels glare aggressively outside the library, blaring crimson headlines and stock statistics. Inside, Kate requests some toothpicks to hold her eyes open with, and we all murmur a subdued, library-proof laugh. 

Three

The house we move into for five days is an artist’s haven. For some reason, this house feels like home. It’s like the house matches who I am, and who I would like to be, all at once. 57 Waterloo Street, Surry Hills, Sydney. A temporary place that will forever occupy a permanent space in my memory. 

[creative-daydreams]

Playing House

The night before I left my old house last month, my housemate and I collapsed onto the corner of our raggedy old sofa, exhausted, and armed with a bottle of wine we’d discovered lurking at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards as we cleared them out. 

“Isn’t it weird,” she remarked sipping on the £3.50, definitely-past-its best-rosé and wincing as she realised that the taste matched the price, “that next month somebody else will be sitting on our sofa?” 

Her use of the first person possessive plural revealed our shared sentiment that this was more than just a student rental. This was our house and we felt a certain degree of ownership over it; it was our home, and its walls housed the sentences of the story we’d built there. It felt strange to know that somebody else would fill the next chapter of the house with their own story, and that ours would continue elsewhere.

 In the UK, over one million students live in rented accommodation. Of these one million, about seven thousand live in a small yet beautiful town called Royal Leamington Spa. Of these seven thousand, precisely four of us lived in the tiny little terraced house that we had become accustomed to calling ‘home’. Our house. My house.

“Four bedroomed terraced property in popular student location, four good sized bedrooms, fully furnished. Viewing recommended” the advert read in the window of the local estate agent, the day I told my landlord that I’m moving out. I paused over the words, their letters grazing my lips as if this advert has reduced the novel of my life to the blandest blurb possible. Anthropologists say that the house is an extension of the person, but how can these words, these simple, plain words ever represent what this house meant to me? This house, and all its faults (and there were many – the smoke alarm that frequently screeched for no reason at seemingly the most inconvenient moments possible, the spot on the floor that we had learnt to jump over to prevent a mysterious white liquid from bubbling up from between the tiles, and the letter box that needed reattaching to the door every time one of us shut the door a little too forcefully, to name but a few), this house would forever be a physical reminder of the person I was when I lived there, its mould-streaked walls encompassing my secrets and my stories and a little piece of my soul. It was a kind of in-between place that matched the in-between person I was; somebody’s housemate, and somebody’s girlfriend, but not my own anything. Even my own bedroom, my personal space, was so close to my then-boyfriend’s room that every evening after he kissed me goodnight, I could hear him singing along to his favourite Tame Impala song through my open window; a kind of in-between lullaby. Ten thousand miles and one month later he is posting me back my things, those kisses and those songs reduced to a memory contained within the walls of that house. My house. 

The day I move out of my house, I walk around it like a visitor, standing in each now-empty room and replaying the memories of each room in my head like old VHS tapes; rewinding, fast forwarding, pausing, jarring... I remember the afternoon we first moved in. We ran around each of these rooms, drunk on the small fountain of independence that afforded us the luxury of having our own house. It was playing house, almost, with money borrowed from the government and attitudes and outfits borrowed from each other; a kind of temporary, in-between adulthood in an in-between house; my house. 

I brought my photographs and posters from my old house to my new house, transporting memories and old dreams halfway around the world. I’m astonished at how little these pictures resemble my current narrative. Me, laughing with my fingers intertwined through those of a boy who would break my heart only two months after the flash went off. Me, laughing on the corner of the raggedy old sofa with the friends who are now ten thousand miles away. Me, laughing, dancing, beaming in a place that is now rendered a memory rather than a home. It is a highlights reel of the happiness from my last house projected onto the blank canvas of my new one; the words from chapter one oddly jarring with those in chapter two. One Wednesday, nine days into the heartbreak and one month into the new home, I silently remove every relic of that narrative strand and hide it in the back of my new wardrobe. 

The day I move out of my house, I do not realise that closing that front door for the last time represented the closing of that chapter; the act of leaving obliterating the possibility of returning. I lock the door and post the keys through the still-broken letterbox, the muffled clink of them landing on the carpet chiming the toll of finality. I turn, and take the first step away from my house and the in-between person I was there, and into the chaotic, vibrant, unknown sunrise of chapter two.

[creative-daydreams]

New Things

August 1st. 1.30pm. 

In my new room, in my new town, in my new country, I can see a bird. It’s swooping in circles, wings stretched to the very tip, swirling around and around in the same spherical shape, tracing the same path taken by butterflies and blackbirds. As it swoops, it’s calling out in a strange new sound - a kind of electronic cackle that echoes through my open window, joining the dust swirling and twinkling in the sunlight that cascades through the open curtains, and filling the room with the swooping hint of music. 

I’m alone, chewing distractedly on my thumb nail (a bad habit that has followed me from one side of the world to another), feet firmly on the third floor of the residential building I keep accidentally calling “home”, but my head and my heart swooping with the unknown, strange bird. 

My feet are pacing a completely new path, yet, like the bird, my head is stuck in the same rhythmic patterns, tracing the same circles again and and again and again patterns - the same need to be a part of a greater whole. The kindly old English professor who gave a lecture on Elizabethan England that I missed due to a horrific hangover said, when I’d finally dragged myself the pitiful distance from bed to desk to listen to a recorded version of the lecture, that each planet in its spherical orbit is always at the centre of the line it traces. It has an integral, fixed path that it always follows, and it is always equidistant from the edges. It is part of a greater whole; an entire mechanism that functions in its entirety, yet is made up of billions of individual and unique parts. It is whole, yet it is always expanding. 

I need to escape from this need to be a part of something greater than myself. The recognition has been falling into place ever since I pressed “book” on the flight that carried my head and my heart 10,000 miles across the world. I cannot let myself get carried away in who I think others want me to be; who I should be; what they think; this desperation to be included in someone else’s story. This chapter of my life cannot be conformity to someone else’s writing. It needs to be my own. 

So as I sit here in this new room, typing on an old laptop, and listening to music that makes me feel creative and mysterious, I realise that I can do this. I am the one who can change my life. No more sitting in someone else’s pocket. No more dressing in a way that will make me not stand out from the crowd because I am so desperate to be ‘normal’. No more being unable to go and do what I want to do because I am worried what people will think. No more suppressing how I feel. No more anxiety. No more lying - about who I am and what I want. No more sitting alone in my room and wishing that someone else will come and show me the way I want my life to be. This life is mine, and I’m God damn going to take it. 

No more tracing the same swooping path through the air. No more making the same call over and over again. No more waiting for someone else’s music to be the rhythm I dance to. I can dance recklessly and fearlessly to my own, and fuck anyone who says otherwise. 

In my new room, in my new town, in my new country, I am adopting a new attitude. I will become a new me; but she will be the person I always wanted to be, and that is absolutely fantastic. 

[creative-daydreams]

A Letter to my Teenage Self

Dear me,

I’m writing to you on the brink of turning twenty. Looking back on my teenage years, I guess the first thing I have to say to you is: you will make it. You will become a wiser, taller and more confident version of yourself. Things will happen to you that won’t be great and will make you want to curl up into a tiny ball and never come out again, but at the same time, things will happen to you that are wonderful, and these things will far outweigh the bad ones. I wish you could see life the way that I see it now.

When you are thirteen, you will have many firsts. You will win your first Midlands championships, and then go on to win a heap of national medals because you keep your head straight and are determined. You will have your first kiss, and you will go on your first date (hint: I know you don’t like him very much, but please don’t go wearing a tracksuit and wet hair- future you will find this hilariously embarrassing). You will realise that some of your friends are not your friends, and it is ok to be strong enough to leave them behind. You will be shy, and you will be scared to talk to people because you don’t think that you are cool enough. Thirteen year old me, you are cool enough, and anyway, the notion of ‘cool’ means absolutely nothing seven years later. The girls who make fun of you now? In seven years time, you will be watching them having children when you are at university, and unfriending them on Facebook after one sob-story post too many. Don’t let other people define who you are or who you want to be. Tell Heather who she will become, just to see her reaction. Tell Jen that she will get into medicine, because she needs to believe that she can. Talk to your parents about how you feel. Oh, and a quick word of advice: please check who you’re sending the message to before you actually press send.

When you are fourteen, you will discover make up, and you will go into school wearing your Mum’s mascara and hideously orange powder that was £2 from Boots and think you look incredible. You will say goodbye to a close friend- but don’t be sad, because fate has a funny way of bringing people back together again. You will have the worst year in swimming of your life: you will cry, and you will feel tired all of the time, and you will feel desperately lonely on a new swimming squad. You can cope with this, even when you think you can’t. You will grow out your fringe and severely regret it. The girls you thought were your friends are not. Do not listen to what they say (and when they try and tell everyone that you are a lesbian because that’s the biggest insult they could come up with, in the future it will turn out that they were being homophobic because they were gay themselves and too scared to admit it). You will get your first guitar and you will fall in love with Taylor Swift. Don’t be afraid to express your opinion- please try and be a little bit more assertive. You won’t regret it.

When you are fifteen, you will make friends that will be some of the best friends you will have throughout your teenage years.  A word to the wise- the emo kids that sit at the back of the class playing guitar? They are your real friends. You will become close friends, even best friends, and listen to Green Day and My Chemical Romance and start wearing thick black eyeliner and get your block fringe put back in. You will change your twitter bio to “Pop Punk is my RELIGION”. You will go to gigs with your friends, and your sister will take you to parties. You will have a big birthday party and everyone will come and you will dance for hours and you will feel so loved. Enjoy these times. You will swim at the Olympic Swimming Trials, and you will do well. Swimming at these trials will make you fall in love with London- something you will maintain throughout your teenage years. You will watch your sister fall in love with a boy who doesn’t deserve her love, and you will shout at him in the middle of town on one Saturday night, because you are each other’s biggest defenders. Look out for your sister; she needs you more than you think she does. You will think that nobody will ever love you because you’re not pretty enough. Fifteen year old Gee, just because you aren’t blonde and tanned does not mean that you aren’t pretty. Embrace your pale skin and learn to love yourself, because boys will fall in love with you, even when you don’t feel like you deserve it. You do.

When you are sixteen, you will get drunk for the first time. You won’t know what you are doing, and you will drink half a bottle of brandy that your friend’s sister bought for you, introduce yourself to everyone in the room, kiss several a lot of frogs and ultimately throw up on your friend’s brand new dress before jumping out of a window to escape from the police. You will feel so embarrassed that you cry at the prospect of going to school, but future you will find the entire story hilarious, and it will become legendary. You will finally discover eyebrow pencil, but you won’t know what you’re doing and will do them horrifically whilst thinking they look amazing. You will learn to do them better, though. You will have some incredible memories with your friends that will give you a six pack from laughing. You will fall in love for the first time, with a boy who has green eyes and a gentle heart. He will take you on dates to the cinema and to Nando’s, he will dance around your bedroom and in the car to Fall Out Boy with you, you will write him songs and sing them to him, and you will love each other fearlessly and recklessly. He will help you to feel beautiful and will support you endlessly. You will go to music festivals and feel so alive in the tents with the flashing lights and pounding guitars. You will cry, you will laugh, and you will learn that writing helps you to cope with anything. You will get straight A*s in your GCSE’s and you will be so excited about this that you will dance all around your house. Your parents will be proud of you. 

When you are seventeen, you will be at a new school, and will make new friends, even though the first day will be absolutely awful. Be confident and be unafraid to be who you are. Talk to everyone. You will make so many mistakes in this year of your life, but you will learn that you cannot be old and wise without having been young and foolish. You will make friends and you will make enemies, and that’s ok. You will think that you have fallen for a blue eyed boy with a rotten heart. He’s gross. Let him go. You will learn how to do your eyeliner properly. You will go to parties and you will suffer a break up, and you will write heartfelt letters. You will get back together again. Everything will get better, you just have to give yourself time. 

When you are eighteen, you will have the best year of your life. You will drink far too much wine and litres of coffee, and spend far too much money on nights out. You will fall asleep in a club, and cry in taxis, and work out that the N4 is so much cheaper than a £20 taxi. You will have a weekend job that you will hate, but the pay slip will make it all worth it. You will quit swimming, and this will be the dawn of your new life. You will suddenly experience what it is like to not be tired all the time, and dance around the kitchen after school. You will go to the gym religiously. You will stay up all night looking after friends who are too drunk, and you will become closer with girls that will look after you in turn. You will have a breakdown about not knowing what to do at university, and you will make choices that will affect your entire future. You will not get into Oxford, and you will be utterly heartbroken, but you will get over it. Everything happens for a reason, and you need to remember that. You will go on holiday with your friends and you will realise who you like, and who you perhaps don’t like as much, and this will be ok. You will have an incredible summer that will make all the tears of the winter worthwhile.

When you are nineteen, you will go to university. The first year of university is going to be weird. You’re going to drink more than you’ve ever drank in your life. You’re going to do strange things like go to Tesco at 5am and throw spinach out of the window “just because”. Your flatmates finding you hungover on a beanbag in your onesie will be a normal occurrence. You will eat weird combinations of food (pasta sandwich anyone?). You will break up with the green eyed, gentle hearted boy, and you will break his heart and you will cry for hours in your room on your own. You will wonder if you will ever love somebody ever again. You will feel lonely. This will partly be because everyone you are close to is off doing different things, and partly because your flat sucks. Nineteen year old me, get out of the flat and go and talk to everyone: it will be worth it. You will feel like you’re the only one who doesn’t have a clue what they’re doing, but you will realise that neither does anybody else, everybody just hides it better than you do. Take the opportunities given to you. Take chances that you are too afraid to take on your own. Whatever you put in, you will get out, so work hard and be nice to everyone. You will kiss strangers. You will meet a tall boy with a Northern accent that you don’t particularly like at first, and you will surprise yourself by falling in love with him. You will make some of the most special memories with him, and you will go to magical places together, and you will cry in train stations when you have to say goodbye. You will meet some of the best friends that you will ever have, and they will be the friends you have wanted for your entire life. You will become more confident in yourself, and you will learn to trust people. At the same time, you will cry so much. You will cry over work, you will cry over your skin, you will cry when you are drunk, you will cry on the train when he tells you he loves you, you will cry at songs, and sometimes you will cry even when you don’t have a reason. Don’t be ashamed of this. You will stay up all night writing essays, and you will hate yourself in those sleep-deprived, stress-filled moments. Please try and start your essays earlier than the day before, and don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. You will surprise yourself. You will realise who your true friends really are. You will end up at the same university and on the same course as the friend who moved away when you were fourteen, and you will marvel about how life works out sometimes. You will move into your first house, and suddenly feel like a grown up when you’re hit with sorting out bills and internet. You will realise that your parents aren’t always right, and that will be okay. In fact, your relationship with your parents will change, but for the better.

You will change yourself, and that will be ok. Change isn’t scary like you thought it was when you were thirteen and shy. You will change your friends, your style, and how you act multiple times, and that will be ok. You will learn from your mistakes, and you will dance like nobody is watching. Teenage me, please try and love yourself. It will take time, and you may not have mastered it before you pass out of your teenage years, but please try, for our sake. 

You will have bad haircuts, but it will grow back- even when you cut it all off yourself in a moment of madness. You will master winged eyeliner, and you will cringe at your fourteen-year-old way of doing it. On the subject of eyeliner, don’t wear eyeliner that you are clearly allergic to because when you are sixteen your eyes will water whenever you put anything on your face as a result of this. Don’t worry what boys think of you, or the other girls. You are different and you are clever and those are not things to be ashamed of. Be excited over the little things, and sing loudly and dance without abandon. 

You will be ok, teenage me, I promise. You got this. If you ever think that you can’t, think about five year old us, and how her eyes light up when she sees a teddy bear or a new book, and how she likes to dance everywhere, and how fearless she is. Do it for her. 

Love,

Yourself, about to enter her twenties.

[creative-daydreams]

A 3am Stream of Consciousness (A Discourse on What Is Love)

This is a post that I’ve queued to be posted in the future when it’s less embarrassing. I’ve written this on December 30th, 2014, and I’m queueing it to be posted on December 30th, 2015. I wrote this originally in my journal, and I wanted to post it on here too but I’m too embarrassed right now. Haha, sorry future me. Love, G x

What is true love? 

Is it running off into the sunset with an ‘and they all lived happily ever after’? Or is that just an unrealistic ideal propagated through old Disney movies and romantic comedies where the geeky, shy boy always pulls the super hot popular girl? I read somewhere that true love is somebody still texting you back even after you’ve ignored them for weeks due to a futile argument over nothing.

 Sound familiar? 

I always catch myself wondering if one day I’ll be drafting and redrafting my wedding vows in this journal or if I’ll be writing poetry as a coping mechanism to get over how it ended. (FYI, poetry is very cleansing for the soul, you should try it sometime). 

I seem to live my life wondering is this it? Is this what real love is? Is he the one? I guess that is one question among dozens of others that I’ll never really know the answer to. How am I meant to know? How does anyone know? Do people get married knowing that this is the best that they’re ever going to have, or do they constantly wonder if they could have been happier with someone else? 

This is very much a Schrodinger’s cat kind of situation.

Equally, I don’t want to think of a world where I don’t marry him. This is unconditional love. How many guys will love me after a Christmas spent with me being angry with him and buying him pointless material objects because I can’t think of a thing that can express the abstract immensity of how I feel?

 I do not like even thinking about love anymore. I used to think that I had it all figured out, that love was being able to love a flawless person: handsome, without fault and constantly surprising me. He would say everything right all the time and I would be so happy I could burst, 24/7. 

You know what? That’s bullshit reserved for movies and fanfiction. People like to write about romantic ideals because they’re non-existent. Love is not a photoshopped sex god with a six-pack. Love is seeing the flaws, but not letting them change your outlook on a person. Love is not being constantly in sync- it’s explaining your views and opinions, and being prepared to change your mind if necessary. Love is arguments. Love is jealousy. Love is good and bad kisses, and love is throwing things and not speaking for days. Love is missed cues and late buses. Love is misjudged timings, and love is reckless. But love is all-consuming, and love is worth all of these things. Love is accepting that Francisco Lachowski lookalikes are not a better deal, because, as the old cliche goes, looks fade and personalities brighten. 

Love is unpredictable, and that’s life.

[creative-daydreams]

I love your writing style!

Omg omg omg omg omg THANK YOU SO MUCH

[creative-daydreams]

1.01

This is something I wrote whilst sat on my windowsill at 1am. G x

There’s something about being awake when everyone else is asleep. I can’t quite find the words to explain it. The air seems stiller somehow, and fresher, as if the millions of people who used to populate it with cigarette smoke and gasps of horror and screams of “I STILL LOVE YOU” have faded. It’s comforting, knowing it’s just me and the orange glow of a street lamp that is a modern sunrise and the faint noises of the city. Tranquil.

Sitting on my windowsill with my legs dangling towards my 20 feet long 20 feet wide back garden, I feel at peace. Admittedly, it’s not the most comfortable of positions- my back aches from keeping my body completely upright and there’s a bump in the sill that’s digging into my legs- but it’s comforting. I sit and, like the millions of people during the day, breathe out every problem I feel welling up inside me. Exams. Family. Best friend. My body. My hair. My everything- all breathed out into the welcoming air and replaced in my lungs with a cool stillness.

I feel like a stereotype of teen angst sitting on the windowsill at night, but maybe I want to be one, I want to be the girl that gets rid of her problems by breathing and writing how she feels in the notes on her phones. I’d rather be a living, breathing, colourful cliché than a canvas stripped of all its paint, two dimensional and unfeeling.

I wonder how I look to someone looking up at my window right now. Do they see the ghost of my face lit up with the glow of my phone screen? I read somewhere once that the only people awake at this time are either in love or lonely. I also read that Paul McCartney is actually a hologram though, so can you really believe everything you read?

I feel my strength returning to me as the heat of my body diffuses into the night’s welcoming arms and words form from my mind and onto this screen. I breathe deeply once more, then return to my bed, ready to take sleep’s arm and drift into unconsciousness.

[creative-daydreams]

Summer Haze

New one, from June 7th. G x

June 7th. So in love.

The word I think best describes me is daydreamer. I'm a 'head-in-the-clouds- type of girl I guess; my thoughts constantly fly higher than the birds and faster than the wind, and more complicated than all of nature's components combined. Today, the clouds are like an oil painting, the sweep of a gigantic brush from an almighty painter: delicate, fragile and mystical. They complement the sky perfectly, its sheen my favourite shade of blue mixed with half a cup of water. Like a watercolour, faded and slightly hazy. This is our painting, our moment, and we are in the foreground.

We resemble perfect tourists from the year 1999, cameras slung around our necks that were created long before the development of anything digital and before technology drove the children indoors and away from the so called 'great outdoors'. We're laughing, jumping over pools of water that are the only remnants of the rainfall earlier, rapidly being evaporated by the sun's blinding rays. 'We', by the way, is myself and my boyfriend, his skin turning browner by the second to match the baked earth, and mine the colour of milk and the clouds.

I fall back and let him wander ahead, calling to his dog who has bounded far too close to the edge of a lake for his own safety. I watch him walk. His long, sloping strides take him further away from me with each step, so that soon he is a small figure in the distance. This is an illusion. He is anything but small, his head is least six feet above the ground, although his feet are firmly planted on the ground, unlike mine. He swears he hates his height, which puzzles me. I can’t imagine anyone finding anything to dislike about it. No triple locked, iron bolted fortress could ever make me feel safer than his arms around me and his chin resting on top of my head, tucking my hair behind my ear and planting a kiss on my nose.

He's calling to me, and I jog to catch up. He smiles the mysterious half smile that makes me feel all fuzzy and winds a daisy through my hair, before snapping a picture of me standing on the edge of a jetty which may as well be the edge of the world. I've never felt more alive. I want to take this moment and capture it in a jar to look back on when I'm at my lowest, but I'm afraid that taking something of such a monumental scale and containing it within something with clear boundaries will degrade from it's actual value. Instead I capture the feelings in my brain, wiring the freedom and electricity of being alive along with reflexes and nerve endings and blood vessels, chugging away to keep me living in the most literal sense.

I think that, as humans, the things we love the most are also the things we hate the most. That's why I can cry for hours over a misread text and bring the walls shattering down with anger over something we won't remember in a month. It's because I am so deeply in love with him. He got under my skin somehow; he gives me the most strength but he's also my biggest weakness. I guess that's what love does to you. As humans, we sometimes push away the things we love the most because we know that they're attached to us on elastic strings and will always come pinging back no matter how far they're stretched. We always fall back together, he and I. It's like not even powerful, uncontrollable forces such as the wind and lighting could keep us apart. I hate him sometimes, and he frustrates me beyond the point of logical thought on occasion, but he makes me laugh and spins me round like I'm a Disney princess and whispers the right thing in my ear when I'm sad, and I know that I love him more than anything else.

All this flashes through my head as we're walking down an abandoned train track, but I can't find the words at that precise moment in time. All I end up saying is "you make me very happy" and standing on the tips of my toes to touch my lips to the space between his ear and his cheek. I look up at that deep blue sky and realise that it’s a thousand times better than staring up at a ceiling. The sun illuminates all that is good and makes them catch the light, like a diamond when light is cast onto it, radiating beauty in every direction. It does the same for him. When I am walking through the fields with him, I find myself slowly slipping into being even more deeply in love with him, and that's the most beautiful thing of all.