Share A Coke With Friends, they said. What If You Have No Friends, I said.

Last night, I paid £9 to stand like an awkward loner for half an hour and flee the depths of Stockwell in tears. 

I am not a social butterfly. I am not good at making friends, or keeping friends. I'm not good with communication. I'm just terrible at talking to strangers and being in crowds. 

This is something I have known about myself from a young age. I remember my first Brownie session- my sister ran around getting involved in the games, as I clung to my mum crying. 

I left Brownies because I had no friends there.

I consistently see articles saying how you will live longer and alleviate depression if you have friends. So one can only assume that if you are best left to your own company then it shall be a quick descent down the depression spiral for you.

Movies and TV shows made me think I'd grow up with a huge gang of mates. Hey Arnold, Arthur, even the Rugrats. I do have friends, I love the friends I do have, but it's not what I was led to believe I would have. I suppose this is true for the portrayal of most aspects of life in TV and film. 

It's not that I'm terrible at talking to people. I talk to people for a living. But it's not the same thing. Phoning someone and being the Spanish Inquisition about their lives is a damn sight easier than walking into a room of people, none of whom you have ever seen or spoken to before and striking up conversation with the first person you happen across.

I stood there last night, clutching my drink and smiling at people, but rooted to the spot in terror. I could think of tons of things to say, a bunch of opening gambits, but my feet wouldn't carry to me to people, or my mouth just wouldn't open. 

On the tube on the way there, I got chatting to a guy. Well, actually, he started chatting me up. But I was capable of talking back. It's not like I can't talk at all. I just can't do it if I'm the first one. And I can't do it when I'm so worried that they will think I'm the desperate loner that, let's face it, I am. 

This inability to talk to strangers is worrying. Not just because in life you are often measured by your ability to talk to people and how many friends you have, but, more immediately, because I'm leaving to go to a country where I know about 3 people, and I won't be with them all the time. Will I make friends in hostels? Or am I facing a year of almost solitude?



Share a Coke with friends, they said. What if you have no friends to share it with, I said. Well then, they said, you can have all the Coca Cola goodness to yourself, as part of a healthy, active lifestyle.

Can I just ask, legit question here, who the hell shares a 500ml bottle anyway?! Doesn't anyone intending to share their coke get a 1.5 or 2litre bottle?! Or maybe it's that actually no one does share a 500ml bottle so you'll have to get to get more than one and...ah, I see what they did there. Well done, Coca Cola. Well played.

Edit: I walked past the Share a Coke truck at Westfield and people were coming away with tiny bottles! Not even a 330ml can's worth! That's a normal glass size, who the hell shares a normal glass?! 

Thoughts That Occupy A Mind Left To Silence

Cancer

Trees

Badgers

Travelling 

Things to do

Social plans

Food

Global warming

Spring/summer/autumn/winter clear outs

More things to do

Changes

Ice cream 

Chocolate

Jeans

Jewellery 

Eating disorders 

Psychiatry

Depression 

Illness

Getting old 

Memory loss

Things left to do...?

Holidays 

Adventures

Time and space

Life, past and present 

Immigrants

Emigration 

Jobs

Career paths

Perspective 

Cats, missing, alone, leaving, dead

Jealousy 

Rivalry

Bitterness

My choices 

His choices

Her choices

No choices 

The consequences

This train terminates here.

I might be a grown-up but I'm still growing up

I can be quite an excitable person. Although I do not get excited about Christmas or birthdays, I get squealy over new film or TV releases, epic wins such as same-sex marriage, and kittens. (If you don't get squealy over kittens, I suggest you have your heart examined, although the same might be said of my lack of googliness over babies.)

I'm vaguely aware that my behaviour is not always very... grown up. I have the advantage (?) of being short and I think (without any scientific evidence to back me up whatsoever) that short people are allowed to be less grown up for longer. My evidence for this is that my sister is tall and she has always been quite grown up. Usually she looks after me, even though I am the elder sister.

Growing up is not just about making it through education or work, and taking on "grown up" responsibilities like a mortgage or kids. It's about negotiating your way through friendships and relationships and just life in general, and not necessarily coming out unscathed. It's about learning how to handle successes, defeats and experiences.

For me, growing up is watching your childhood home be packed into boxes and seeing my mother prepare for a new life in another county, and not feeling bitter or abandoned but feeling proud and content to say goodbye. I never liked that house anyway; it was haunted. (I kid, I kid...)

For me, growing up is working out who to make an effort with, and when to recognise that you have drifted apart from someone that at one point would have been your everything, and to let it go. Growing up is recognising the loss, and being okay with it.

As someone still growing up, I'm still figuring out whose opinion should matter to me. Once upon a time I would have cared what everyone thought. And when you made a mistake, you thought everyone was looking, and judging you. But I suppose life is a bit like being a learner driver. When you stall in your car, you might think that everybody is staring and laughing and pointing and you feel mortified. But everybody has stalled before, both in life and in their car*. It's easy to falter in new situations, or even familiar ones. You can stall at the bottom or the top of a hill. What's important is that you get going again. Forget the people you think are paying attention to your mistake. They are probably too wrapped up in trying not to stall themselves.

I learn every day more about who I am, and who in my life I care about and whose opinions matter to me. I can respect your opinion, and yet not let it affect me. And I am still working out my opinions.

Although... if your opinion is that women shouldn't be in power/flying planes/doing anything except getting their tits out, cleaning the kitchen and making you a sammich, then I will declare your opinion stupid and I do not have to listen to it.

Come back when you've got something far less sexist to say.


*this metaphor really only works for those who can drive. But the idea of stalling - essentially a false start, being unable to get the right balance of power and clutch - is applicable to everyone.

Also, here is my breaded cat, running with the sandwich/cat theme. 

Nom nom nom.

   

Late Night Walks

*Trigger warning: rape*



I just walked home from my old house to my new one.

And I walked the long way home. I walked down a residential road that dips, and is therefore longer and much more effort to use, instead of walking through the isolated alleyway that would have got me home a few minutes earlier.

I use that alleyway all the time. And I have used it when it has been dark. But for some reason, at 11pm on a balmy Friday night, I didn't think it would be safe to use.

That shiz is effed yo.

And it's not even a feminist problem, that I have been conditioned to be frightened or wary of dark alleyways in case someone leaps out and rapes me. Despite the fact that 80% of rapes are committed by someone you know, that still doesn't stop the government, police and media capitalising on the 20% and warning women off walking down dark alleyways late at night. Especially if they've been drinking. Or they are wearing any items of clothing that don't cover all their flesh.
Urgh.

But actually, there are similar tactics used to warn against or protect you from other supposedly "spontaneous" crimes. The idea that if you take out your mobile phone on the street, you're walking around with a valuable in your hand that a criminal can see and you are automatically making yourself more of a target.

To me, this. Shiz. Is. Effed.

Why are we not teaching people NOT TO MUG PEOPLE? NOT TO COMMIT CRIME?
It makes no sense to me. Yes there will probably always be crime, there are some people in the world apparently more pre-disposed to becoming criminals but surely we should take a preventative approach with the wannabe or potential criminals, and not the potential victims?

Annoyingly, when a women walks down an alleyway late at night and gets raped or sexually assaulted, there will be people that say "She should have known better". That doesn't happen when a man is raped.
It doesn't happen when a person is mugged. Or burgled.

I am NOT, I repeat NOT, comparing being raped with getting mugged. They are not comparable in my opinion, and I am not trying to trivialise these crimes. Both can and do result in trauma for the victim.
But they are both crimes. And we need to stop scaring people about being victims of crime, and start teaching people not to commit crimes.

I dream of a world where I can walk down an alleyway and not hold my keys in my hand "just in case".
But I also dream of a world without gender-based toys.
I dream of a world where growing your armpit hair is not disgusting (BECAUSE IT'S NOT DISGUSTING. JANINE I LOVE YOU BUT IT'S NOT "GROSS" IT IS COMPLETELY NATURAL. NO ONE TELLS MEN THEIR ARMPIT HAIR IS GROSS!! STOP POLICING MY HAIR PEOPLE. SOMETIMES I SHAVE, SOMETIMES I DON'T IT IS NOT YOUR GODDAMN BUSINESS WHAT I DO WITH MY BODY HAIR ARRRRRRRGHHHHH).

I dream of a world where men and women and trans-people are equal and treat each other with the love and respect they deserve. I dream of a world where all races and ethnicities are equal and treat each other with the love and respect they deserve. I dream of a world with EQUAL GODDAMN PAY.

A person can make bad choices and do bad things. That does not mean their race, their religion, their gender does bad things.

Come on people. Wake the fuck up and let's start changing the world for the better.

If you need me, I'm going to be eating Nutella out of the jar and measuring my armpit hair.

Carpe Diem! (Or recognising opportunities)

I like planning. I'm not usually one for spur of the moment plans. I like to know what I'm doing and when because it is less stress for me and therefore for my head. It means I can plan getting enough sleep and fitting in exercise (if I can). 

I've begun to wonder if life could be looked at as simply a series of opportunities. If my life up until now can be pinpointed down to opportunities. If my future hinges on opportunities, and if I seize them. 

Sometimes opportunities arise out of something planned, like going to a networking event and getting a job through someone you meet there. Often an opportunity comes that needs a bit of planning to see it through. But I feel opportunities in themselves have spontaneous, unplanned energy about them. Because you don't know what the outcome of them will be. 

I'm seeing opportunities in everything. I pick up the download codes in Starbucks and as a result I've had the opportunity to discuss an absolutely beautiful and fantastic piece of music. Getting in contact with yet another alternative therapist is an opportunity to continue exploring my headache and ways to a possible cure. 

Being asked to extend my contract by several months. Being invited onto a radio show by a random person on Twitter: an opportunity that I should never have hesitated over!

Australia has become more than a year working abroad.  It's an opportunity to experience a different culture. It's the chance to see if I can sink or swim on my own. It's the possibility of making new friends. Of trying new things, seeing new places.  

And it's also an opportunity to get as far away from the shit that's gone on in the last year or so.  

The divorce, moving, my sister's illness, my dad's drinking, my mum's moving. Saying goodbye to the house that was my home for my entire adolescence and which I hated when I first moved into but grew to love. 

And him.

I loathe sounding melodramatic over men. They are not the be all and end all, and I am not a broken-hearted damsel.  

But having seen him last weekend, I'm surprised I didn't feel the pain of the break up a lot more. True, my legs were jelly when I got there, I could barely look at him most of the day, and every time he looked at his phone I wondered if it was her. But when I left I didn't feel the need to be complicit in the pleasantries. When I said I wouldn't see you again, I wasn't smiling because I was joking. I was smiling because I know now I don't need to see you again.
Maybe one day we'll be friends, he said. I just need time, I said.  

I could look at Saturday as a missed opportunity. I could have said all the things I’ve wanted to say to him for months. All the times I've dreaded walking through London Bridge station in case I spot him - on his own or not- even when I'm walking through the station an hour before he would even get up.  

I have to admit that 4 months after we went out separate ways, I still think about him every day. Wonder what he's doing, how he's feeling, who he's seeing... I wonder if he ever misses me like I miss him.

Oh my, for someone who loathes to melodramatic about men, I've devoted several paragraphs to one. 

We were never going to last. I mean, he's so old! Just kidding.  We saw an opportunity to get to know each other. At least we gave it a go for a bit, and had fun while we did.  

The night before I last saw him in April, I applied for my visa for Australia. All I could think was that I wanted to get out of here.

But now it's more than just an escape. It's an opportunity to forget the person I am, and be the person I want to be.  Perhaps I am placing too much on this. It might have become my new holy grail.  

In the mean time, I hope I continue to see opportunities, and seize them.  Next time I see that guy at work who I think is fit, I will say hi. It may come out all mangled as my mouth dries up and my brain switches into standby when I see him, but that's often the beauty of opportunities: you never know what will come from them. 

I've passed up so many in my life. No more. You're gonna hear me roar. (Sorry, just had to get that in there ;D)

What's So Scary About Being Hairy?

OK, I'm going to have to break the news to you all, and I'm going to try and do it slowly.


Just because
I'm growing my armpit hair...
does not mean
I'm going to hide them away.



QUELLE HORREUR, I hear you gasp.

Well, get over it.


I am already a week in to growing my armpit hair for a charity called Verity which supports women who suffer from Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (see my JustGiving page here). The movement is called Armpits4August, and it's like a woman's version of Movember. Except, people with prostate cancer don't suddenly grow excessive hair, and if they did, well, people with prostates tend to be male, and hair on men is universally accepted.

But hair on women?

I mean, who'd a thunk it?


My mother called me "brave". Someone said armpit hair is gross and disgusting, but promised to sponsor me. There was the "Can I sponsor you not to do it?" comment. And then there is the assumption that I will hide my armpits away, like they are a deformity, or something to be ashamed of.


Whilst in my head I sometimes feel a little self-righteous and think "Yeah! I'm doing this! I'm not a slave to the razor! The patriarchy ain't gonna tell me what to do with my body hair!", these self-righteous moments pass and I remember that actually, as a woman I should be able to choose what I do with my body, and that includes my body hair, and if I choose to shave it off, then OK.

One of the biggest things I've learned in the last year about feminism is that it is about equality for all, and the freedom for everybody to make their own decisions. Not the "right" decisions. But the right decisions for themselves. And that includes the things most people think feminists hate, such as make-up and shaving and high heels and short dresses and bras.

For me, I shave when I feel like it. I showed my mum my new heels I wore last night to a charity fundraising dinner and her first comment was about me not having shaved my legs.
Erm, you might be my mother, mother, but it's not up to you whether I shave my legs. In fact, it's not up to anybody else. It's up to me.

And also, I didn't have the freakin' time between caring for my elderly dementia-ridden neighbour and trying to research laptops for my travels. I've got shit to DO people. I haven't got the time to rush a razor up my pins just so I can satisfy expectations of normal.

And that is where the comments get my goat. Shaved legs, shaved armpits, and even shaved muffs these days are the NORM. The societal NORM. So therefore armpit hair, leg hair, and muff hair, are wrong.
Since when did policing and eradicating our own body hair become the norm?
Since when is such a hatred of our bodies so normal?

We are taught so much to hate our own bodies. And I'm not just talking about women anymore. Yes, I would say women are the main targets of the media and the cosmetics industry and the cosmetic surgery industry. They want us to buy into the belief that we are not good enough/too fat/too ugly/too unfashionable, but I would say that because I am a woman. I  can't away from the fact that I do not have a male perspective on this topic, and others. I wish I could have more discussions with men about how they are feeling. Because actually, whilst women's magazines are dangerous because they have articles on how to love your life adjacent to articles on the newest diets and hottest celeb techniques, men are also suffering from the cycle of self-hatred. Whilst women are given stick-thin models to aspire to, men are given macho muscle-men to throw themselves against the gym weights to look like.

Where's the compromise? Stick thin women and hyperbolic muscle men? The tiniest percentage of people look like that, and so it leaves the rest of us to just be miserable over our own, apparently inadequate, bodies.

I'm sick of being made to feel ashamed of my own body. I'm sick of being made to feel like I should be losing weight or toning up to compete in the world. My looks are not everything. I want to be healthy, not thin. And I'm especially sick of feeling like if I don't possess tanned, silky smooth legs that a handkerchief could float off of, then I'm not worth anything, or worthy of anything. The girl with the silky legs gets the guy, the self-esteem, the random beach holiday that women brandishing razors seem to get taken on. I don't want a guy that wants silky legs, thank you. I'd rather not have a guy if that was the deal.

And this is not just a Western problem - Chinese women are turning to cosmetic surgery to stay in their jobs. There is a global problem with body image, and something needs to be done.

We are, in a way - in a big way really - responsible for our own fears and insecurities. Yes the media can and does create a fear or insecurity but ultimately they create the opportunity for us to feel that fear, to harbour that insecurity. We allow it to take hold, to have strength, to possess our minds. That is why I still look at other women and wish I was as thin as her, or as fashionable as her, because I have allowed the idea that I am not good enough the way I look or the way I dress to grow and flourish inside.

But I am good enough for myself, no matter what my shape or size or length of armpit or leg hair. I have no reason to be good enough for anybody except myself. I feel like I'm being told I should shave my legs and my armpits and my muff because that's what people do. But why should I be made to feel ashamed for not doing that? The people that think it's gross, or disgusting, need to look at why they think that way. Who taught them that? Because science didn't - scientific research suggests that bacteria loves clammy, shaved armpits, and armpit hair suggests

What I want, what I would really like, if for all women to think about why they shave their armpits. Is it because hair is gross (science says no). Or because they think hair is gross (probably). And if that is what they think, then why do they think that, and is that the way it should be.

As I said above, one of the biggest things I've learned is that feminism is about choices, and if it is your choice to shave, then that's great. But I want you to be doing for you. If you are shaving because you're afraid of people's reactions, your friends' reactions or your boyfriend/girlfriend's reaction if you don't, then perhaps it's time to question not why people shave their armpit hair, but why people don't grow it. Don't do something because you're afraid of not doing it. Do something because you are afraid of doing it, like bungee jumping, sky diving, or growing your armpit hair...

And I would just like to reach out to all the women, and men, and say judge me on my personality, my beliefs, my flaws and virtues, and yes, my actions. But do not judge me on my looks, and do not judge me on my body hair. I am not a freak, I am not disgusting, and I am not growing it for you to pass comment on, unless that comment is the opener to a discussion or debate. I am growing it for myself, and this month for charity.




And here is my armpit a week in. There is nothing scary about being hairy.