tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37768443658821165062024-03-12T18:32:39.201-07:00SCARPHELIAA blog by Katie Oldhamscarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comBlogger236125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-84879101172000803032020-05-17T13:15:00.003-07:002020-12-15T10:44:56.627-08:00Let's Get Embarrassing <span style="font-size: large;">Here's a fun opener: It's taken me a long time to realise I don't actually hate myself. </span><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">It's been the melodramatic default of my mind for so many years, but I guess it just took this extended period of time alone to find out the truth was actually something far more vulnerable. I don't hate myself at all, I'm just deeply embarrassed quite a lot of the time. And being so easily embarrassed, is the thing that I hate.<br /><br />For some reason I'm struck now with a memory of a boy I've written about on here far too many times than he could ever deserve. We had that kind of spark you pine for in your teenage years, that sexually-charged back and forth quipping that veers dangerously close to being out of line, that would only inevitably dissolve in a hotbed of lust and crumpled clothes on the floor. (This <i>treat 'em mean to keep 'em keen</i> mentality is something I'm relieved I finally outgrew... despite deep down knowing it'd probably still gets me a lil bit to this day.)<br /><br />Anyway, we'd always be at each others throats, desperately trying to outsmart one another and claim the victory, but the intoxication of the game was that he was absolutely unbeatable. Even my most ingenious and devastating forms of disrespect would simply ricochet off his unshakeable facade, and make me look the fool for trying. It was impossibly frustrating, and mostly because I always envied it about him so much.<br /><br />When I look back at my life now, the only time I've felt that unembarrassable is when I have literally been too dumb to realise how embarrassing I was. I cringe hard when I think about myself at my most bolshy and how deeply unlikable that made me. Back then, I'd synthesised sky-high confidence out of deeply rutted insecurity, a rather transparent defence against powerlessness. It was unstable and manic, which by no coincidence actually caused me to be my most embarrassing self. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;">I'm more than happy to leave that in the past, but feeling the complete opposite isn't a comfortable place to be either. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What I want to do is recapture that feeling of being bulletproof, without having to use it as a weapon. While this may sound contradictory, I no longer wish for confidence to use in defence, I seek it as protection. I'm not facing outward premeditating attack any more. I'm turning inward and looking after my own. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />So I wrote down a list of things about myself that make me feel embarrassed to admit. Whether they are actually true is somewhat irrelevant in this case, 'cause just believing their truth is enough to hold serious weight. And then I took the thing that made me feel so bad about myself, and rephrased the very same sentiment as if I was telling someone about my best friend in the whole world. And by the end, I'll be damned if it didn't make me feel kinda different. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">'I am alone and I have no friends' became: She generates her own happiness and found in herself everything she needed.<br /><br />'I'm weird and fucked up and wish I could just be normal like everybody else' became: She's this curious and unique character like no-one else I know. She lives by her own rules.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">'I have failed at everything I've ever tried, I'm a walking disaster' became: She has this wild colourful history and a wealth of experiences under her belt, and through them she learnt what wasn't for her, and what was. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">'It's humiliating to be this age and still not know who I am or what I'm doing' became: She never settles too long on one thing, she's constantly evolving and taking steps in new directions. She considers herself a late bloomer which she likes, because it means everything only gets better over time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">'I lack discipline enough to ever see a project through' became: She's passionate and throws herself fully into something when it grips her heart. But she trusts her gut too, and knows just when the time is right to return to something or let it go for now.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">'I've wasted my life' became: She affords herself the time to find her footing in any new situation, and knows this is something which can never be rushed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">'I'm all over the place and can't seem to make up my mind' became: She's a Libra, what can I say?</span></div>scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-72767906419608558442020-04-15T07:02:00.001-07:002020-12-15T10:47:23.112-08:00Embracing Nothing <span style="font-size: large;">I took a walk around my neighbourhood yesterday evening, just as the light had begun to turn golden.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And when I say around my neighbourhood I mean down every single road and street I could think of, zig-zagging past rows of houses I used to walk past daily, and some streets I'd never happened to traverse before. There's just a small joy in secretly stealing a glance inside a strangers home as you pass, especially now knowing at home is the only place any of us are allowed to be.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was a beautifully warm evening and I found myself coming to a stop outside a barbers. The sunlight glinted off the polished metal and rich maroon swivel chairs which sat facing mirrored oblivion. My eyes were drawn to the peeling posters that lined the wall by the window, for gigs, concerts and comedy shows on dates that had long-since elapsed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The sadness I felt was perhaps melodramatic considering we've only been in lockdown for a month, but it wasn't just the outdated gigs that never ended up happening. It was the future gigs and festivals no-one could ever have imagine would be cancelled when these posters advertising them were put up. It was the way this would act as a time capsule from here on out, just like the movie posters in the desolate cinemas that have inadvertently preserved the last possible moment of The Time Before. While everything now feels so devoid of sentiment or meaning, the sensation of gazing into that window stirred something quite deeply apocalyptic.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A month in and the virus has now infected over 2 million people globally, and the death toll continues to skyrocket. Our Prime Minister has just come out of intensive care, and every Thursday at 8pm we all clap our hands and bash pots and pans outside our windows as a sign of solidarity with the healthcare workers desperately trying to keep us all alive.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's becoming increasingly hard not to crumble into an existential hole, and I think it's something to do with this extreme sense of conflicting duality.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Because while we're living in this extraordinary moment that is fully detached from the concept of time, where an historic international crisis is ravaging mankind in a dramatic and terrifying way, at the same time, the vast majority of us are experiencing a complete abundance of simply... Nothing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">We're locked inside without jobs, plans, schedules or purpose, without any reason to get out of bed in the mornings, yet that makes us the incredibly lucky ones. Lockdown feels like both a holiday and a prison sentence. A blessing and a punishment. An awful consequence, yet also somewhat of a relief.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's certainly put a lot of things into perspective. Where my brain has always frustratingly defaulted to linger on what I don't have, or even better, what others have more than I, this time has served as a powerful lesson in gratitude. I'm incredibly lucky to live in a beautiful vibrant city by the sea, in a sweet apartment with a lovely housemate and a balcony overlooking a cluster of sweet independent shops and businesses with everything I could want or need. I'm lucky to be physically healthy and have remote counselling when my mental health wobbles, and a family that are willing to pick up the phone to me whenever I need to talk. I am grateful that during this time I don't have to worry about money, as our wages are being covered by the Government, and I have enough to get by. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've found I can also be grateful for this abundance of time, whilst navigating and managing these feelings of guilt as to why we have it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I began this post on a very different tone, and wrote about a thousand words on how we should be making the most of this time and how I'm being productive in it, but I scrapped it entirely. It was definitely a kneejerk reaction to do the whole ~motivational blogger~ thing, and there's a reason I gave that the boot all those years ago. I just want to write honestly and freely, without intention other than to convey what life feels like when everything real becomes surreal. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As I <a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/2020/03/filling-pool.html" target="_blank">mentioned previously</a>, I'm dedicating this time to an intense mental overhaul, taking a deep dive into finding out who I am and what I'm about when I exist entirely unobserved. And so far that has been both taxing and illuminating, and I'm excited to see where this journey takes me, whilst remaining very humbled that I have the opportunity to take this trip.<br /><br />In this world where all we are left with are the two extremes of nothingness or horror, I'm grateful to be a part of those with that everyday sense of nothing at all. </span>scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-20119698582565370982020-03-29T12:23:00.002-07:002020-04-04T09:23:53.600-07:00Going Out For a Cry <span style="font-size: large;">It's mad how going for a walk is now the absolute highlight of my day. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm discovering places in my city I never even knew existed, and planning adventures to exciting, exotic and distant (yet not too far from home) lands.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Alongside a good walk, I've also discovered the joys of: crying! </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And even greater still is the combination of the two.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This pertinent discovery was made a couple of days ago, when the sun remained beaming rather rudely, and after losing my morning to an unpleasant storm of anger and frustration, I decided to go 'for a run'. I put on the new Dua Lipa album because everyone seemed to be saying it was good (and they really weren't wrong), and started pounding pavement toward the beach. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The seafront was rammed with couples and families practicing 'social distancing', carving their solitary paths through the throng of other people all desperately trying not to acknowledge that this probably constituted a crowd. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">With my limbs preoccupied and glossy synthpop bangers blasting in my ears, it was as though the unruly siblings of my mental and physical self were finally distracted enough to let my emotions come tumbling through, and I just burst into tears.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And it was glorious! Not a single person seemed to notice or care, and if they did, they either deeply related and understood, or the fact that I was sniffling and snotting was enough for them to give me even wider berth so I could continue on, undeterred. It's not that I was sad, exactly, or even really crying about anything specific. It just seems to be the only way to break the strain of overwhelm that's hitting from every angle on a daily basis. I read a profound article the other day that said this horrible feeling we're all experiencing is, in fact, grief. So I let it all out. I grieved for the past, I grieved for my life and everyone else's, and I grieved for the loss of human life the world over.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">By one full listen of the album I'd regained a little composure, reaching the point where the promenade is abruptly cut short by the big white walls of a luxury complex. The gated community, (complete with own private beach) is known locally as 'Millionaire's Row', and is famed for housing a bunch of celebrities and the super rich. A car with blacked-out windows crawled past me as I stood admiring the buildings, and I wondered who was coming to take shelter here, knowing with a slight sad smugness that it wouldn't make a difference.<br /><br />By the time I started heading back a few police cars had parked up, with officers gently moving people along and reminding them we are, in fact, supposed to be in a government quarantine. Most people seemed compliant enough, with the odd grouchy frolicker marching off with crossed arms. One memorable sight was a bejewelled, glamorous old lady sat on a bench with a glass of what looked like champagne, dismissing a police officer with a devastatingly casual waft of the hand, refusing to have her afternoon disturbed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It reminded me of my friend Millie, and how she'd broken the rules a few nights ago turning up at my house in the dead of the night, glass of wine in hand. Knowing I was feeling down and desperate for a friend, she coerced me into going on a responsible and socially distant walk with her, which constituted about 15 laps of my street, smoking cigarettes we definitely shouldn't have and chattering all our woes into the night sky. It was the precise dose of normality I needed to feel sane again. When we parted, we knew it was probably the first and last time we'd be able to do this, but like optimistic lovers after a one night stand, we promised to do it again soon.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Things I've learned the true value of this apocalypse: walking, crying, friends. (And wine)</span><br />
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-37794888183733981682020-03-27T06:56:00.001-07:002020-03-27T09:31:24.571-07:00Filling The Pool<span style="font-size: large;">This morning I awoke to the sun-dappled street shimmering gloriously through the window by my bedside, and for a moment it felt like any ordinary day. It wasn't long, however, before reality crept up and swung a sledgehammer of anxiety through my spine, bursting like a firework in my chest and wriggling uncomfortably through me from head to toe. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's how most days begin now. Although last night I had a particularly uncomfortable dream that I had this tiny, scone-sized dog I had to take care of, so for safekeeping decided to keep it inside my mouth, only to accidentally part-swallow it and start dry-heaving and choking in the dead of the night. I'm sure that has some profound meaning somewhere. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Surreal updates of the last few days include our Prime Minister, ruler of the realm and daily harbinger of doom and gloom, has become infected. This comes the day after news that the sickness has also come for Prince Charles, heir to the throne and (debatable) future King of England. In these unprecedented times where the everyday news is stranger than fiction, it's not actually implausible to picture a world where this wipes out the entire Government and Royal Family. This virus doesn't care if you are a Prince or a peasant, if you have a human form you are vulnerable. Right now we are all equal in the eyes of this invisible enemy and that's both parts terrifying and... somehow slightly iconic.<br /><br />Wholesome distractions have become key in preventing a complete mental breakdown. In search of such activity, I posted on our community noticeboard and a couple of hours later picked up a little packet of tomato seeds an old lady across the neighbourhood had left out for me. I spent the afternoon potting them on the balcony, watching folks in medical masks and plastic gloves meander aimlessly below, using their stipulated 'daily exercise' allowance as a chance to relish the sensation of the sun on their faces.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As twilight drew in, Tom and I thoroughly sanitised the handles and saddles of some rental bikes and cycled down through the dead city, past the marina with the carefully spaced queues snaking outside the big supermarket, and toward the tall white cliffs by the ocean. The sun was golden and the sky dressed in pearlescent shades of pink and lilac, and just for a moment I willed myself to let go and embrace the solitary stillness of the present. But a previous traverser of this path had scrawled 'GO THE FUCK HOME' in chalk on the wall overlooking the sea, and guilt reached up in thick, suffocating tentacles and dragged me back into the depths, knowing full well they were right. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's barely been a fortnight, but I can already feel this inescapable sadness burrowing through the core of me. It's not even just the anxiety of this everyday madness, but extended time alone with nothing to really do has left my brain quiet enough to let all my old demons start to yell again. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">'This lockdown is re-calibrating the world.' My Mother said in a moment of profoundness the other day, and I've been thinking about it a lot. There's people likening this to a world war, the blitz, or the Spanish flu, but in reality, no-one alive on this planet has ever gone through this before. We are the most technologically advanced and well-connected evolution of humankind and we are being decimated by an enemy we cannot see or predict, whilst trying to protect the quivering pillars of modern society. It's more akin to an alien invasion than anything else. We have never been more united or more isolated, and everyone everywhere is fucking terrified and trying not to die. Everything we have ever known is being re-calculated in real time, trying to figure out how best to secure the future. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And all the while we are stuck inside our houses indefinitely, being told that the best thing we could possibly do to help, is do absolutely nothing at all. So I guess it's no wonder these demons are rearing their ugly heads once again. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Here's my demonic epiphany of the day: I've spent so long trying to flood myself with other people and their stories and lives, that I've let myself become an empty vessel. My whole life I've inexpertly tried to emulate the people I think are happy and have it all together, whilst engineering false identities so they'll think of me as the same. But with no outsider input or things to sway and influence me, when I'm just left on my own, what am I actually left with? Staring endlessly at the same four walls inside my home is like staring at the blankness inside of my own head, and I'm just left with one question. Who the fuck actually am I when I'm by myself? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">When the water mains are turned off, and I find my pool drained and empty, what is there left among the glistening tiles?<br /><br />This is the time I've always longed for and dreaded in equal measure - It's the time to find out. </span><br />
<br />scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-47549182492351871202020-03-24T13:52:00.000-07:002020-03-25T06:58:22.693-07:00Life Comes At You Fast <span style="font-size: large;">March 11th was a fairly unremarkable day. According to my records it was a Wednesday, slightly overcast, and I had the day off.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was a mere 13 days ago, which seems somewhat impossible to believe. It was a day in which I opened up this blog for the first time since summarising the last decade back in November. I started to write a post.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The working title was, melodramatically, 'On Growth', and was set to be a piece in which I spoke my greatest wishes for the future into existence. I was bristling with excitement, with a corker of a start of the year under my belt and plans for a whole new journey ahead. I found love, dear reader. I found hope. And I found a drive to take on the world akin to that gusto that had seen me start this blog 8 years ago.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I opened with the sentence; 'Right now, the year is 2020, and I am 27 years old.' And that was it. The year itself felt an unremarkable statement, the now-inane seeming content of the post, not inane at all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But back in November last year, right when I was lost deep in the turmoil that saw me desperately recount the last ten years, little could I, or any of us have known that the seed of something dark and deeply sinister had begun to root in this world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Something that would begin as just a snippet of an article on Twitter, a passing anecdotal remark shared over coffee, a joke between friends that allowed us to reminisce over our favourite apocalypse movies. I can't even pinpoint the exact moment that it became incredibly, terrifyingly real, but due to our inherent western-lensed privilege, it really doesn't feel like that long ago. Never in a million years could we have expected then what was coming, and just how quickly and dramatically it would upend the entire planet.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So I guess I'll start that original post again.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Right now, the year is 2020 and I am 27 years old.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And right now I, alongside millions of other people in nearly every country on earth, am locked in a nationwide quarantine inside my own home in an attempt to protect humanity from a deadly virus which has taken over the planet and infected hundreds of thousands of people.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's staggering to think it was less than two weeks ago that this was so far from my thoughts that I could even begin to imagine my future. Just this morning, on my single government-sanctioned walk into town, I breathed 'oh my god' audibly spotting a man carrying a luxurious bounty of two 4-packs of toilet roll. Later, I was genuinely ecstatic to find a lone packet of bagels squirrelled away on the back shelf of newsagents I'd had to wait 10 minutes outside of, in a box marked on the pavement in hazard tape. So when I finished my last post with 'Here's to ten more years of trying to do the right thing and causing a whole hot mess of a life along the way!' I really had no fucking clue what was just around the corner.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So this is my life now.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've been out of work for nearly two weeks and the official lockdown of this country started last night. And while it's expected to last three weeks, we all know it'll last a lot longer and the situation is about to get a lot, lot worse. So as I wile away endless hours watching modern society descend into chaos, knowing if I leave my house I could get fined or potentially kill a whole bunch of people, and I don't know whether any of my friends or family will survive this - I guess I'm just gonna write. I'm well aware there's far more important stories to tell and read during this pandemic, but I can't really tell any other story than my own.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And I suppose there's never been a greater prompt than the end of the fucking world, right?</span>scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-73110838230762426102019-11-11T17:53:00.000-08:002019-11-22T09:46:49.418-08:00Rituals<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm just gonna come out with it: This past year has been really, really hard. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The other day I tried to recall everything that's happened since January and it would seem every single conceivable part of my life is wildly different now than it was then, and even more so since the last time I was here. Some change has been for the better, some for the worse, but all of it - or so I keep having to tell myself - for the greater good. <br /><br />I guess I'm being vague because a lot of it is still sensitive, but also because I stopped writing online all those years ago because oversharing caused me so much damage. </span><span style="font-size: large;">So I don't know if this is a good idea, and to be honest I don't really know who I'm even talking to anymore, but fuck it. </span><span style="font-size: large;">I'm here now because I've just had a really fucking weird year, and for some reason this is where I'm drawn back to after all this time.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />One of the lighter changes this year has been developing a wholesome and mostly unironic interest in astrology and mysticism. Yep, Tarot cards, zodiac signs, crystals, the LOT.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What started as</span><span style="font-size: large;"> a mild curiosity has blossomed into a life-affirming passion that just does as much for me as the almost-certainly-overpriced private therapy I had over summer did. One of my favourite daily rituals is to stick on a video of some softly-spoken youtube mystic who just pulls random tarot cards based on starsigns and tells you you've been through a lot, but ultimately you're gonna be okay. Who knew it was just that easy huh.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was through one of these videos that I came to learn that the 11th of November - the day I began writing this post - is a special day. </span><span style="font-size: large;">As explained by a very legitimate looking website: <i>'</i></span><span style="font-size: large;"><i>According to numerology, the number 11 is a “master number” which signifies intuition, insight, and enlightenment. When paired together, 11 11 is a clear message from the universe to become conscious and aware.'</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />So with it being not only the 11th day of the 11th month, but also the day of a full moon, the end of a decade AND a period of mercury in retrogade (I told you I was into it), the girl in this video told me now was the time to do something important. And then she said one line that reached out and grabbed me by the throat;</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /> <b style="font-style: italic;">'If you've found yourself having a particularly hard time recently, it</b></span><i><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">'s the universe telling you there's things you simply cannot bring with you into the new decade.'</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></b></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I thought about it all day, and the more I thought about it, the more truth it seemed to hold. This year has seemed so fucking hard because its the culmination and apparent consequence of everything I've done in the last ten years. Every mistake I've made, person I've hurt, every time I fucked myself over or let myself down during my time as an adult, all of those things have come full circle this year from one explosive drama to the next.<br /><br />So I just wrote it all down.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This 'former' over-sharer made a list of everything that has happened in the decade, </span><span style="font-size: large;">starting from my impossibly naive 17 year-old self about to make her first important life decisions, and everything that has gone right or wrong since then. And fucking hell was it a revelation.</span><br />
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</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;">To be honest with you, part of me was thinking I'd post the lot here, but not only is it long as hell, I quite frankly can't possibly imagine why anyone else would care. *Edit: this is me returning to this post 11 days later (omg poignant) and after finding myself constantly going back to the list and adding things and remembering more over time, I think it does has value, maybe if only even to me. So, fuck it:</span><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /> <a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/p/the-universe-was-telling-you-you-cannot.html" target="_blank">This is my huge ass list of everything in my life over the past 10 years</a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: large;">The biggest takeaway I had from doing this, was realising not only have I made the same mistakes over and over again, but it seems the mistakes were the first and sometimes only things I could remember. I guess it's true you don't remember every lovely yet ultimately inconsequential evening you had with close friends in a cosy bedroom with a bottle of wine, but you DO remember with startling detail the time a once boyfriend got so mad at you for wanting to go home that he launched a candle at you from across a crowded pub. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Ultimately it just said a lot about how I prioritise these memories in my perception of my life story. That was what came to mind first. Not the joy and growth and exploration, but the regret and cringe and misery. </span><span style="font-size: large;"><i><b>'It's the universe telling you there's things you simply cannot bring with you into this new decade'</b></i></span><b style="font-size: x-large;">,</b><span style="font-size: large;"> I heard echo inside my brain, and I knew the nice horoscope youtube lady was right. I was the one saying I can't escape my mistakes, when I'm also the one letting these mistakes define me. <i>That's</i> what I want to leave behind finally, once and for all. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />So later that night, as the time approached 11:11pm, I decided to complete the ritual.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">After spending a few hours bulletpointing this list, I pulled three tarot cards and placed them before me; the <a href="https://labyrinthos.co/blogs/tarot-card-meanings-list/four-of-cups-meaning-tarot-card-meanings" target="_blank">four of cups</a> for the past, the <a href="https://labyrinthos.co/blogs/tarot-card-meanings-list/four-of-wands-meaning-tarot-card-meanings" target="_blank">four of wands</a> for the present, and the <a href="https://labyrinthos.co/blogs/tarot-card-meanings-list/nine-of-cups-meaning-tarot-card-meanings" target="_blank">nine of cups</a> for the future. </span><span style="font-size: large;">I then took out a notebook, ripped out some pages and wrote out five things I want to either release myself from or to manifest for myself in the future. (I'm not going to write what these were because, apparently I think <i>some</i> things are still sacred.) </span><span style="font-size: large;">I wafted the cards and the manifestations over fumes of burning sage, and whilst clutching rose quartz, labradorite and moonstone to my chest, I set them alight and burned them one by one.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />And as I watched my words dissolve into cinders and float off into the universe, I thought deeply to myself that, yeah, this may all be just bullshit and one of the many things people to do cope. But if in doing this I truly believe that I can become a better person, that I can release myself from past traumas and start this fresh new slate on which I aim to thrive and prosper and make beautiful things happen does it really fuckin' matter? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">That night I slept with the stones and cards under my pillow. You know, just in case.<br /><br />Here's to ten more years of trying to do the right thing and causing a whole hot mess of a life along the way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Goodnight x</span><br />
<br />scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-4109416982802120472018-03-29T08:46:00.000-07:002018-03-30T01:59:05.272-07:00World, I'd Like You To Meet Sit Down <div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: #f4cccc; font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: large;">On trading Scarphelia for Sit Down, and the story behind our debut EP: 'Cheap Luxe'</span></div>
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It'd been a month since we'd returned from the fateful summer in New York City, I was sitting in the coffee shop in Brighton where Greg had just got a job, and everything felt like hell. Through my headphones, I listened to the demo he'd recorded the night before, a screeching guitar and thundering drum beat that told me more than he ever could put into words. He felt it too. I pulled out a notepad and pen and scrawled a few lines in time with the track: </div>
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<b><i>My hair's a fucking mess and doesn't even look good. I'm so fucking hungry I don't have any food. When nothing I do matters, all is wrong with the world, I'm an angry, motherfucking angry girl.</i></b></div>
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It was the first song we wrote as the band we called <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/SitDownyeah/" target="_blank">Sit Down</a></b>, a name we chose because we wanted something angry and punchy and didactic; <i>Sit down, shut up and listen to this.</i> We were young, passionate and broke, and so desperately furious at so many things. During our time in New York we'd slipped from the matrix, turning on the idyllic world we'd always known, only to realised how deeply fucked it all was. The clawing dissatisfaction that flowed through us swirled in a vortex of anger and a compelling need to do something about it. It was this raw energy that sparked a counter-cultural explosion in the 70's and feminist anarchy in the 90's. It was punk. And the only thing that could do justice to the fury was pure, unadulterated noise. </div>
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May 18th 2016 was the first time I sat behind a drumkit, at 23 years old - something I thought I was far too old, especially as a woman, to even entertain the idea of doing. I'd tried to learn other instruments before but to no real success as I'd soon get too frustrated to persevere. But as I looked down at the slick skin of the floor tom, my rage began to rise, my knuckles clenched around that wooden weapon in my right hand and I just smacked the fuck out of it. The note thundered into the air, vibrating through my ribcage and shimmering out through my bones, and I immediately thought; <i>oh fuck. That's the shit. </i></div>
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And thus, the angry girl found her outlet. The more rubbish I was, the more I lashed out in anger, and the better it ended up sounding. I became addicted, slowly learning how to separate my body from my mind, and trusting my hands to their job. Blisters grew and burst across my palms, my fingers, my thumbs, a permanent bruise lingered around the top of my left thigh, punishment for every time I missed that snare, and my knuckles split and bled more times than I could count. But every inch of pain, every droplet of sweat, torn hangnail and splatter of blood made my wild, intangible anger into a real, measurable thing. And soon I found my voice, too.</div>
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Nearly two years to the day since I first hit a drum, after countless gigs in London, Brighton and beyond, we are finally ready to release our first official record, a calculated distillation of the fury that has propelled our art since that first angry song. And this is what we have to say.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>B L O O D L U S T</u></b></span></div>
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<i><b style="background-color: #f4cccc;"><br /></b></i><i><b style="background-color: #f4cccc;">You write her off, as not enough. Now time is up. She is gonna find you. You pretty fool, you played it cool, wanted her to be your little baby.</b></i><br />
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Once I'd begun writing my anger into lyrics, I found nothing riled me more than recalling just how awfully I'd been treated by men growing up. It's a very complex issue I'd probably benefit from taking up with a therapist, but blossoming into a woman with the insight of maturity, it was as though the veil had been lifted, and my blood boiled at the men who had systematically used, and abused me both mentally and physically during the most volatile parts of my development. I wrote about it in a little more detail <a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/2018/03/the-last-scorned-woman.html" target="_blank">here.</a> But one of the things which angered me most, was how I'd always blamed myself for being too weak to stand up for myself. To defend myself. To fight back. So Bloodlust was born from the girl I wish I could have been. The girl who gets revenge on the men who try to crush her. Written around the idea of a cheating partner, Bloodlust is for the girl who will kill the man who thinks he can get away with murder. </div>
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<i><b style="background-color: #f4cccc;">Your fatal flaw was wanting more. Behind the door, you cannot escape her. So hold you breath and pray for death, 'cause here's your second best now coming in first. </b></i></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-size: x-large;">H O N E Y S U C K E R</span></u></b></div>
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<i><b style="background-color: #f4cccc;">I've seen your video, your phoney rock'n'roll. You say you're from the beach, but don't mention the stones. </b></i><br />
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As we delved more into exploring punk and heavy music, playing lineups with countless 'grunge' 'garage rock' and 'punk' bands without a single non-white non-male to be seen, a similar trope seemed to be everywhere we turned; weak ass motherfuckers. Everywhere we went, there were bands putting way more effort into trying to seem badass than actually doing anything remotely rebellious, and taking themselves so damn seriously it actually started to become kinda funny. It's amazing how quickly some completely lose all sense of reality when one drunk dude in a pub function room says they sound a bit like Kurt Cobain. We started a secret burn book called The Shit List, of everything that pissed us off, which later became the song 'Honeysucker'. Of course, the hypocrisy is not lost on us, but that's half the fun. We're just as full of shit as the next guy. This running theme soon morphed into the following song Cheap Luxe.</div>
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<b><i style="background-color: #f4cccc;">Your watered-down whiskey-drinkin' candy-ass fun. Say you're a honey, bee? Well none of us are stung. </i></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>C H E A P L U X E</u></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f4cccc;"><b><i>Something I find I notice more with each and every day, a subtle conversation behind what we choose to say. Blatant in the game, it's driving me insane, these candy-coated candids hiding rusted razor blades. </i></b></span><br />
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The title track Cheap Luxe is probably the most scandalous, a distilled version of everything I've been trying to find the words to say about blogging, social media, and the general fucked up delusion of modern society. When I quit blogging, <a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/2017/02/the-final-act-of-scarphelia.html" target="_blank">I attempted to reveal</a> the dark secrets I'd found and to put it bluntly, why the whole industry and everyone in it was fucked up. It felt unbelievably liberating to finally say it, but it wasn't quite enough. After years ruminating upon it, Cheap Luxe is my definitive exposé, slamming the entire concept of modern social media which is to try and convince everyone else that you and your life is better than everyone else's, and how I've come to realise the only path to true happiness is the exact opposite.</div>
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<span style="background-color: #f4cccc; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">When the truth is a secret that's too dirty to share, a two-way mirror with nobody else there, when you talk about the steps but never take the stairs, you'll be blind to the fact that nobody fucking cares.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>Cheap Luxe is a way of life, the true unspoilt DIY ethos behind keeping your head down, doing your own shit, and trying to work hard instead of just being a try hard. <span style="background-color: white;">But it isn't just about calling people out, it's about attempting to make sense of things too, to offer some cautionary advice from someone's who's been there and let that shit destroy them for so many years. I think of my own epiphanies as a kind of 'Rebel Education', a phrase that we coined when we were in NYC and realised the world was not as we knew it. Whilst I can't help but find myself resenting those I used to idolise online, I want to help them realise the error of this world too, before it's too late. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #f4cccc; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700;">Please don't get me wrong I know we all need validation, but living to be seen is just a dirty medication. So channel your vexation and find that liberation, that comes from when you own your shit through rebel education.</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-size: x-large;">M O T H E R S H I P</span></u></b></div>
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<b><i style="background-color: #f4cccc;"><br />I've spent a lot of time on the cutting room floor, cutting little bits and pieces I don't need anymore. And as my hands trace the shape of my new found form, I rise to the throne as a bitch reborn. </i></b><br />
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This first song on the record comes as both the beginning and the end of an era. Since we first started playing, we've written probably two albums worth of a material, with every one being driven by anger and revenge. But after a couple of years, as a woman and as a songwriter, I've finally come to realise the energy I've invested in revenge can be better utilised elsewhere. Instead of seeking revenge on the men who hurt girls, I finally feel strong enough to start empowering these girls in the first place. While there is power in revenge, there is strength and longevity in reinforcement. For me, a person who has been fundamental in my spiritual growth has been <a href="https://twitter.com/theslumflower" target="_blank">Chidera</a>, aka <a href="http://www.theslumflower.com/" target="_blank">The Slumflower.</a> Her depthless and illuminating wisdom has transformed this broken soul out for revenge into a newly healed entity ready to spread the light. She has been my Mothership. And now, I'm ready to open myself as one too.</div>
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<b><i style="background-color: #f4cccc;">I crack my knucles for the first time yet, the sound of revenge I no longer need to get. I'm duty-bound now to protect my kin. They'll all learn to fly underneath my wing.</i></b></div>
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Wherever my path will take me on this journey, I know I'll always measure success by impact. As a writer-turned blogger, all I ever wanted to do was reach out and air my innermost feelings in the help they may soothe the woes of another. And fuck any sponsorship deal or blogging event, one little email in my inbox telling me something I wrote mattered, was enough to make my work, my self and my life feel worthwhile. A while back, before I dramatically 'quit blogging' <a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/2015/11/a-storm-on-horizon.html" target="_blank">I wrote that there was a storm coming</a>, something brewing on the horizon that was going to change everything. I was a little hermit outside the city walls, watching through a telescope as the residents buzzed around in a hustle and bustle, but something beneath the busy streets was cracking and shifting. But I was not observing that in the world. It was something that has happening to me. </div>
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I have been in hiding for some years now, slowly honing my craft so I can do this thing right. Refining exactly what I want to say, and the most effective way that someone in my position can say it, because I finally fucking believe once more that there are some goddamn important things that need to be said, and I'm willing to try and find words for them. And with this record, I hope to be born again into my new found form, ready to inject this power into the universe to anyone who is ready to receive it. </div>
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<b style="background-color: #f4cccc; font-style: italic;">When darkness comes for you and me, just look into the sky and see. The mothership is coming as planned, and she's finally found a place to land. </b><br />
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-57787339453737140592018-03-23T09:05:00.001-07:002019-08-31T04:27:54.977-07:00The Last Scorned Woman <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: medium;">"I won't be the villain in your stories any more." I said, as the midnight waves crashed against the shore and we shivered in the moonlight, his arm draped over my stiff shoulders. It was strange how brutally cold it was, yet we were both somehow pretending it was worth it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">"You were never the villain." He replied softly, gazing out across the dark swelling sea, as if he'd find the right words dancing along the horizon line. Then he turned, his arctic eyes fixed upon mine, and I looked up at him expectantly. With the utmost sincerity he could muster, he looked at my lips and murmured; </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">"More like the saviour."</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">And with a cross between a snort and a choke, I burst out laughing in his stupid fucking face. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">And that's when I knew that I was free.</span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">*</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Everything I am today has grown from the ways I've butchered myself to be enough for the men I have loved. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">It's a fact that kills me to acknowledge, yet I must confront if I ever wish to heal. And boy, was he one of them. Not just someone that I loved, but someone that entirely owned me, mind, body and soul. <a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/2017/12/the-scars-inside-ourselves.html">The puppet master.</a> He knew exactly how to make me fall at his knees and he did not hesitate to use that to the full extent of his power. He was not the first to break my heart, nor would he be the last. But he somehow seemed the most profound. Unlike any of the others, his was a love I could not shake, that clung to me like frost, slowly sucking the warmth and life out of me.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The problem was, we gave each other everything we always wanted. He, a philosopher returning to a country that had forgotten him with nothing but a troubling alcohol dependency and a light suntan. I, a doe-eyed dreamer younger than her age but older than her years, with a desperation to feel special so blinding, it completely obscured the truth of sad, predatory soul-sucker who adopted the guise of a mysterious creature that would attack anyone who came close, except for one.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">And that is all I would ever be. The greatest thing I could ever deem myself to be in his eyes was the exception to the rule. He could have just crushed me like an ant between his fingertips. But why would you, when an ant is such a diligent worker? Instead of crushing me, he saw first what I could offer him. And the only accolade I had was I think I surprised him. I had more to give than he imagined. What I never realised until that night on the moonlight beach 4 years after our last meeting, was all these years I'd been providing him the one thing he sought more than anything, more than sex, more than love, more than dedication; </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">To be viewed as the person he so desperately wanted to believe he was.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">While my loving hand was outstretched, ready to give and receive openly, he'd only ever slip his fingers between mine when no-one was looking, tugging me further away from the light and guiding me into the shadows.He was the one that took the innocent complexities that I'd only begun to discovered in myself and branded his name across them. He stole the things about myself I slowly began to love and understand and explore and suddenly they belonged to him, to a point where I was no longer sure if I wanted to be his, or simply be him. It's so easy to fall for a man so in love with himself, as a girl is taught that there's no greater way to be accepted than to concede.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But his was not the only poisonous love I have felt in my time, not by a long shot. And I'd spent an entire girlhood believing it was my weakness and vulnerability to blame, rather than the overbearing predatory desires of toxic men. Nearly every man that I have loved has tried to knock me down enough to wrap his chains around my independence. Nearly every man I have met who has perceived my brightness as a threat to their own, has actively tried to dim mine to make space for theirs.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">And it has took me 25 fucking years of stunted growth and delayed epiphanies and lengthy healing processes to finally look up into the eyes of my puppet master and slash through the thin silvery threads that still glistened around my wrists.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">In that moment I transcended. I stepped out of the shell of a girl bruised and broken from years of neglect and torment and control at the hands of man, and flexed my muscles with my newfound strength. At that moment everything I had ever been, and everything I have the potential to become collided in one seismic ripple in spacetime that altered my future irrevocably. I looked down to see divine wisdom flowing from my fingertips like static electricity, and my soul became fluid, ebbing and flowing through my physical form like treacle, churning and throbbing with feminine power to the rhythm of the tides. I was every wronged female, every lost girl, every broken ex-girlfriend, and the last scorned woman. And as the stars aligned above in the night sky and mother moon bathed every curve and angle of my face in her ethereal glow, I knew I'd finally found what I’ve been looking for my entire life. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The woman to defend the girl who couldn't defend herself.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The parts of me that had been scattered to the wind were finally being called home. And I knew then that every person who had ever taken from me, was going to pay.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">A few weeks later, I awoke unexpectedly late in the day to find dusk pressing heavy on my eyelids. I went to the window to see our street below, doused in an otherworldly orange glow. There were no people. The cars were motionless. Twilight had fallen during the day. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">It was the day that the aptly named hurricane Ophelia clawed her way through the sky and tore the sand from the Sahara Desert, shaking it out across Western Europe. It was the Friday the 13th of October. A supposedly cursed day, in the month of the 25th year of my birth, the month of Halloween, when decades ago my grandmother had born my blood line into this world. There was something feverish in the air that day, and I wrote two lines on a piece of paper. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>The air is ripe beneath the amber sun<u>,</u></b> I wrote. <b><i>The season of the witch has just begun. </i></b>It was the start of our 13th song.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I never fully understood how I was going to get my justice, until we wrote <a href="https://sitdownyeah.bandcamp.com/track/voodoo">Voodoo.</a> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I've spent years writing essays on this blog, and while sending out each sentiment allowed me a certain sense of release, there was something darker I sought. Something a little like vengeance. I couldn’t let something ago until justice balanced the hurt. My words were as good as whispers when written. I needed to yell, and I needed to be heard. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>The dirt is dry beneath their fingernails,</i></b> I wrote, <b><i>a shallow grave is deeper than anything they’ve done. </i></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Something changed when music was added to these words. With a thundering slippery bassline and pounding drums, the words came to life, no longer a series of static marks and shapes that attempt to emulate a human feeling. But real, gut-wrenching, teeth-gritting reality. With noise, I could take the feeling out of my chest and belt them into the heart of those hearing it. It was as good as witchcraft, every song we wrote becoming black magic propelled out through my vocal chords in a buffer of sound, weaving and dodging through the fabric of reality to seek the one for whom it was destined.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>The stars above they seem to whisper to you, a secret that they all know to be true. An evil lies between your parted lips, turning hurt into a weapon, with the power of voodoo.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">As we sat on that beach and I watched his expression melt from disappointment into a muted kind of anger, the power and magic he thieved from me began to slowly seep from his pores, leaking out across the pebbles. And it was this power that I took back, and weaved into a curse, that I could stand beneath the spotlight and belt out into the world to anyone that would hear it, and know wherever he was and whatever he doing from here on out for the rest of time, it'd send a shiver up his spine. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><i><br /></i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b><i>You wanted, you got it, but you didn't know, </i></b>I wrote. <b><i>You paid with your soul.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">So here I stand now. The Last Scorned Woman, risen from the ashes of the broken young girl. I am strength, I am power and I brim with magic, here to seek vengeance from all who have taken from me, and every other girl. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">And I've only just begun. </span></div>
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</style>scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-81515917697231933912018-01-01T05:25:00.000-08:002018-03-23T10:58:30.728-07:00The Scars Inside Ourselves It’s the dead of winter, and still a surprise to run a thumb across my wrists and find grooves where the strings were once tied. <br />
<br />
My breath fogs against the icy glass, a storm between two panes, and as the familiar parts of me begin to ache and howl, I quiet them with a warmth and stillness of my own. Something in me has healed, a once damaged light which only now fixed reveals the other wounds I didn’t know I had. It’s funny, isn’t it? How skin toughens into scar tissue, but only once it’s been destroyed.<br />
<br />
When I was younger, I was obsessed with the scar on my forehead. A thin white gash that extends into my hairline, from a childhood accident involving a glass door and an untied shoelace. At school, scabs and scars and broken bones were social currency, a way to prove how interesting you were, and how you had got here. And I displayed mine with pride, a jagged pearlescent trophy of my resilience and bravery, because here was healing you could prove. A neat story from start to finish, a memory immortalised with a permanent souvenir. But not all healing is as linear. I wonder how many of those other children were carrying the scars that could not be seen.<br />
<br />
I am a woman now, and I have collected many scars along the way. <br />
<br />
It pains me to credit man for any manner of my making, but there is a heaviness I carry that could’ve been forged by none other. I was raised by my mother, protected by my sister, and understood by my aunt, but only ever because men were either incapable, or worse, unwilling. While on the surface I grew older and wiser over the years, softer and kinder from the impact of brilliant women, what in fact forged my character was the scar tissue growing inside of me; bitter, blanched and tough from the claw marks men left on my soul. When I later began my path of self-discovery and the male indifference inevitably reversed, I became prey, vulnerable and completely exposed through my naive desire to excavate the reason why I was the way that I was. I began as we all do, ethereal and vague, with no defined edges or sharp corners, open to any and all things that could impact me. Today I stand misshapen and tough, like a long-chewed piece of gum spat out by the world, warped from years of changing myself to be enough for the men that I have loved. But in my toughness is strength. That resilience and bravery that was foretold on my skin. And I have arrived, fully-formed and blossoming into that shape I have ended up being. Because unlike the scar on my head or the proud injuries we displayed as children, sometimes we can learn how to undo the scars inside ourselves. And that is what I have come here to do.<br />
<br />
This silent year I killed the puppet master. I tugged at my own strings and the faceless man fell, stumbling on his own surprise. I didn’t know I could do it until I did. And I turned and looked up into the beady eyes of the man of all men and watched as my own thieved purity seeped from his fatal wound. Then I dug the strings from their well-worn grooves and I stepped out into the cold alone. A woman who’d never again be controlled by man. <br />
<br />
The last scorned woman.<br />
<br />
I can’t promise I’ll do it right, but I promise I’ll do enough. scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-78974928089672007402017-02-06T07:43:00.002-08:002019-08-31T04:28:28.559-07:00The Final Act of Scarphelia<div style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgrh2OATE6iZsL64PT9SUo58jtNasaO3ZBR7LOy93MC_Un5feByQ9hhBmWoC4V8OJfdnkXYuKv1a4X_heRL2gkgOKZwpQSI-cWBUSZ2SxfP9Udvr1vrw5dD54RpcB3fUQ2-SRvwz2ZTp6F/s1600/15235819_10154020210981889_3901092331908969320_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgrh2OATE6iZsL64PT9SUo58jtNasaO3ZBR7LOy93MC_Un5feByQ9hhBmWoC4V8OJfdnkXYuKv1a4X_heRL2gkgOKZwpQSI-cWBUSZ2SxfP9Udvr1vrw5dD54RpcB3fUQ2-SRvwz2ZTp6F/s1600/15235819_10154020210981889_3901092331908969320_o.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: medium;">Boy oh boy, have I had to think long and hard about how to start this.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">In fact, it’s taken me <b><i>months </i></b>from the moment I began typing this sentence to get to this point now - which if doesn’t say more about how much things have changed, I don’t know what does.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Perhaps a good place to start was when I woke up to that email informing me my blog domain was due to expire after it's 3-year lease, and the question: did I want to renew? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Or when I found an old film reel in my room, and on it, found photos from that day in summer I hadn't known would be the last time in this city that I’d ever feel alone.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Or most recently, when the man in the bar, who’d been staring at me in confusion for some moments finally approached - and I silently prayed he wasn't from one of those tinder messages I'd been ignoring all month - and he put his hand on my arm and he said my name, but not my name. Because he asked me if I was Scarphelia, and it had been so long since I'd been asked that and it was so deeply unexpected, I wasn't sure I knew how to answer him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Even now, when I experience things like this, the fresh memories instantly frame and polish themselves into a solid self-serving Moment, before carting themselves off to that little treasure chest in my mind labelled 'Content'. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Here lies countless little nuggets of profundity stored in my mental banks as a good opener for a piece I’ll never write, material for a post I’ll never birth into existence. Bragging rights for a status I’ll now never update. Maybe it's the storyteller in me, or perhaps it's the more sinister glutton for attention, but I still know when a moment becomes a Moment - and the value it has once it fossilises into a Story. And over the years I've become very good at testing the weight of these gemstones as they fall between my fingers, always knowing precisely the one to trade in at the right time for the highest reward.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> All those years, and I never thought to ask myself why I ever needed to feel rich in the first place.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Today as I write this, I can’t quite process how different my life is compared to just a few months ago. I think it goes without saying for the most of us, last year was truly awful. From the state of the world, to the death and loss wherever we look, to just our daily lives and most personal situations - 2016 seems to have simply fucking sucked. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">For me, I thought it was the curse of being 23, or maybe the inevitable shitty first year out of the education, but truthfully I don’t think I ever really fully recovered after NYC. There, I glimpsed the greatest potential of everything I’d always dreamed of just peeking over the horizon, the golden light of opportunity just gracing my fingertips. </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I remember standing on the roof of our apartment block one evening, gazing out over the city in the sordid heat of sundown, watching in awe as an electrical storm sent silent forks of lightening rippling across the sky, buckling and splintering beneath the relentless heat. <i><b>That’s how I feel right now</b></i>, I remember thinking, a thunderstorm brewing beneath my silent skin. </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I’d began this blog as a bored young lonely dreamer in grey suburban Britain, with ambition so fierce and passion so broad that I was convinced I had a destiny greater than the path I’d ended up on. The contrails of the teenage daydream had infused with the heavy weight of perceived spiritual neglect, to create a peculiar kind of arrogant rebellion not entirely dissimilar to a deity complex.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">A fire in my belly drawn from the very last reserves of my determination that said; fuck you, I don’t need to wait for your permission anymore. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">This blog came from the very final Now or Never. My plan was to write and write, exploring the very depths of my soul whilst deliberately altering my way of navigating through life to encourage the maximum ridiculousness and opportunity imaginable. And I would chart it all in a captain’s log, like a great pioneer of destiny manipulation. But it was not an aimless experiment - I had a goal, a hypothesis of sorts. I truly believed that by doing this, I could wrangle my path back into the realms of what I’d dreamed of for so long as a child. If I persisted in my magic-making, I would and could eventually alter the course of my life for good, and become the Somebody I always dreamed I would one day be. Not a famous Somebody, not a rich Somebody but a Somebody of substance. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">A Somebody with a wild and magnificent story as to how they came to earn that capital S. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">When I look back now, I’m eternally grateful for my naivety and lack of cynicism, because if not for that, then three years down the line, I’d have never reached the point where I suddenly realised my made-up magic had actually begun to work. It took three years of that radar sweeping across empty silence before I heard the first blip in my headphones. I pressed that receiver to my ear as I silenced the control room, eyes darting back and forth across the monitor waiting for it to come again, proof it was more than just an anomaly. And sure enough it came again, stronger now, that little neon dot glowing from the screen, inching ever closer. I was 22 and living in New York City with my best friend, paying our bills with our art and handwritten works scrawled on the floor of our sweaty apartment in Brooklyn, and it hit me like a sledgehammer. <i><b>Something is coming</b></i>, I whispered, tracing my finger over the fictional screen. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">And I knew I was about to become. The part of me that had been longingly unfulfilled for so long was about to eclipse, and I would reach a state of being where I’d no longer feel so lost and confused as to what I was trying to do, and I’d also feel free of need to try and fill that gaping emptiness with words frothed and spewed out into cyberspace which begged and pleaded; <i><b>‘Just tell me that I’m not to the only one?’ </b></i></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But just as it was beginning, it all slipped out of my grasp and I tumbled all the way back to square one, back to the UK. The visa I always knew was going to expire did, and I was dragged back home. Back to being bored and dreaming of a better life, but now not quite as young, and not quite as optimistic. It was then that I began to doubt if that moment I’d staked my life on was ever really real to begin with. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">What did I expect, to wake up one day having ‘levelled up’, with the blueprints of my future dropped into my lap? That I’d shimmer and shake like Sims do on their birthday and explode into a fully-functioning adult before people’s very eyes? I’d always thought I was going somewhere, but waking up back in my old childhood room in my hometown, jobless, friendless and alone, I began to wonder if this had been just a naive fever dream all along. I’d always said I was silver, and silver I had certainly felt, but at that moment I was the dullest grey I’d ever been.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">And then silence. Months and months of silence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">I guess to most it may have seemed like I’ve given up. That I just quit. That I’d got so close, but at that critical moment I’d lost and returned home wounded and raw, retreating into obscurity under the shame of my failure, at least being able to say ‘I tried’. And it’s not to say that that didn’t happen - but that’s not why I fell silent.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">The silence came because right in that moment of peak despair, I was in fact closer than I ever could’ve known to the thing I’d lost faith in believing was real.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">In July, I <a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/2016/07/why-were-too-scared-to-admit-when-were.html" target="_blank">wrote</a>:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b>‘This is where I've been for the last year of my life, a character left hanging in an empty storyboard whilst silence falls in the writers room, and no-one can really work out what happens next… this is the hardest lesson I've ever had to learn - that sometimes progress grinds to a halt, and the universe suddenly stops seeming like it's got your back.’</b></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">At the moment I wrote that, I had no idea I was less than two months away from a phone call that would change EVERYTHING. I didn’t stop writing because I gave up the search, reader. I stopped writing because, right when I least expected it, I actually found what I was looking for.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">What I hadn’t expected was for the change to be both all at once, and all the time. It was not a singular explosion of change. What I had felt creeping up was the first few notes of a symphony that’s only still beginning. And I knew it was real because, for the first time in my life… words escaped me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">I reached my fingers into the mist, and found the dewdrops clung to my skin so naturally. There was no need to snatch anymore. These were formless, viscous words, the vague shapes of understanding that ebb so purely from a moment, but never need to be written or said. Sentiments so magical and fluid that they are in fact far more valuable in vapour than in solid, mechanical descriptions you can harvest out of something beautiful to prove it’s so.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">In the darkness of my own profound restlessness, I finally found answers. All the time I’d spent looking for enlightenment, all the time I’d spent looking for true happiness, all the endless years and blog posts and diary entires I’d spent looking for myself, and… I actually found her. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">She stepped from the shadows, fully formed and serene, glowing fiercer than the dim sweep of my flashlight beam, and whispered in my ear the truths that I’d spent my entire life trying to work out. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">For 3 years of blogging, and 20-odd before that, I’d existed one metaphysical state of being.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">But toward end of 2016, all of the magic I’d worked so hard to pump into the world, suddenly turned back on itself and surged straight back into me, knocking me off my goddamn feet. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>*</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The problem is, the truth isn’t always pretty. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">With such astounding clarity, I suddenly saw what was right, and what was so wrong. Wrongness that I myself had perpetuated heavily before. And so alongside relief and a glimpse of true happiness… I found anger. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I felt myself having slipped from the matrix, glancing around with newly opened eyes to how fucked up some of the shit is that we do, and what I’ve done too. I think trying to find a way to discuss what has made me so angry has been one of the main reasons I have stayed silent. Because I’ve not been able to find a way to do it constructively, and I still don’t know how. But for months this anger has been stewing in me, and if I don’t release it once and for all, I'll never let it go and it will slowly poison me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The modern concept of what we broadly refer to as ‘blogging’ is deeply sinister.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The majority of ‘top bloggers’ are either: <br /><br />a) Deviously smart and conniving, ruthless businesspeople to the core<br /><br />b) The more sincere folk, continually concerned by the compromise of their own morals by having to essentially deceive to succeed<br /><br />c) So deluded from dwelling beneath their own proverbial bell jar for so long, that they are actually oblivious to both of the above.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;"> I know that this is going to likely piss off any blogger reading this, as they refuse to believe they fall under any of those three, but if this is the last chance I have to tell the truth, then like hell I'm not going to tell it like it is. And I know this, because at some point or another, I have been all three. The doozy is, all three will fuck you up. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;"> However, I do not believe this is the fault of the creator - this now is just what is required of you if you wish to survive and prosper in this industry. This toxic environment has grown like a tumour within what was once a powerful, almost anarchist community, who rejected conventional forms of marketing and instead chose to instil their faith in human beings over billboards. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">And we are goddamn fooling ourselves if we think that is still what blogging is. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But I don’t blame you, the transition was so smooth and so seamless, none of us realised it at the time. We were still so young and naive, still shocked and surprised at the success of ourselves and our peers, that any interest from traditional media seemed like nothing but a good thing, right?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But what do you do when you’re a huge corporation that spends potentially tens of millions of pounds on marketing budgets a year, only to find the success of your campaigns is being continually dented by the rise of a new kind of consumer, one who is impervious to traditional marketing, and instead follows the guidance of someone dedicated to helping them cut through the shit? </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Of course they panicked at first, but with something as young, messy and un-structured as what blogging was, there was a goldmine of an opportunity. They bought the bloggers’ loyalty. They offered them to the same endorsement deals they would to top celebrities. I actually remember the first time I saw one of my favourite bloggers announce she’d become the brand ambassador for a haircare line. It was unheard of, and I was ecstatic for her, as was she. Look, huge brands are actually recognising the power of the people! Old media are finally waking up and accepting this new media landscape!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But this is not at all what they were doing. This is what they wanted you to think they were doing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">In fact, they had discovered an ingenious way to make sure their age-old formula for marketing would still prosper in the digital age. They did what big corporations have done for decades. They capitalised on the grassroots DIY phenomenon under the guise of supporting it, to make sure they regained the monopoly of control over the straying consumer. Bloggers starting to become brand ambassadors was the first red flag we all missed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">And again, I know all this, because I motherfucking did it. I was a brand ambassador for H&M in 2013, and not only were we not allowed to breathe a word against it, we were only allowed to wear their clothes in a designated number of photos, given printed spreadsheets of precisely what we were allowed to wear and given vouchers to ensure we got them. But we were paid, sent off to photoshoots in cool East London locations and treated like we were supermodels! How cool! We were just kids, getting to live some ridiculous fantasy that we were famous. A fantasy so pure and easy to implement (because the bloggers had already done the work to get the audience, har har!), it sent marketing teams across the globe into a frenzy of activity. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">And yes I may sounded like some jaded, jealous reject of a movement I chose to forfeit, but don’t forget I was on the other side too. I sat there, social media intern of an online clothes retailer, while my boss scrolled through the photos of entrants of our latest ‘winner chosen at random!’ blogging competition, until she found someone pretty enough and with enough followers to deserve to win. But again, I’m guilty from another side of this too. I remember once emailing a company hosting a competition to win a holiday, saying they should make me win it, because I’d blog about it and get them more publicity if I did. And they bought it. They made me win. I cheated, and I got what I wanted. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">It’s these smart bloggers that know this, and use it to their advantage. They’re the ones who are saying ‘stay tuned for my new faves!’ to their adoring fanbase, then turning to brands and saying ‘right, let’s talk.’ I find myself almost in backward admiration for them - maybe their shamelessness is actually ingenious, fucking with the system by playing the game it invented, because they are the ones sitting on million pound fortunes and jetting off to the Maldives to cure writers block for their fourth cookbook. Whilst so easy to dislike, it’s hard not to respect these people if they’re honest and open about this, that they’re business people, marketers who use their social influence to make their livelihood. It’s not exploitative if your audience knows they’re in the game. It’s the sneaky motherfuckers who deliberately attempt to conceal this and purposefully deceive their audience that I’ve got a real motherfucking problem with. It’s borderline sociopathic the way I’ve seen some bloggers be outrageously shady behind the scenes, only to act like their success is completely organic to their audience. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">That’s why I scroll through the feeds of some of the people I use to truly idolise, and am now absolutely bamboozled by how I never before seemed to notice how sickeningly transparent it all is. How the misery creeps out from between every word in their carefully captioned instagram posts. Because how can you not get completely fucked up trying to keep up in a world like this? Not a day goes past where I don’t see a vlog of someone crying because their relationship has fallen apart, a v sincere-looking #powercouple announcing their divorce in a 20 min youtube video, or a long-winded insta caption ‘finally revealing the truth behind the filters’. Because when your personal brand is your personality, and you’ve not adequately prepared a buffer between your life and your job, this world will destroy you. </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">All this time I spent blogging, I gained what I thought was so much, by sacrificing more than I ever realised. I too, lost a very important long-term relationship and many, many friends, simply because of the psychological overhaul that happened to me when I started to broadcast my life online. The fucked up thing is I must’ve known this, because in 2014 <a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/2014/05/the-blogging-social-media-delusion.html" target="_blank">I wrote</a>; <i><b>‘What happens when you shut that computer screen and walk outside and realise that you actually have no-one?’</b></i> I was already in too deep. I’d lost everything because of my blog, but at the same time my blog was all I had left. It’s a vicious cycle I see so, so many people still surrendering themselves to today, without even knowing it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">You have to understand that choosing to do that will alienate you from everybody if you can’t draw a line. Because if you spend 98% of your time preaching to the world about how successful you are, people are inevitably going to delight when the see you fail. That’s the screwy schadenfreude nature of human beings. People don’t like successful people if they’re smug about it. And I just despair watching bloggers fill every possible social network with their relentless bragging and shameless egoism, people who make a living off of making other people envious, only to expect sympathy when it all falls apart. It doesn’t work like that. Constantly projecting the rhetoric that you are better than everybody else, even unconsciously, is going to leave you so desperately alone. And that truth is one I learned the hard way; The true price of selling your happiness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Because happiness is something so delicate and pure, that any manhandling is going to damage it in a way that'll have rippling effects across your whole psyche. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">It's a bit like a coral reef. </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Left undisturbed and unobserved it'll thrive without anyone even knowing about it. The biological exchange is seamless and sustainable, a self-sufficient eco-system with inputs and outputs that operate in harmony. The thing is, when something is beautiful and pure, people want to look at it. And it’s when we believe people want to look, that we may suddenly find ourselves with the want to show it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">And so we open up ourselves, our private lives and our happiness to tourists. People are so fascinated by other people's lives that they come flocking, with their snorkels and their diesel boats, crowding to get a look at this pure thing which is so glistening and so magical and so ethereal. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">But every tourist leaves a trace. The atmosphere changes in their presence over time, and slowly everything begins to lose purity. We open up sections that we previously cordoned off so as to keep them entertained. We push the boundaries on what is comfortable and what is moral because we need to give them something to keep coming back for. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">After a while, the eco-system becomes so imbalanced that the reef can only survive with the tourists present. What was once a subtle poison is now the only thing sustaining it - for them to leave would be a death sentence. It’s already too late to go cold turkey. So we bring more and more of them in to try and help it flourish again, but one day it just cracks under the strain. It's bleached, stripped bare from over exposure and too far removed from what it was before to ever be able to go back. The tourism has been too heavy, too fast and too constant that the nutrients which existed for thousands of years before the tourists arrived are now lost forever, the water too polluted to support life anymore. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">The tourists slowly leave - after all they didn't come to see a sad dead skeleton of something that used to be beautiful. They move on to a jungle, a desert, something or someone else equally as spectacular yet not as sad and ruined, because there will always be somewhere else as exciting, and someone else who can entertain them.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">And while people who can draw a line are perhaps far better at managing the tourists, I came <b><i>so</i></b> fucking close to letting my insatiable need to invite people to view my life destroy me. Sylvia Plath once likened depression to being beneath a bell jar - it doesn’t matter where you go or what you do, no external stimuli can reach you whilst you’re trapped in your own mind. Sensations come and go, feelings that could be powerful, lessons that could be so meaningful, experiences that could be so influential, but you can never truly connect to them as they just bounce off the glass, passing you by. That’s exactly what blogging does to you. We become so ensnared in the trap our our own reinforced delusion, that the act of maintenance alone stops us ever really feeling anything. When it’s your job, your responsibility, and your livelihood to make interesting content out of your life, how in the hell can you justify finding time to just live?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>*</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">And so, this brings us to the inevitable. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">If you made it this far, I truly salute you. I’m bordering on 5,000 words here. But if this is my last ever post, then I guess this really all is now or never.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">As you can probably see, I'm still angry about a lot of stuff. I could vent forever in all that infuriates me about this world, but another thing I'm really working on trying to do is to articulately sieve out the important truths from my overwhelming rage, without derailing my own argument. But I don't think you should ever apologise for your anger. If you're angry, it means you care, and that there's something that needs to be done some motherfucking justice.<br /><br />So, in my epiphany I learnt about my anger, I learnt the truth about blogging, and I learnt about the price of happiness. But there was one greater truth I was about to find out. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">There’s a line in a song I used to listen to a lot when I first started coming to Brighton. The song is We Go Back by Danish synthpop band Chinah, and the line is; <i><b>‘It’s all about the breath you can’t control.’</b></i></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">It took me several listens before that line fully hit me, and I think I could honestly write another 5,000 words on it alone. I think its no coincidence it was when I first found those words that I began to drift further and further from blogging and social media. Because that’s just it, isn’t it? That’s the meaning of life - It’s all about the breath you can’t control.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Life is about laughing so hard that you’re bent double in silent fits. About the breathlessness of his lips against your neck, your fingers in her hair, their scent upon your skin. About the sea breeze so crisp and so sharp that it takes the breath from your lungs and brings a sparkle to your eyes. About that excitement that you can only express by squeezing your best friend’s arm and her squeezing you back. About live music that pulsates through your bloodstream as you sway in a throbbing mass of humanity moved to the divine by what you’re all experiencing, together. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Any way you look at it, it’s true. Life, or happiness at least, is quite simply about the breath you can’t control.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">It’s not about calculating your every precise move, plotting the trajectory of your life in exact targets and trying so desperately to control over every part of who you are, and what you look like to others.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">That is not living. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">We are wild, reckless beings, bought here and kept alive by mechanisms beyond our comprehension or control. We are juvenile, soft manifestations of consciousness born into a unfathomable world we can't understand, yet have been given minds so great and limitless that we were are able to dream that one day we can. We have the forms of animals and the souls of stardust, moving through space time as but a blip in the grander scheme of existence, yet each of us to have ever existed remains individually unique and irreplaceable. Why? If we were meant to know, we'd know. Trying to place some kind of anchor on this madness and protect ourselves from the futility of it is laughable. To find true happiness and satisfaction in this insane whirlwind of life, we have to be flexible and free enough to ride alongside the storm that's taking us anyway. </span><span style="font-size: medium;">Because that's what life is, and that's what you'll remember on your deathbed when your time to fly comes to an end; The breath you couldn't control.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>*</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I only ever started Scarphelia as a way to way to live a more meaningful, remarkable life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">I wanted to have a blog so I could chart the journey of trying to become extraordinary, and seek more than the path I’d just ended up on. I had ideas and dreams and goals and I was going to make them all come true, like seeking achievements I could display in the trophy cabinet that was this blog. The blog was never the thing. I only began to build the cabinet so I could fill shelves. But I forgot that somewhere along the way. And It was only after years of trying to make my cabinet the best and the prettiest, that I realised I’d completely forgotten I wasn’t actually a carpenter. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But that’s not to say that I failed. The 4 years of this journey have been unfathomably complex, a series of wild ups and downs all charted for perusal. Whilst I may not have exactly used this blog as a place to store the wonders you earn once you chase your dream, it instead became something far more fascinating.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">In December 2012, we were all sure the world was going to end, I’d just turned 20 and started my second year of University. It was then that I wrote my <a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/2012/12/the-pre-resoloution-explanation-act-1.html" target="_blank">first ever blog post</a>. In it, I wrote:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b>‘I guess 'Scarphelia' is the end of an era. It is the end of what I shall call 'The days of Silver Uncertainty.' It symbolises the past twenty years of knowing I want to do something important, to be somebody, but having no idea what to do, how to do it, or where I go next. But it is also the beginning. It is the very, very beginning of one hell of an adventure.’</b></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">And today, in February 2017, we’re still pretty sure the world is about to end (albeit for different reasons), I’m 24 and I live in a beautiful house with some artists in Brighton, just one street up from the beach. And it’s now the I write my last ever blog post. That hell of an adventure that was just beginning, has come to it’s end.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But it doesn’t have to be a sad thing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">‘Scarphelia’ now is the wonderfully flawed and fully-preserved account of how one girl came of age online, and how she found out who she was, from learning all that she wasn’t. I no longer have to be that messy juncture between Scarlet and Ophelia, alter egos to try and work out what the fuck I was about. Because I’ve learnt how to be Katie. And it’s time to fly the nest to bigger and better things. The alignment is complete.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The end of Scarphelia does not mean that I no longer have anything to say, I’ve just found new, more powerful ways to speak. For the first time ever, writing is taking a back seat in my life as I focus on <a href="https://sitdownyeah.bandcamp.com/" target="_blank">my music</a>, finding ways to channel my anger and passion into something that can really make a change. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/SitDownyeah/" target="_blank">Sit Down</a> rises from the ashes of Scarphelia. </span><span style="font-size: medium;">So I’m not really going anywhere - you’ll just have to look a little harder if you want to find me. </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">While I’m not saying I’ll never write on this site ever again, this is the end of Scarphelia as it has been. I cannot thank you enough, every single person who has been on this journey with me, and I feel honoured to have been able to help anyone who’s happened to read one of my posts. It’s you who has made me who I am today. You gave me the courage to drop out of uni, to follow my heart and get my life back on track. It was you who allowed me to find myself. I owe you so much, and I only hope I can continue to make you proud. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">It also seems only fitting that I end this journey with this title, as when I began, I used to chronicle my posts in acts and scenes like it was some great piece of performance art. Maybe it was back then. Maybe it is now.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But this is the final Act. The curtain call.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;"> It’s been real, huh?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">I thought I’d probably be in tears by this point, but I feel strangely at peace. This is the right thing to do, the right time to go before I overstay my welcome. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">This is the longest, most truthful post I’ve ever written on this blog, which has taken my longer to write than any other. But this is how I am, I was, and always want to be remembered. Angry and alive and determined to head out there to change the goddamn world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">So I guess this is goodbye for now. Life is very exciting at the moment, and about to get even more so. But I've learnt to talk about it less, and live it more. I'm happy, dear reader. I'm so, so happy. And it just took me 4 years to work out how to do that. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">All my love and gratitude in the universe, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">For the very final time,</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Katie Oldham, aka Scarlet-Ophelia, aka Scarphelia.</span></div>
scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-86414356046963960872016-08-16T11:03:00.001-07:002019-08-31T04:29:13.868-07:00Homecoming <div class="p1">
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<span style="font-size: medium;">There’s a sweet little irony in only realising where you were going wrong in something, once you come to the end. A kind of long-awaited clarity where, with a deep 'Ohhh', the reason for all that was senseless suddenly makes complete sense. A certain kind of epiphany, I like to think, you only achieve when it's <i>time</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><br />I've spent months waiting for that bittersweet moment, often doubting it's existence. But recently I've started to feel different. I can sense this cosmic shift, and I think I've finally realised what's been missing all along. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">It was not what I previously thought; a lack of good people, purpose, or somewhere to direct my passion that left me empty. Perhaps they were a part of it, but there was something bigger that encompassed it all. At the root of it all, it came down to something so simple and so obvious, I realised it a million times without ever really noticing what it meant. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Home.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">As humans, we seek home in any manner of scales - in alternate planets and solar systems in our universe, in countries inside continents, cities inside countries, in people and streets and lovers within the cities that we live. Home is something we’ll never cease continuing to need and seek. And while social media has come to encourage us to celebrate and revere those who <i>cast off the shackles of conventional living</i> and <i>surrender themselves to the nomadic life of the dreamer</i>, we’re all seeking something. Even in the smallest of ways, we’re always trying to find a home in what we do, the people we meet, and the person we think we might be. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">And in this I have realised something far greater about the past year of my life, a year of feeling more lost than perhaps ever before. Each new flaw that I have discovered upon running my fingers across the indented surface of myself could be traced to the one fact that for a year now, I have had no home. Both metaphorically and physically. (Although, without my own place to live, I am very grateful that I’ve had a roof above my head and a bed to sleep in.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">For a year, home has extended no further than a day’s clothes crammed into bags and bustled onto trains. Home has pushing the limits on sofa-surfing or returning to the single bed in the museum of my formative years, gazing into the mirror of my teenage self and trying to tell her that, somehow, it's fine, right? Home has been all of the pieces of myself packed in boxes and stacked in the gloom, gathering dust in the darkness like my steadily decaying hopes that I can get out of this rut. Home has been straddling a line between unconsciousness and alert, not quite awake, but never fully asleep.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">And with an almighty crash I can suddenly see the truth of it all. How, in the months I’ve spent half-heartedly just looking for a new place, I never fully understood that incredibly powerful connection between this subtle undoing of myself, and the lack of a space of my own with which to express myself, care for myself, and get to know myself again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Until now, when out of the blue it has suddenly become clear as day to me. Dare I believe it’s because the end is night, the next chapter of my life lurking just a few emails and phone calls away? I don’t know if that’s true, but I can feel a change happening anyway. The long since hardened parts of me are beginning to rumble and shatter, something forgotten still molten and fluid deep beneath the surface. I’m waking up. And I feel perched upon the horizon of something transformative. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Like an aching, ageing star’s slow succumb to implosion, this year has withered and strained me to the very thinnest stretches of who I think I am and what I believe I can do. But I’ve reached critical mass, and while the end of this era has felt like something slowly approaching for some time now, I can’t help but feel I’m now dancing in those final few seconds before supernova. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Because when the stars finally align and I find my home once more, I can be born again. Both metaphorically and literally, I can start over, carefully choosing the pieces of my past I wish to bring with me into the next chapter of my life, a chapter which has been so agonisingly on delayed since I landed back from New York City, and so deeply changed from my experience there. I have been aching to rise again from the moment I fell, which has been a light through the depression which has consumed my 23rd year that I’ve clung onto, if only at times like a little finger wrapped around thread. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">I’m ready to put myself back together. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;">And as I gaze in awe at my metamorphosing core, sensing my homecoming in a future so tantalisingly near, I wonder if perhaps that’s what fate had been waiting for me to say all along. </span></div>
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-12850619325816314032016-07-14T05:20:00.000-07:002016-07-14T05:20:09.363-07:00Why We're Too Scared to Admit When We're Vulnerable<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">"We like recovery stories to move quickly through the dark s</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">o we can get to the sweeping redemptive ending."</span></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><br />- Brené Brown, <i><a href="http://amzn.to/29Ffpoz" target="_blank">Rising Strong</a></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A curious quirk about the nature of blogging, I've come to realise, is that the story never ends. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">As writers, social mediacs, online diary keepers, one day we begin to write our story and we never stop. We start from what we perceive to be the beginning, or perhaps languish in regaling the tales of our childhoods and our former selves which all contributed in some way to make up who we are now, the person behind the fingertips above the keyboard. And while some may quit, give up or just forget they ever started telling it, that story doesn't end until we do. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And soon enough, the story we tell catches up to real time. The chapters become naturally less frequent as we try and formulate our fresh life happenings into meaningful sentiments worth sharing, with an increasingly snappy turnaround. The pressure mounts when we struggle to find things worthy enough to add to our ongoing narratives, and we risk falling foul of believing our lives have gone to shit. That we used to do wonderful things, and now our lives are dull and purposeless because we can't extract the gold like we used to, and we're not constantly living this highlights reel our previous chapters suggest we used to be.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But there's a reason 'truth' and 'story' are not synonymous. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">While we can both tell the truth and tell the story, the results may perhaps differ wildly. But, that's not to say they're antonyms either. For the truth is <i>objective</i>, the real things that happen to us and that we are a part of. But the story is <i>subjective</i>, how we perceive, react and adapt to the real things that happen to us, and how we think and grow in response to them. And personally, I know which one has more value to me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Our stories become our most prized possessions, and other people's stories have the power to make us, break us down, and build us up again. Storytelling is the currency of the soul. But to have meaning, each story has to have a conclusion. We need that ending to fully understand the moral or a message which is revealed at the end. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But with the never-ending chronicle that we create of our lives, this is something we do not get. When the story is never over, we're constantly seeking that understanding, chasing the sweet irony of 'The End' so that we can have that retrospective epiphany we won't even be able to appreciate because it'll all be over. We can only seek to understand the smaller stories within our lives, figuring out the point of each passing day, month and era as we age. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But what happens when your current chapter, the era of your life you are living at this second is like staring into impenetrable mist? When you cannot extract the story, let alone the meaning of your life, because your truth is far to bleak to feel like it even means anything?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This is the point where closure seems further away than ever. When the idea that this blankness and pointlessness is a formative experience that will later be a part of a greater story, seems laughable. When you exist in a paradox of feeling caught in a Groundhog Day loop of doing the same dumb shit day in, day out like time has frozen, whilst being painfully aware that time is slipping away from you faster than ever, wasted to mundanity and apathy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This is the place we fear more than anywhere. This is story we don't want to hear. This weakness, doubt and vulnerability is not good for our egos, and is best served delicately brushed upon just enough in stories to add weight to the grand conclusion, but never lingered upon uncomfortably so that it accurately represents how shit that truth actually was.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><i>"We like recovery stories to move quickly through the dark so we can get to the sweeping redemptive ending."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And the reason I know all this, is because this is exactly where I am now. And this is where I've been for the last year of my life, a character left hanging in an empty storyboard whilst silence falls in the writers room, and no-one can really work out what happens next. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I don't like thinking about it, I don't like talking about it and I really don't like writing about it, because vulnerability is something as hard to admit to ourselves, as it is uncomfortable and awkward to hear someone at the pub suddenly spew out embarrassingly after a few drinks when asked what they've been up to lately.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm reminded of another quote in <i><a href="http://amzn.to/29Ffpoz" target="_blank">Rising Strong</a></i>, Brené Brown's fascinating book which has bought me a long way into understanding what's happening recently;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><i>"Falling down, screwing up and facing hurt often lead to bouts of second-guessing our judgement, our self-trust, and even our worthiness. <b>I am enough</b> can slowly turn into <b>Am I really enough?</b>"</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And while it's perhaps this lack of a 'great fall' that's derailed me as to understanding what's gone wrong, I empathise deeply with the change in mindset. I have gone from advice-giver to so desperately seeking advice, rendering me a massive hypocrite for all I've tried to achieve by telling my story. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">All in all, this is the hardest lesson I've ever had to learn - that sometimes progress grinds to a halt, and the universe suddenly stops seeming like it's got your back, and you look up at this vast great wheezing machine that's suddenly broken and you realise you have no fucking clue how to begin fixing it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's a truth we never hear because it doesn't make a good story. It's not exciting, or engaging, profound or formative. It's scary and unpredictable because we never knew this could happen. Because when we don't hear the stories, how can we know what to expect? That it's human? How to fix it?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Deep down I suppose I have to believe there's a certain courage in vulnerability. A humility in admitting catastrophic imperfection, without admitting defeat. That there <i>can</i> be an elegant, thoughtful way to shine a light on the more inelegant, undesirable parts of life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And I think that's all I need to say right now. How apt that I can't think of a conclusion to end <i>this</i> story, huh?</span></div>
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-91832179304546144392016-07-11T08:15:00.000-07:002016-07-14T05:38:54.238-07:00Book Review: Ctrl, Alt; Delete - Emma Gannon <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">'I learned that you cannot speak on other people's behalf, but you can share your own truth and listen to other people's. Because there are a lot of young women who need to be listened to.'</span></i></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">- Emma Gannon, <a href="http://amzn.to/29ygp8B" target="_blank">Ctrl, Alt; Delete</a></span></i></b> </div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's a mild Thursday afternoon. I'm sat alone in a rattling train carriage speeding through a countryside smudged with streaks of amber and olive, and in a passionate flourish I suddenly snap the book shut on the table before me. <i>How</i>, my mind asks, more statement than question. <i>How can she possibly know that?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">For beneath the picture of the woman grinning conspiratorially with her finger over her mouth, are all of my secrets. My teenage diary. Every thought I've never whispered, every sentiment I could never find the words for. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I picture in that moment a butterfly effect of young women across the world having that very same reaction, momentarily stunned to read their own stories with different names and hear their deepest most isolated secrets confessed by somebody else. I pick up the book again, unable to tear myself away for long, and continue to read our parallel narratives. For in a world in which we all seem so divided by differences, there's one thing Emma's book makes clear to me; We are all more alike than we think. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And we are stronger, always, together.</span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;">From the earliest memories of discovering chatrooms and MSN as a preteen, right through to becoming a professional internet-er of her own cyber empire, Emma's stories are as hilariously embarrassing as our own cringiest memories, yet as heartwarming and innocent as we remember ourselves once. But don't be fooled, this book is not just a collection of (albeit very witty) anecdotes. There's something much deeper that lies beneath every word she writes and every tale she chooses to relay, which becomes more apparent in the latter half of the book. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Where Amanda Palmer's '<a href="http://amzn.to/29rwhxm" target="_blank">Art of Asking</a>' first whispered the idea that I could start a fire, Emma Gannon has put a matchbox, kindling and a can of gasoline before me, and whispered, <br /><i><b>'I dare you.'</b></i></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: large;">Through the simple radical act of just <i>telling her truth</i> she's inadvertently done two seemingly contradictory things. One hand, her prose reads so familiar and speaks so uniquely to the reader they'll feel completely singled out, exclaiming 'Me too!' after every other sentence as if they were kind friends reminiscing over a bottle of wine. Yet she has also united all these souls under one shelter, and bought them home, naming the flaws we've all had without any hint of patronisation, accusation or shame. She is voice kinder to our former selves than perhaps we ever could have been. This book is much of a sigh of relief to the 23-year old me, as <i>Girls in Tears</i> or <i>Angus Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging</i> was when I was 13.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: large;">After watching Emma's journey on <a href="http://girllostinthecity.com/" target="_blank">her blog</a> through the past few years, I somewhat expected there to be a tone of, perhaps, 'finality' about this book. As though this was the amalgamation of the past 7 years of hard work, and <a href="http://amzn.to/29ygp8B" target="_blank"><b>Ctrl Alt Delete</b></a> was testament to it, born from the end of a long journey. But in fact, it doesn't take more than a few pages to realise that this is all really just beginning for Emma. This book is no graduation. It's her formation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's at this I'm reminded of a quote from Aubrey Plaza, upon the release of Guardians of the Galaxy and the sudden rise to superstardom of her former co-star and on-screen husband:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-large;"><i>'I just want him all to myself, and now I feel like the whole world is let in on the secret brilliance of Chris Pratt' </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">While I feel like a proud parent, with that secret little smugness that I stumbled upon a great thing before the rest of the world, I could not be more proud to see just how exciting the future is about to become for Emma Gannon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Quite simply, I'm left with a sweeping gratitude that future generations will grow up in a world <b><a href="http://amzn.to/29ygp8B" target="_blank">Ctrl Alt Delete</a> </b>exists, and I feel blessed with the honour of knowing the insightful, passionate and inspirational woman behind it.</span></div>
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-63114450287627841162016-07-03T10:05:00.003-07:002016-07-12T03:00:16.836-07:00I O U<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg75JSJHfYgigBZdZhu9U8vWN4KzM3xDVF_09DZ9oaR79Rt7LtwWtVlp5Xq3XJE1CibpOk_2-409lHRZS7F4D0qX-PB5FtJ1Kj_EkoS3M716-TOzW9Pnd6fsCsQDa7PFVfJmvSvaXrHkNiJ/s1600/bb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg75JSJHfYgigBZdZhu9U8vWN4KzM3xDVF_09DZ9oaR79Rt7LtwWtVlp5Xq3XJE1CibpOk_2-409lHRZS7F4D0qX-PB5FtJ1Kj_EkoS3M716-TOzW9Pnd6fsCsQDa7PFVfJmvSvaXrHkNiJ/s1600/bb.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">When I was a child, I always remember having a similar kind of nightmare.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was a witch, a superhero, perhaps even a mutant - someone passionate with something important to stand for, and a powerful way of fighting for it. And mid-epic battle to save the earth, my magic would just... fail. I'd stumble and stare in horror down at my hands, unable to believe what I daren't believe could be true. My identity, my purpose, my ability and my passion had been suddenly and inexplicably stripped from me with the loss, and as I glanced up, wild-eyed in the face of looming responsibility, I knew I could no longer do it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I could no longer fight, and I could no longer win.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'd lost my powers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">How strange the prophetic qualities our young dreams can have.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">*</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'll admit something to you right now; I don't like writing this. I don't want to do it and I'm throwing a bit of a tantrum about it. But I have a responsibility to. I <i>need</i> to write this, not for you, but for myself.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I don't want to just repeat what's in my <a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/2016/06/where-ive-been.html" target="_blank">previous post</a>, but bottom line: My life sucks right now. But during this period of wild and uncertain dissatisfaction, in which I am quite simply wallowing in misery and boredom, I've had an unfortunate amount of time to think. And I've been thinking about this idea of responsibility, that <i>thing</i> you owe to your audience once you declare yourself a creator. And the mental debilitation that comes when you realise, for whatever reason, you can no longer provide it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I think this kind of 'creative responsibility stress' comes under a lot of names and derivatives: imposter syndrome, pressure to perform, doing it for the vine, pic or it didn't happen etc etc. When the boundaries between motive and motivation get blurred, the magnetic poles of creation get flipped and suddenly you're creating because you're supposed to, because you owe it, because you said you would, and then suddenly you become incapacitated with with this looming expectation of what you're supposed to deliver that you fucking can't because you're a big fat fraud and for some reason you're completely broken and are just fumbling with the odd-shaped pieces in the dark trying desperately to smash them back together before too much damage is done, whilst hoping that no-one will notice that, at the end of the day, you've let them down.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Christ. *takes deep shaky breath* I'm a bit of a mess at the moment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'd be ungrateful as hell to suggest that having a responsibility is just a burden. It's a gift too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Doing it for the story to tell pushes me to go out there and get the life I dream of, and inspires me to cast off my own misery and invent my way out of the mundane. To be resourceful and innovative in the hopes of being an inspiration. There's no doubt that some of the more amazing moments of my life have happened because I found a surge of confidence and bravery to pursue them from the kind support of people that would take an interest in what I had to say, and the 'chapter in my autobiography' I could share with them afterward. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But if I don't have the right frame of mind, which so often recently I do not, then the responsibility to be that character I so brazenly declared that I am, sinks me into a vortex of guilt. When my life *isn't* great and I don't want to talk about it or shout it from the rooftops, when I just want to put my head down and try and navigate my way out slowly and quietly, I can't. Because I can't sink into melancholy obscurity while I try and fix my life without feeling overwhelming guilt that I owe it to you all to be better than that. I should be able to fix this. Why can't I fix this?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">If I were to psychoanalyse this for anyone else, one looming thing would jump right out at me. Sir, right here you've got a textbook case of delusions of grandeur. What on earth gives you the impression you have something important enough to owe?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Because truthfully, I know no-one really gives a shit. No-one is waiting in baited breath for my next blog post or is mad because I'm not <i>giving the people what they want. </i>I know this... so why does the guilt that I've gone AWOL still hang around my neck like a lead cloak?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Because maybe it's not to you that I am in debt. Perhaps, in fact, I owe to myself. Perhaps the idea of cheating you, is just a smoke screen for the fact that I'm cheating me. That I should be, need to be and deserve to be doing a better job of being me, and I'm not.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Because I'm not a superhero who's lost her powers in the middle of saving the world. The world is not waiting for me to deliver on my promises. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But I am. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm the one waiting with baited breath for the day that I can be a woman of my word, and provide for myself the future, the happiness and the success that I owe to a girl who has the capabilities to achieve all three.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So that's my deal at the moment. I'm a bit of a mess and I don't really know what's going on, or how I'm going to fix this. I guess, as always, I just have to keep listening, keep thinking and keep writing about it in the hopes that soon I'll reach a day where I realise it's all a lot easier than I realised.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Jesus christ I'm truly exhausted of myself.</span></div>
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-69582183752757325812016-06-20T11:03:00.000-07:002016-06-20T11:05:04.680-07:0012 Powerful Quotes from 'The Art of Asking' <div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3mODPYFsG1HGR0K9_nqEnYqo0aWGGdKFMCMEJwbXzA2iBS5mCLoMZ-Ksag9VZKWmauV3kYnRxqxEgur2SMEPbHjqzlwNVmJx4XQ0L9URI0MxWbez__n2otxmin_cqMei_FVYnafnzOCaa/s1600/13467354_10153606349131889_576015788_o.jpg"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3mODPYFsG1HGR0K9_nqEnYqo0aWGGdKFMCMEJwbXzA2iBS5mCLoMZ-Ksag9VZKWmauV3kYnRxqxEgur2SMEPbHjqzlwNVmJx4XQ0L9URI0MxWbez__n2otxmin_cqMei_FVYnafnzOCaa/s1600/13467354_10153606349131889_576015788_o.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Okay, I really need to tell you about <a href="http://amzn.to/28Jccxq" target="_blank">The Art of Asking</a>, because I'm pretty sure it's changed my life forever. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I picked this up about a year ago after being recommended, and totally adoring, Amanda Palmer's <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking?language=en" target="_blank">TED Talk</a> of the same name. In 14 minutes, she offered a beautiful and powerfully thought-provoking range of stories, thoughts and ideas of how artists and creators can navigate successfully in the digital age, and I was hooked, buying the book instantly. But only now have I managed to work through my mammoth reading list to get to it, and it feels like absolute serendipity at how well timed it seemed to be. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In short, this book has blown my mind. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I almost feel like Future Me sent it back in time for me to read at this EXACT moment in time, whilst I'm feeling creatively frustrated and unsure of how to move forward. Overall what I've taken away from <a href="http://amzn.to/28Jccxq" target="_blank">The Art of Asking</a> is a sense of <i>permission</i>. I <i>can</i> do it. And I can do it <i>myself</i>. I was struck dumb by the similarities in the way she spoke about her relationship with her fans, and the connection I feel with my readers. So much so that I went through with a pen and hastily underlined long, sprawling passages, annotating the margin with a frantic 'THAT IS LITERALLY ME'.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">About halfway through I was struck with inspiration and came up with an idea for a writing project which has consumed my every waking moment since. It's ludicrously exciting, and I have set the deadline for my birthday - October 7th 2016. But I'm not going to do what I always do, and rush into announcing it. I'm going to sit on it, gently watering it like my proverbial bamboo, and wait patiently whilst working diligently for it to slowly come together. Just... watch this space *excited squeal* dear Lord, just watch this space.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> There's so much more than I can even begin to put down in a blog post about how this book inspired me, but here are some of my favourite quotes:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>On pretty much my exact life situation right now:</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"I was twenty-two, I'd just graduated from college, and I really, really didn't want to get a job. Don't get me wrong: I wasn't lazy. I wanted to <u>work</u>. But I had no desire to get a JOB job."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"The truth sounded too stupid. I wanted to be a Rock Star. Not a pop star. A ROCK STAR. An artistic one, a cool one. Like Prince. Like Janis Joplin. Like Patti Smith. Like the dudes in The Cure. The ones who looked like they Lived Their Art."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>On the patience and diligence required to succeed as an artist:</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"One of my favourite yoga teachers once told me a story during class. Since ever in China, bamboo farmers have planted baby bamboo shoots deep in the ground. And then, for three years, nothing happens. But the farmers will work, diligently watering the shoot, spreading hay and manure, waiting patiently, even though nothing is sprouting up. They simply have faith. And then, one day, the bamboo will shoot up and grow up to thirty feet in a month. It just blasts into the sky. Any small, sustainable, artist-fan community works like this."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><u><b><br /></b></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><u><b>On the relationship between fame and fortune as an artist:</b></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"All I needed was... some people. Enough people. Enough to make it worth coming back the next day, enough people to help me make rent and put food on the table. Enough so I could keep making art."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"The happiest artists I know are generally the ones who can manage to make a reasonable living from their art without having to worry too much about the next paycheck."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"The ideal sweet spot is the one in which the artist can freely share their talents and directly feel the reverberations of their artistic gifts to the community, and make a living doing that. As artists, and as humans:if you fear is scarcity, the solution isn't necessarily abundance."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>On fighting Imposter Syndrome: </u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"In both the art and the business world, the difference between the amateurs and the professionals is simple. The professionals know they're winging it. The amateurs pretend they're not."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>On how the internet has given power back to the people: </u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"I was learning, slowly, but surely, that The Media - the traditional one, at any rate - mattered less and less. The ability to connect directly, under our own umbrella, was making one thing very clear. We <u>were</u> the media."</i></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u><br /></u></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><u>On the universal link between all different types of artists:</u></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"The impulse to connect the dots - and to share what you've connected - is the urge that makes you an artist."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"All artists connect the dots differently. We all start off with all these live, fresh ingredients that are recognisable from the reality of our experiences (a heartbreak, a finger, a parent, an eyeball, a glass of wine) and we throw them into the Art Blender."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"All art, no matter what shape or size, has to come from somewhere."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And finally, my most favourite quote of the entire book:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>On why we wallow:</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"He never told me what to do. Instead, he told me stories. Here's one of my favourites:</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>A farmer is sitting on his porch in a chair, hanging out. A friend walks up to the porch to say hello, and hears an awful yelping, squealing sound coming from inside the house.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>'What's that terrifyin' sound?' asks the friend.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>'It's my dog,' said the farmer. 'He's sittin' on a nail.'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>'Why doesn't he just sit up and get off it?' asks the friend.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>The farmer deliberates on this and replies:</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>'Doesn't hurt enough yet.'</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>*</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This book has honestly changed my life, or, at least, my attitude toward it. And if you're anything like me, then I think there's a bloody good chance it just might change yours too.</span><br />
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-21050775386263273832016-06-11T15:31:00.000-07:002016-06-11T15:37:59.967-07:00Why 'Just Be Yourself' is the Worst Advice Ever<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Self-discovery is<i> </i>one of the most unique aspects of intelligent life. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Some dedicate their lives to it, some use it to fuel their art, some have even made a fortune telling their own story of it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's always baffled me that we are born with a dedicated thought-organ, able to decipher complex logical, mathematical, and critical issues, yet fundamentally unable to understand itself. That, thinking about your brain is almost a paradox. That, a system designed to home consciousness, knowledge, awareness and intelligence... doesn't know how or why. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Our brains seem unfathomably more complicated and mysterious than our minds - where our personalities live in a gated community, peeking nervously through the curtains when something doesn't feel right. In my more pensive, serious moods, I sometimes wonder if consciousness is just a passing soul inhabiting the shell of a dormant supermachine we wouldn't even begin to know how to use. A lowly hermit crab that's snuck inside the washed-up remains of a downed space satellite to obliviously make it's new home.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The plight of the human being seems to be to understand the world, alongside learning to understand ourselves. And over the decades we've become a lot more tolerant to the idea of seeking to explore our own interior complexities, as well as the outside world. Mindfulness is a hotter topic than ever, and we've come on in leaps and bounds with discussing mental health. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But there's still one glaring misstep in this path of self-discovery we're all working along. And the problem is, it's the very first step. Three little words of faux-advice that get bandied around constantly from patronising elders to ~inspirational~ insta quotes, which mean absolutely fuck all to a person if they've been compelled to ask the question 'where do I begin?' in the first place:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>'Just be yourself.'</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Now, I get what Oscar Wilde was getting at when he first said the famed <span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">'Be yourself; everyone else is already taken'.</span> My best guess is he meant that individuality and originality are incredibly valuable commodities, and trying to simply mimic somebody else's successes or characteristics will leave you as a crude imitation at best. If it's been done, it's <i>done</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Be innovative and dynamic, and use your eccentricities to your advantage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What I'm pretty sure he didn't mean, is that if you're lost, have no idea what you're doing or how to progress in life, then just carry on remaining lost and clueless and it will eventually pay off with great success and happiness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Because what good is 'just being yourself' when you don't even know who the fuck you are?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm 23 years old, and have struggled with identity more or less my whole thinking life. For the most part, because my interests completely contradict each other. I have two entirely different dress senses. I adore genres of music that fans of which have historically brawled over. I can sometimes wake up with an entirely new frame of mind than the one I went to bed with. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">My thoughts, my desires, my behaviour, my clothes and my aesthetic interests have never correlated, and I've spent a lot of my life envying those who are so clearly defined, who have their shit down across the board, who had the confidence from such a young age that they still use their email address from when they were 11.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But slowly over the years, it's gotten easier. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I now feel like I know what I'm about more than ever, or at least it's the closest I've ever been. And the truth is, it's only when you're satisfied with who you are and what you're about, that you get a little sparkling key. You find yourself bumped up to a new level, having passed the first and hardest challenge of being human, and now your mission on the path to self-discovery is to find out exactly what you're capable of doing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And I sure as hell didn't get there from being told to 'just be myself.' I only worked it out by default... from being everyone else. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">While a lot of me looks back at my former self with a bit of pity, I couldn't be more glad that I eventually learned this lesson, however uncomfortably I got there. For you see, at the lack of an identity, I absorbed those of the people I was around. I put my pursuit on hold, and I went undercover. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I became a chameleon. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In the past four years of my life I've been a fangirl, an amateur marine biologist, a senior captain and competitive cheerleader. I've been a borderline alcoholic, a slut, a prude and a poet. I fake tanned, had bleach blonde hair to my waist and shopped in Jack Wills with my Essex friends and chopped my hair to a blunt crop in ripped jeans and a band t-shirt. I've lived with countless strangers, lived with my parents, and lived on a boat in New York. I've worked as a barista, a painter decorator, a sports coach and a fucking rockstar singing live on BBC Introducing. I've pin curled my hair, drawn on fake beauty spots whilst watching monochrome movies and gone to jazz clubs, and I've sunk so many jagerbombs that I've slut-dropped to Avicii and then got in the bath naked with boys from the rugby team. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've said thought and done some things that I'm ashamed of now, but have had conversations and met people through them that have opened my eyes, educated me and switched me onto the world. And every single one of these mistakes and achievements, trials and errors have taught me a lesson, and helped nudge me closer and closer toward my truth. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was never 'myself', but only from that could I figured out what I'm not.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">When discovering your identity, sometimes you don't always know what 'being yourself' even is. So instead you have to begin with what you know for sure you're not. I don't like marmite. I will never wear neon colours. I don't think I'll ever understand death metal. Of course these things may change over time - in six months we're all hypocrites - but the process of elimination isn't a bad place to start your journey.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I think of it like collecting shells on the beach. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Every single one is different, even if only microscopically from it's neighbour. But if you were to pick every single shell one by one and look at it carefully, you could decide whether to put it in your basket or put it back down again. Most of them you'll no doubt carefully replace on the shore. Not to say it's not beautiful - it's just not you. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And by the end of the day you'll look back flabbergasted at the sheer magnitude of things that you aren't, but then you'll look down into your little basket, and sure enough, you'll see the handful of little things you are. </span></div>
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-23299016992012598812016-05-31T17:58:00.001-07:002016-06-01T06:43:08.410-07:00Ten Bloggers Sent to a Desert Island<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">You know, when I received the email in my inbox, before I even opened it, I actually took a screenshot ready to post some 'relatable lols' about how PR emails always look like they're inviting you somewhere, 'til you open it and it's just some let down infographic or another.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">That's why tugging my suitcase across the marble floor of Birmingham International two weeks later felt more than *a little* surreal. I never ever would have <i>dreamt</i> it could actually be real. And for perhaps the millionth time in my life, as I flashed a nervous grin and handed over my passport at the <a href="https://www.thomascookairlines.com/en/cheap-flights/canary-islands/lanzarote/index.jsp" target="_blank">Thomas Cook Airlines</a> check-in desk, I wondered what on earth I was actually doing there, and why in god's name out of every single person on the internet, I'd been chosen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">From there began one of truly the most bizarre experiences of my life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've thought long and hard about what I want to say in this post - how honest I can be, the points I really want to emphasise, the things I am most thankful for - and I've managed to mull my sentiments into one distilled thought. Overall this trip was perfect, because of it's disastrous and calamitous imperfections. The beauty found in those aquamarine vistas and sprawling desert landscapes were just as perfect as those stolen moments between the carefully-curated photos and bullet points of the itinerary, conversations and epiphanies far more real and remarkable than I ever could have anticipated, or could be deduced from just the #content under the hashtag.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I think I already knew I'd be way out of my depth. I usually am with anything remotely blog-related, but that ain't news to anyone. Except, this time, I made a conscious choice that I wasn't going to try and change that. Instead of spending a bunch of money buying stuff to wear or use just to feel less of a sore thumb, I was just going to embrace it. Lord knows what I'm even trying to achieve with this blog, but no matter what I do, honesty, clarity and transparency always comes first. So I thought for perhaps the first time in my life, I'd apply that to myself too. I'm a mess, can't dress cute for shit, and care way more about capturing the world through analogue over digital. So that's how I'd remain. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The thing is, as much as this description may seem like I'm this mysterious outsider who plays by nobody's rules but her own, it's never that at all. Perhaps my paranoia speaking here, but it's the faaaaar other end of the spectrum, the two-foot-taller-than-everyone-else-and-twice-as-built shadow lurking at the edge of a group, causing unamused mutters of 'what <i>is</i> she <i>doing</i>?'. But, hey, that's just me. And to pretend to be anything else would only make me more awkward. Although I must say, rocking up with a notebook and a 1970's film camera to a crowd toting seperate vlogging cameras from everyday DSLR's with a variety of interchangeable lenses, kinda shook even the most solid foundations of my confidence in what I'm about.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Boy they've made a mistake with me</i>, I sighed, hearing the others in front of me excitedly babble comparing tips and techniques, as we cruised above the delicate pearlescent blanket shrouding planet earth. Then I craned my head in the way I've always done as a kid, seeing if I can just about get the right angle enough to glimpse the first twinkling darkness of space, and with a smile I thought, <i>Wow, Katie. Who really fucking cares?</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I heard <a href="http://hannahgale.co.uk/" target="_blank">Hannah</a> in the seat in front of me joke to someone 'You know what, <i>you do you</i>', and I savoured it's unintentional poignancy. That phrase became my talisman of the entire trip, and by the time we touched down in Arrecife, I felt finally sure of my purpose; to do the truth, justice. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'd be liar to say it wasn't absolutely fascinating to witness first hand reality, and the 'reality' which made it to onto social media. Although I'll hands up admit right here, I'm as big a culprit as any. I was initially cynical, but I soon found myself quite dumbfounded in admiration at how someone with a keen eye for a photo can so effectively sift golddust from ash. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The landscapes were mind-bendingly surreal - long, seemingly endless stretches of volcano, dusted in pallettes of muted browns and reds, uncanny of some futuristic rendering of Mars.</span> </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyFdtgLoMA2PM7uRngQbfs4bnneXGJjt2xLHhu64mP2am5-wFJ1_eIEaFLQ1rTJ0-8Xqgg8rgepLxCPMUDPZ1oMn_Ov-vGVIvS-D15by8vos-jXQrYeMfqDdPR-3W6lOf3rYar9a8Q61R7/s1600/016_16.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyFdtgLoMA2PM7uRngQbfs4bnneXGJjt2xLHhu64mP2am5-wFJ1_eIEaFLQ1rTJ0-8Xqgg8rgepLxCPMUDPZ1oMn_Ov-vGVIvS-D15by8vos-jXQrYeMfqDdPR-3W6lOf3rYar9a8Q61R7/s1600/016_16.JPG" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi98gGq-pWd9F-LKX7wBbv2CNZRCAOzANjdQpzuYWDCLF_VCHjythayRCPGf3elsUp0NXDkzQJCumpjKnn4I2p8fB6vkYpBx4I9W_HjhdPt00O3uiv-t29ZLxGIDYyz4B1kY5Wdytsy5hCD/s1600/017_17.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi98gGq-pWd9F-LKX7wBbv2CNZRCAOzANjdQpzuYWDCLF_VCHjythayRCPGf3elsUp0NXDkzQJCumpjKnn4I2p8fB6vkYpBx4I9W_HjhdPt00O3uiv-t29ZLxGIDYyz4B1kY5Wdytsy5hCD/s1600/017_17.JPG" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">How bizarre it was then to gaze over stark, barren lava fields void nearly of even the smallest green spring of life or sign of human habitation, to turn and see someone perched on a rock with their macbook open, photoshopping a fake sunset into the snap they'd just taken. Later in the trip I was actually speaking with that same person, who was possibly one of the friendliest and nicest people I met, and they told me with a laugh how last year they'd spent two weeks clinging on to dear life in a dingy Vietnamese hospital, passing the time by editing and uploading a series of carefully updated photos from an old adventure they'd had, which elicited hundreds of comments praising their amazing life. There was no trace of malice or menace in their voice when they told me this, and I realised it was all just a game to them. Conscious deception was just a clever play.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I thought about that a lot.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmahnpiqWtOoSNUDnnRNnk6g8Z34rn04vomyaAiTS67J3cSFbNpuQFgNtUCrYSeR4vVyazoire6KFZb5l-_moVHw6Hqo4jChtgzxASgeLfc3bYkwl4994mMsGeW4pddurK13t4thKmDrdS/s1600/014_14.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmahnpiqWtOoSNUDnnRNnk6g8Z34rn04vomyaAiTS67J3cSFbNpuQFgNtUCrYSeR4vVyazoire6KFZb5l-_moVHw6Hqo4jChtgzxASgeLfc3bYkwl4994mMsGeW4pddurK13t4thKmDrdS/s1600/014_14.JPG" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">Now this isn't to say that everyone was so intentional or deliberate in their doctoring of reality, some, lik</span><span style="font-size: large;">e <a href="http://www.wonderful--you.com/" target="_blank">Megs</a> or <a href="http://hannahgale.co.uk/" target="_blank">Hannah</a>,</span><span style="font-size: large;"> just had to appear in the frame of a photo to instantly add magic to it. It was truly remarkable the grace and elegance which radiated from them before a camera, a charm which was not something fabricated or switched on, but a natural confidence of which I could only dream of one day possessing. I found myself warming to them greatly, names I'd only ever known online but who were genuine, gracious and so fun to be around in real life too, and soon to become friends.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaF7iX9n45VLe_j_TzcTy72TRRuFJinXbLzo1Bx0fPhMFgMXkfca4JGuJYf37Ao2TSsA1ocFRm-nNMrN17QfmDM6Tt8Jlayvbn7VcyffPHcQ81snPiEYSfUJo21_DBIQJ9tw1G6uhnA7op/s1600/038_38.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaF7iX9n45VLe_j_TzcTy72TRRuFJinXbLzo1Bx0fPhMFgMXkfca4JGuJYf37Ao2TSsA1ocFRm-nNMrN17QfmDM6Tt8Jlayvbn7VcyffPHcQ81snPiEYSfUJo21_DBIQJ9tw1G6uhnA7op/s1600/038_38.JPG" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvuiWopdwpLmml_369wdUpKEh0-bMnGAfLnDYYW1T0eQ7NkI6tPz7esZvOpTADV1s6jKo6vRdbpwuCVZHYGaZTA0-ltldJ3ZOxKZ2SoJiLtRbMAt_mevfoqQWyjAI0BZrXw1W6acZbtAzD/s1600/034_34.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvuiWopdwpLmml_369wdUpKEh0-bMnGAfLnDYYW1T0eQ7NkI6tPz7esZvOpTADV1s6jKo6vRdbpwuCVZHYGaZTA0-ltldJ3ZOxKZ2SoJiLtRbMAt_mevfoqQWyjAI0BZrXw1W6acZbtAzD/s1600/034_34.JPG" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">During our time, we were treated to a jam-packed itinerary of some incredible places around the island of Lanzarote. These included <a href="http://www.hellocanaryislands.com/museums-and-places-interest/lanzarote/cueva-de-los-verdes-green-caves/" target="_blank">Cueva De Los Verdes</a>, a sprawling underground cave system full of labyrinthine passages and optical illusions that were used as escape tunnels by local villagers to flee from pirates invading from Africa. The <a href="http://www.hellocanaryislands.com/museums-and-places-interest/lanzarote/fundacion-cesar-manrique/" target="_blank">Cesar Manrique Foundation</a>, a stunningly picturesque and beautifully designed home sculpted from the lava bubbles from neighbouring Timanfaya, full of tropical hanging vines, 70's decor and bright turquoise pools you just wanted to slip into. I was completely struck by how peaceful and serene the place was, a far cry from the jagged black lava which spilled in through the windows. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpJWLHu6tgxqcz4r7hB02-_p1DbiLE5Q0rc3hZ2aO19fHCQXvLwwVePiJ95JM2K0g9GLjXq2dW4lXrvh7t_ACFPovX3U4bBNI_MTGzsg0B82A_HS0MQ6P1mp8X6x2_claNP_qCP5aCsyZi/s1600/thumb_IMG_3410_1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpJWLHu6tgxqcz4r7hB02-_p1DbiLE5Q0rc3hZ2aO19fHCQXvLwwVePiJ95JM2K0g9GLjXq2dW4lXrvh7t_ACFPovX3U4bBNI_MTGzsg0B82A_HS0MQ6P1mp8X6x2_claNP_qCP5aCsyZi/s1600/thumb_IMG_3410_1024.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And perhaps my favourite place was <a href="http://www.turismolanzarote.com/en/centros-turisticos/mirador-del-rio/1131" target="_blank">Mirador Del Rio</a>, which <i>truly</i> took my breath away. So far, the landscape of Lanzarote had been fascinating and unique, but this was the first time I was truly struck dumb with the instant appreciation of sheer, unequivocal beauty. The weather had been a little temperamental throughout our trip but the sun burst defiantly through the clouds and melted away all traces of blemish from the sky. We stepped through the smooth white-washed walls designed by Manrique himself, and found ourselves before a panoramic view of the most breathtaking cobalt blue, as the midday sun softly faded the sky into the azure ocean, a blend near indistinguishable if not for the looming island of La Graciosa perfectly framed before us, visible in it's entirety from our viewpoint. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSeqbITYRe6NCR1_7kQITGHP8i0o34v7Vc2fUtJLjQGGhgjyt3VtVHh1rb1syXZEZAz_rsEFdfABTX0zn90N5aguu886lC3a_3rxkRX3DWqujhG2QUtPINGTCkawRZAK5iJ1RNyBi4N3j_/s1600/thumb_IMG_3253_1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSeqbITYRe6NCR1_7kQITGHP8i0o34v7Vc2fUtJLjQGGhgjyt3VtVHh1rb1syXZEZAz_rsEFdfABTX0zn90N5aguu886lC3a_3rxkRX3DWqujhG2QUtPINGTCkawRZAK5iJ1RNyBi4N3j_/s1600/thumb_IMG_3253_1024.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Everyone snapped away on expensive cameras and I marvelled at the images they produced, but I couldn't help but feel what I had on me was so much more special. In my hands I held real treasure, the behind the scenes of it all. I had the truth captured and sealed in celluloid forever. That was my purpose, and I'd fulfilled my duty. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Or so I thought. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Because it wasn't until the final day that I realised the spool mechanism in my camera had actually broken. And in fact, for all the hundred or so times I'd clicked the shutter button to capture pure spontaneous magic, only 10 or so of these frames had actually landed. My heart <i>broke. </i>On that last evening I very moodily watched a rainstorm roll in across the mountains and fog settle above the surfing beach of La Famara. But as the sunset illuminated the clouds like cotton candy above the heads of the matchstick men at sea, I finally sighed and realised I had to let it go. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggl4dN0o_shdNLfV5aZusYw3BAHxVeMTiEe0MoEa_CUsnaEA8IT7aXk23JVS5VXry2l8weaDEsSUkWyMVgWYn4xfsIrgmJaD5nPEae93D6IY8CIxJ_Senkv47HZhjKhldOGkklLysvZaMA/s1600/018_18.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggl4dN0o_shdNLfV5aZusYw3BAHxVeMTiEe0MoEa_CUsnaEA8IT7aXk23JVS5VXry2l8weaDEsSUkWyMVgWYn4xfsIrgmJaD5nPEae93D6IY8CIxJ_Senkv47HZhjKhldOGkklLysvZaMA/s1600/018_18.JPG" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Because in the future, when we look back on this experience, the photos will be things we'll remember. We’ll return to the hashtag, the vlogs, and the perfectly curated instas which will inevitably alter our memories, but I’ll always remember those lost frames glimpsed down the lens of my 35mm. The laughs behind the seeming seriousness of some photos, and indeed the grimaces behind some of the seeming joy. The night we skipped drunkenly through the humid darkness to McDonalds because we’d just had enough of the hotel food. The time that our coach broke down at the top of a volcano and we all had to get out and walk. One of the girls puking in the bus after a few too many all-inclusive cocktails. When we secretly shared prosecco by the bottle huddled in one bed, sunburn-cheeked and glittering-eyed, whispering well past midnight. The real, honest friendships that blossomed behind the screen of an instagram photo two people just happened to be tagged in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps then it was somewhat symbolic that these shots were lost, fated never to reach the red light of the darkroom let alone the vibrant glow of the internet. Because an image captured on film cannot be manipulated or altered, deleted or reviewed. With a click of a button, a moment in time and space is captured, suspended and preserved in it’s purity. Whilst not always producing the most impressive or remarkable pictures, the rare thing which film captures is <i>honesty</i>.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW6-9oXahFTilb9PHUMKM-Whvz7wzGCSpc77iT4gr3DMTF2-ULfDSGu8CrqBEubnW-KJsCypm6YSazRGZ36ZxyyCjZaYqSuwY7LPNinNGrY9wd2E-FipZH1ZY5yozCknnhi2vEhIeUKXpp/s1600/035_35.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW6-9oXahFTilb9PHUMKM-Whvz7wzGCSpc77iT4gr3DMTF2-ULfDSGu8CrqBEubnW-KJsCypm6YSazRGZ36ZxyyCjZaYqSuwY7LPNinNGrY9wd2E-FipZH1ZY5yozCknnhi2vEhIeUKXpp/s1600/035_35.JPG" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And the more I began to think about it, and why I was so devastated to have lost the pictures, the parallel became more apparent than ever.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">For you see, in blogging, I’m about as outdated and irrelevant as analogue photography in a digital world. I don’t have a flashy instagram theme or top notch photography skills, I’m not influential or marketable in the slightest, and I don’t like people telling me what I can and can’t write. But somehow or another there I ended up, film camera in tow, thrust in the centre of it. And for a while it really got to me that I was so clearly inadequate and purposeless with nothing to offer. But the more I saw of this world through the little viewfinder of my camera, the more I began to understand who I was, the one valuable thing I <i>can</i> offer, and why I have such a strong affinity with my film camera.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Because while both unconventional and unnecessary, perhaps we have a similar job to do - to produce fleeting, temporary pieces of magic that serve the purpose not to celebrate or be celebrated, but to capture and hold a moment just long enough to observe it before letting it go again. And while I so wish I had the rest of these lost photos to share with you, it seems almost right that those moments captured were seen just by us in real time, then returned to the universe once more.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Above all else, that’s what I’ll remember most from this trip; the perfection of those imperfect moments which bonded us in a sisterhood of endurance far stronger than the competitive rivalry this industry often makes us believe we are in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioMrfVsyR2s8jR4MM2OS5XnC_S1R143l1N_pKc_BPIyhTY9HDRPGkdDWLu6rL_-RJF5L0O7Dd9QQL6v04-vBkPRieicLDS8mvrVFU06S07jbkLhi0qlETINvfP-KpwEYmckzBup7TNwMny/s1600/BIZ1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioMrfVsyR2s8jR4MM2OS5XnC_S1R143l1N_pKc_BPIyhTY9HDRPGkdDWLu6rL_-RJF5L0O7Dd9QQL6v04-vBkPRieicLDS8mvrVFU06S07jbkLhi0qlETINvfP-KpwEYmckzBup7TNwMny/s1600/BIZ1.jpg" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Thank you so much <a href="https://www.thomascookairlines.com/en/cheap-flights/canary-islands/lanzarote/index.jsp" target="_blank">Thomas Cook Airlines</a> for letting me have this experience, it truly opened my eyes in more ways than expected, and gave a gift far more powerful than a goodie bag full of mini's (which I won't pretend I didn't really, really enjoy getting ha. THANK YOU) - you gave we of hyperreality, the opportunity to connect in real life, in the most surreal environment. Thank you. Thank you also to the people of this trip who made it such good fun. (BSofBS amirite?) And finally thank YOU for reading this far, and giving the time of day to my lengthy rambles that take stuff way too seriously, ha. You're the best. </span></div>
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-78866484909953224152016-05-13T02:50:00.002-07:002016-05-13T02:50:40.996-07:00The Filler Episodes of Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiZjw-5KQnlsOZihijaoYQkp4MYKIl5eY98yJENlutOjCqBBmKjvkZX4186ueJgXwSK_2ihhMinzHbm3Z0c_STttSWf6c8FwbK823Np0ynSH4xIwBbY8qcgbLUKgfMmB0-dEGUrxfKa57V/s1600/13180837_10153530406561889_1694210731_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiZjw-5KQnlsOZihijaoYQkp4MYKIl5eY98yJENlutOjCqBBmKjvkZX4186ueJgXwSK_2ihhMinzHbm3Z0c_STttSWf6c8FwbK823Np0ynSH4xIwBbY8qcgbLUKgfMmB0-dEGUrxfKa57V/s1600/13180837_10153530406561889_1694210731_n.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I cannot tell you the relief I feel to watch this thick layer of frost begin to thaw and trickle over each and every inch of my warming skin. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've been in hibernation for months now, numb, subdued, and trying to work out where to go from here when the future is an enigma, the present a frustration, and the only thing that ever seemed to be remarkable, my past. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">How are you ever meant to follow the most incredible thing you've ever done?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Since the start of this year the word 'failure' has swarmed around me, buzzing incessantly and inescapably in my ear, because what I followed it with was... nothing. I slipped into a monotonous routine so far removed from the wild adventure I made of my life, whilst criminalising myself for becoming the person I spent my whole life campaigning against being. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I let myself be tamed in the name of practicality. Employability. Reason.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But as the sun seeks the gaps in these choking clouds, the light chases at the feet of my dogged apathy and tugs at the shoulder of my long-turned back with the unmistakeable scent of hope. And as I glance at my hands, streams of water begin to pour through my fingers like the final frantic sands of an upturned hourglass, and I slowly come to see that, in fact, there wasn't any other way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">How are you ever meant to follow the most incredible thing you've ever done? You're not. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Like those mid-season filler episodes or a mid-album filler track, a work of art cannot be built on just peaks alone. It requires a varied structure for strength, a dip for every peak, a plateau for every sheer drop or climb. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And as I squint through this new sunlight back to the chronicle which creeps toward completion with every step forward that I take, only now can I understand the purpose of that lost chapter so marred by my apparent lack of purpose. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">There will always be filler episodes in life. They may last days, weeks, months or even years. And while it may seem you are devoid of passion and dry of ambition in a never-ending drought which seems like your great downfall, perhaps the universe is just gathering energy and harvesting resources, in preparation for you to experience the Next Big Thing that's going to blow your goddamn mind.</span></div>
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<br />scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-67291592702963590922016-04-24T08:38:00.000-07:002016-04-25T03:04:33.081-07:006 People Who Make My Internet A Better Place<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">I think I become disenfranchised by social media on a weekly basis. I swear if I vocalised every time inner me threw up her arms and said 'That's it, I'm out, I'm deleting all my accounts!' my entire content feed would just be a steady stream of nothing else.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It just seems to take little more than perhaps 5 minutes of scrolling through Twitter or Instagram these days before seeing something that makes me eye-roll, cringe or simply despair. And I don't like being that person, because it's not always the bad news that makes me do it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But I've slowly grown to learn that it's not necessarily 'the internet's fault, it's the internet I have chosen to view, and I think sometimes we forget that it's actually our choice who we follow and the content we see. This year I've taken an affirmative step in clearing out the crap and focusing on the stuff that make me smile, makes me hopeful and makes me inspired. And these are 6 people I am so glad exist, who just make the internet a better place.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">1. <a href="https://twitter.com/lexi4prez" target="_blank">@lexi4prez</a></span><br />
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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BCbQKdcAUHW/" style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">today is the ONE YEAR anniversary of the feminist culture Twitter account. With almost 190,000 followers, so much has come out of this. I've done so many amazing projects with so many amazing people. My mind has been expanded in ways I never thought possible. I will be forever grateful to all those who have supported me, thank you for one brilliant year! So much more to come. xo</a></div>
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A photo posted by Alexis Isabel (lexi4prez) (@lexi4grams) on <time datetime="2016-03-01T21:39:46+00:00" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Mar 1, 2016 at 1:39pm PST</time></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I don't even know where to start with this wondergirl, but all I know is that following her was one of the best moves of the last year. Her refreshingly cut-throat and no-bullshit analysis of American Politics and the US Justice System is as groundbreaking as it essential. At just 17, Alexis has a fundamental grasp on politics than most politics majors, and uses her platform to educate her deservedly-vast audience of followers on justice, equality, congress and feminism on her website </span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://feministculture.com/" target="_blank">Feminist Culture.</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">But all of this and she's still just a regular teen online, which I value so much because it shows you don't have to sacrifice your identity or censor your personality if you want to fight for a cause. With something like politics you're expected to have a pristinely censored persona lest you be dragged for one tiny thing from years ago. But Lexi just doesn't give a fuck. She is who she is, fights for what she believes, and brushes away the inexplicable tirade of hate she gets as a successful woman on the internet doing that. This girl is a gift that our generation needs more than ever. A username which started as likely a bit of joke has never been more real. Lexi. For. President.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">2. <a href="https://twitter.com/boredbarbara" target="_blank">@boredbarbara</a> </span><br />
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A photo posted by barbie ferreira not nox (@barbienox) on <time datetime="2016-01-25T21:18:19+00:00" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Jan 25, 2016 at 1:18pm PST</time></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Barbie is truly one of the coolest girls on the internet right now. From being one of Petra Collins muses (one of my fave photographers) starring in Carly Rae Jepsen's music videos, and having a variety of major campaigns under her belt, Barbie's body positivity is genuinely changing not only the face and shape of the industry, but also the bizarre standard we've come to measure beauty and worth by for so long. Every picture I see of her owning herself and being a bad bitch has a knock on effect in my own brain, contributing toward this bigger change in mindset toward how I look. Sometimes one person unapologetically loving themselves is enough to make you rethink how you feel about your own self.</span><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">There's a fun vid with her talking about the term 'plus size' <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNwTbEVO6Nw" target="_blank">here</a>.</span><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">3. </span><a href="https://twitter.com/planetalex_" style="font-size: xx-large;" target="_blank">@planetalex</a><span style="font-size: x-large;">_</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I must admit I first came across Alex when I saw her give one of the most beautiful, effortless and succinct responses to a dick on Twitter:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiosuDZGOzvKPz1Z6nQrBCJqZbtwE8OpJgyIF079EFBc59Siy3aSipr-r3pUw7RdyQnq6MFcg2oT3tMTOMlKLHMKa-Wo0ODX45hUKSSAKR4GAh_hXFIchHUK0RFKTFXJmX8wqqvLWE-7zU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-04-24+at+14.43.54.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiosuDZGOzvKPz1Z6nQrBCJqZbtwE8OpJgyIF079EFBc59Siy3aSipr-r3pUw7RdyQnq6MFcg2oT3tMTOMlKLHMKa-Wo0ODX45hUKSSAKR4GAh_hXFIchHUK0RFKTFXJmX8wqqvLWE-7zU/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-04-24+at+14.43.54.png" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">And since then she has quickly become one of my all time favourite accounts to follow. Not only is she a beacon of positive light across the internet, one of my favourite thing she does with her Twitter account is to create these long tweet threads of the most stunning photos you've ever seen - beauty that you wouldn't necessarily see in the everyday media. She collects and curates truly the most remarkable beauty from across the world, and every time I'm scrolling aimlessly through Twitter and I come across one of her threads I always pause, and spend a good few moments absorbing what I'm looking at. Hers is an education of so few words. One of her most recent threads I adored was titled 'A celebration of an indigenous rural culture in which the women are the artists and the home her canvas.' Honestly, just scroll through <a href="https://twitter.com/planetalex_/media" target="_blank">her media</a> on Twitter, you could get lost for hours. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">4. <a href="https://twitter.com/LeLeValentine" target="_blank">@Lelevalentine</a></span><br />
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A photo posted by Leomie Anderson (@leomieanderson) on <time datetime="2016-01-11T20:54:55+00:00" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Jan 11, 2016 at 12:54pm PST</time></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Okay, true story, I have been obsessed with Leomie for YEARS. It was 2011 when Channel 4 aired a documentary series called 'The Model Agency', and right from the first second I was hooked. There's something about the juicy backstage secrets of the Fashion Industry which I am forever fascinated about, despite not really being a ~fashiony~ person at all. But I was well and truly hooked on this show, which was a behind the scenes look at the inner workings of one of the world's most successful model agencies, Premier Models. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Featured on the show was one of their newest and youngest recruits straight out of school; Leomie Anderson, and the series began to follow her story as she took her first step into the fashion world. And, despite the fact she is stunningly beautiful, what I became so enamoured by was her genuine and joyous personality. She just seemed like a good egg y'know? </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Fast forward 5 years and she's now an internationally-known supermodel having walked for designers the world over and being a new recruit to the annual iconic Victoria's Secret show last year. Yet she's never lost her down to earth attitude and connectedness, regularly posting super honest chatty vlogs and advice on her blog <a href="http://www.crackedchinacup.com/" target="_blank">Cracked China Cup</a> as if she's just your mate you can check in on. I actually bumped into her one fashion week as she was leaving a show and exclaimed, "Leomie, hi!" in a super uncool fashion, forgetting that we weren't <i>actually </i>mates irl. But she was totally chill and lovely. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">She has also done amazing things for not only feminism - her latest blog post is entitled <a href="http://www.crackedchinacup.com/2016/04/an-open-letter-about-consent-and-saying-no/" target="_blank">'An Open Letter About Consent And Saying No'</a> - but become a pioneer for diversity in the fashion industry. Her Twitter rant about racism and lack of diversity was picked up and <a href="http://www.thedebrief.co.uk/news/celebrity/british-model-leomie-anderson-highlights-the-depressing-lack-of-diversity-in-the-fashion-industry-20160262231" target="_blank">reported on the world over,</a> and prompted her to create <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLsHKN0TNDg" target="_blank">'The Black Model Survival Kit'</a> in response to the sheer amount of make-up artists and styling staff who are unable to adequately cater to anyone other than white models. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">All in all she has become an icon, and over the years I've been watching like a proud friend as she's grown into a megastar and become such a powerful voice. All the love for Leomie always. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">5. <a href="https://twitter.com/areebasiddique" target="_blank">@areebasiddique</a></span><br />
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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BCsAYGtoj5v/" style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">We need to talk, a blog post about #womensday is up on blog || women power 4ever</a></div>
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A photo posted by Areeba Siddique (@ohareeba) on <time datetime="2016-03-08T09:48:54+00:00" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Mar 8, 2016 at 1:48am PST</time></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This girl. Honestly. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Okay so I actually wrote <a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/2016/02/i-need-to-tell-you-about-areeba_10.html" target="_blank">an entire blog post</a> dedicated to why I love this girl and how much I value her presence on the internet. If you cba to read that (you totally should) you just need to take a look at her <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ohareeba/" target="_blank">instagram </a>to see what a vibrant creative spark she is. She forever wows me with her projects and ability to create the most extraordinary journal page. She truly- agh! Just read the post!</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">6. <a href="https://twitter.com/Noor_Unnahar" target="_blank">@noor_unnahar</a></span><br />
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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BEgWu45A5LG/" style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">pinks and whites and plants are my aesthetics🍃🌸</a></div>
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A photo posted by Noor Unnahar Siddique (@noor_unnahar) on <time datetime="2016-04-22T14:16:10+00:00" style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Apr 22, 2016 at 7:16am PDT</time></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But there was one thing I didn't know about Areeba when I wrote about her... she has an IDENTICAL TWIN. And now my life is literally ruled by this ultimate superhero double act; The Siddique Sisters. I would watch that show. I would sure as hell buy the graphic novel. And I firmly believe these two are going to change the world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I can barely explain how much joy these two give me. Their blogs are like genuine locations in space and time, a house you walk into and feel instant comfort. After all, Noor's blog is called <a href="http://www.noorsplace.com/" target="_blank">Noor's Place.</a> And believe me I would sit in a sunny window seat with a glass of Peppermint tea and read her words all day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Noor also organised an <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BElbBdgA5Jc/?taken-by=noor_unnahar" target="_blank">Instagram meetup</a> for Earth Day in the city of Thatta in her native Pakistan and it just looked like one of the sweetest loveliest days ever, and such a thoughtful initiative. I am so grateful the internet has allowed this cross-continental connection to happen. It is my absolute goal one day to travel to Pakistan and meet these two, I think I would actually cry. And I just hope that one day very soon we live in a world peaceful enough for that to happen. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And so here we are, these are the social media queens who are making my world a better place every day. Sometimes I think we don't even realise the things that we see and hear every day that subconsciously influence our minds slowly and surely, to form our seemingly own opinions and judgements of the world. And to a large extent we cannot control what or who has access to our minds. But one of the amazing things about social media is, here, we do. Here we can choose who we want to hear from, and who should be muted. Here, we can choose how we want to grow and what we want to leave behind at the click of a button. And here we can have our own platforms to create things worth saying and things worth listening to. Sometimes, these aren't our things to say. But as a wise friend once told me, 'Maybe we just have a different job to do.' We can always use our platforms, however big or small, to help foster the voice of someone or something that should be and needs to be heard.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">That is, at the root of it all, why social media is the most powerful tool our generation has. And if we utilise it to it's full potential, we can make unfathomable, irrevocable new change in this old world.</span><span style="font-size: x-large;"> </span><br />
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-14775773341490739572016-04-15T09:12:00.000-07:002016-04-15T10:37:05.282-07:00That's Me In The Spotlight, Losing My Ambition <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">A few days ago I met up with an old beloved university friend, the boy that sat next to me the day I typed my first ever word of this blog over three years ago. I hadn't seen him in a long time, and even longer before that, as we'd both lived in different countries and met many faces since. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We ate Vietnamese food and shared some beers, but after a while he looked me deep in the eye, with a crinkle of concern between his eyebrows, and said; "What's happened to you, Katie?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Usually I'd protest vehemently with the ferocity of someone having their authenticity questioned, but I knew exactly what he was referring to without even having to ask, and I remained silent for a moment before shrugging and replying, "It's been a long time." <br /><br />And <i>then</i> he looked at me in a way that made me mad, because he silently told me that the person I was before, was better. That to him, I had changed for the worse.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The next day I took the silent journey home, my head lolling against the window of the rickety train as it sped away from London. And it was only when I finally got home that I realised the precise thing he'd instantly recognised that I no longer had. A go-to phrase I'd once have immediately used to describe myself when asked, yet now could not be further away from my reality.<br /><i><br />Fiercely ambitious.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I cannot think of any current reason why I would honestly define myself as being ambitious. For the first time in my life, I have removed that from my self-identifying lexicon. And I can't lie and pretend that doesn't seem like a really huge scary fucking thing right now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm no stranger to the fact that I've felt incredibly lost with what I'm doing creatively for a number of months now. At a loss of a 'tribe' or creative community I've resumed the role of the lone navigator, painstakingly picking through the ice an inch at a time, hoping to god I'm somehow headed the right direction and clinging on to the dream I'll stumble across fresh tracks of another along the way. I've always felt like the outsider carving her own path through the universe. But I've only just realised there's so little fulfilment to be gained by going it alone. I've now put my foot through too many bear traps not to be scared of where I step.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Has my ambition truly been chased out of me? The girl who declared she would change the world, the girl who had such clearly defined goals and dreams and wouldn't settle for anything else than to get them? Or was I just a sweet naive girl hopped up on delayed teen rebellion and adrenaline when I'd said all that, so sweetly oblivious to how perplexing and hostile the real world is?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've lost a lot of self-confidence and belief in the worth of my work since then, I know that much is true. But has the day come, that by no longer identifying as ambitious, I have actually signed off the seal that I tried and I failed? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have truly been plagued by these thoughts for a while now, and seem to go through weekly cycles of self-destruction and reconstruction, as you can <a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/2016/04/the-comeback-kid.html" target="_blank">probably tell.</a> But the meeting with the old friend seems to have tipped me over the edge. And now I'm very afraid I've become the girl I always said I never would: The dream girl who lost sight of her future.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This morning I woke up, checked my emails, made some coffee and put on the TV, picking up some embroidery, the rhythmic needlework soothing my sore mind. I idly flicked through the channels and settled on the MTV Movie Awards to accompany my stitching - something moderately diverting yet not something I had to really pay attention to. As I tuned in, Halle Berry was presenting a lifetime achievement award to Will Smith and it made me pause, as I've always adored him. And then he gave a small speech, the end of which near stopped my heart and bought a lump to my throat. He concluded;</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">"I just want all of you to know that I am dedicated to being a light in this world. There's a lot of people who are suffering in this world, and when you see my material, and when I present myself in public, and when I'm with my friends and my family, I just want all you to know that I am dedicated in my life, to light, and to love. Thank you."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Something just clicked in me when I heard that, a current of familiarity which zipped through my quiet veins. At the root of everything I have ever done, I have always had the ambition to bring light into the world. I never stopped being ambitious. I just no longer seek the same flavour of ambition I once used to.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">When I first began, when I first knew my friend, my ambition was to scream so loud nobody could help but hear me. To spin my years of being pushed aside into a <i>big fuck you, now it's my time to speak, and I've got some shit to say</i>. I wanted to be queen, to have people hear what I say and be in so much awe that they craved more. I wanted people to fuss over me, to want a piece of me, to want to help me, to want to have me around. I wanted power, I wanted stature, I wanted influence, I wanted an audience, and although perhaps not for the sinister reasons it may seem, my ambition simply was to be <i>heard</i> and be <i>noticed. </i>I was that little kid who had built up so much rage and so much frustration that she'd reached that supernova-level of needing to do something about it, and after that detonation she was either going to come out the other side a superhero or a supervillain. And secretly now, looking back, I can't tell you for sure that I perhaps didn't become a bit of both.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">My extraordinary levels of passion, ambition and determination stemmed from the fact that I'd been smited my whole life. And I'm going to say pretty much all of the things I achieved and the reason why a lot of my 'successes' felt so good because they were out of spite. Out of revenge. <i>Look at me now</i> I'd be screaming silently as my fingers typed a Facebook status about a new update. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But that was the me 3 years ago. And while it was explosive and powerful, it wasn't stable, it wasn't healthy and it was not who I was. I'm not a spiteful person. And I know a lot of the resentment in me was never malice. I was just a little girl who was sick of being stepped on, so she grew some spines and did something about it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A lot has changed since then. I've grown up a hell of a lot, and my attitude toward my work and my goals has changed dramatically. For one, I've grown a hell of a lot of humility. I'm a lot calmer - that girl I once was got to prove her point - and I'm more balanced with my mental health. I've developed a quiet artistic introversion over the last few months which feels safe and comfortable and very much like me. I guess I've grown up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And the flavour of my ambition now is not followers, a dazzling CV of achievements, trophies in a cabinet, increasing income streams or a growing collection of expensive treasures. My idea of success doesn't have clearly defined benchmarks or a tick list or something which can be measured in a graph. And I've been struggling so hard with feeling like a failure or feeling unsuccessful because this is the first time this has ever been the case.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I no longer strive solely for academic, professional or financial success, but that sure as hell doesn't mean I don't still have the ambition to make my life as remarkable and beautiful and rich as it possibly can be. Everyday I am fuelled by the drive to create, explore, learn and embrace. My goals aren't to earn bigger and bigger paychecks to get richer, but to earn enough money so I can blow it instantly on things that will enhance my life experiences - whether that be on travelling, books, a new musical instrument or even just a gig ticket. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Right now, I'm in the infancy of a new era of my creative development, and that is perhaps now more scary than exciting, and I'll be the first to admit it. And sometimes it can be really difficult to distinguish between evolving into something new, and losing track of who you've always been before. And who would've thought it would be Will Smith and the MTV Movie Awards who would make me realise that?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So this is me now, picking my way through the ice inch by inch again, like I did at the start. But now I'm not powered by a negative positivity which gives a powerful headstart but burns out fast. I'm taking it slow, day by day working what I need to do next, and where this dark and stormy path is going to lead me. And I'm learning to not be afraid to ask for help, because I know I can't do this alone. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So I'm holding up my horn and bellowing a siren call into the wilderness: <b><u>I need a mentor</u></b>. I need some creative guidance with my writing, even just some advice from someone in publishing or journalism about where I should be focusing my efforts. All I aim to do in life is to be someone now, that I really needed when I was younger. And now I seek the same for the me of now. So if you're out there, you for some reason believe that I'm worth it and you have even the smallest breadcrumb of advice as to where I can begin doing with my writing, then I'm here to hear, and I'm ready to learn.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But that's for the future. For now, there's only one thing I need to remind myself, and perhaps those who've known me for a long time, and are wondering what's up:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I never lost my ambition. My idea of success just became less high maintenance.</span></div>
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-88933212275773483002016-04-09T09:02:00.000-07:002016-04-09T09:07:12.278-07:00The Comeback Kid<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">This, more so than for anyone else, is for the girl that writes it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I want you to sit down and cry because you're not good enough and you never will be. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I want you to sit, strapped down and eyes sprung with matchsticks, and watch as people forget who you are, what you ever did. Observe how people who used to look up to you surpass you in confidence, skill and success, and you become a mere shadow of not only them, but of your former self. I want you to wallow in the sticky swill of your wasted potential.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I want you to feel every inch of how it feels to watch as someone else does the things you always wanted to. To feel the full volume of how horrific it feels to have your belief that you were born to do that one particular thing shatter in your hands, and the fragmented shards dig into your fleshy palms as someone else gets there first and does it better. I want your eyebrows to slant upwards and for your face to fall into your hands as you feel the full force of how it feels to be a straight A fucking failure. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I want you to drop to your knees in despair as you acknowledge how much time you've wasted procrastinating, complaining and distracting yourself from the fact that you could be better. And I want you to dig your fingernails in the dirt as you recognise how much anger you're harbouring toward yourself for doing so. I want you to feel the hot, unrelenting rage of dissatisfaction begin to boil your atoms and ignite your molten bloodstream because you know you deserve to be better. That you owed yourself so much more than what you gave. That, at the end of the day, you've been cheated, and you know it was only you who cheated yourself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And then I want you to fucking scream. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I want you to mobilise every iota of that frustration and channel it through your diaphragm, surging up through your vocal chords as you throw back your head and belt it into the sky. I want you to see how the ground around you becomes scorched and burnt as you unleash the full hellforce of your absolute fucking misery into the world. That by turning this inward it has become a dripping insidious acid that has eroded any measure of productivity you could possibly have the more you tried not to feel it, but now by letting the whole fucking thing in, can you letting the whole fucking thing out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I want you to scream until your voice becomes hoarse and you finally slump breathless, purged of the darkness that was orbiting your heart and puppeteering your actions. I want you to close your eyes, inhale the acrid scent of ash, then open your eyes to see how people are staring at the state of you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then I want you climb to your coal-smeared feet, take a deep breath, shake out your singed hair, throw your jacket over your shoulder, and begin to walk. Step by step you strut past them as they look on in disgust, dismay, or embarrassment, and you can meet their looks with the steely ice-cold gaze of someone who just crashed and burned baby, and now has nowhere else to go but up. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And from here on I want you to forgive yourself. It doesn't matter how fucked up you're are, you've never <i>fucked up</i> for good. If you're still alive, there's still time. I want you to walk past those ghost faces, your steps sparking like electrical current each time your foot touches ground, and I want you to know you only need yourself on your side. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Because you're the comeback kid. If it had the power to destroy you, then the then the passion inside of you is tantamount to dynamite. And the only dangerous business here is to suppress that explosion enough that the half-life begins to poison you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And as the aftershock settles and the debris falls away, I want you to stretch your neck from side to side, focus your sight on the horizon and walk on, leaving yourself, and the others behind you in your wake. 'Cause there ain't nobody that can turn it around like you. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've come to understand the overwhelming feeling that just there's no point in trying anymore. Because that's when I know it's time to <i>burn.</i></span></div>
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-40742494024800444062016-04-05T06:34:00.000-07:002016-04-09T07:17:42.740-07:00One Night in Copenhagen Airport<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'd waited in the departures hall for 2 hours already, terrified of missing my flight after the Irish girl I'd met over the weekend had explained the series of disastrous events which had lead to her missing hers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">All the gates for the next 20 flights had been listed already, and the blank gap next to mine glared menacingly empty as the clock fast approached take off time. I was exhausted, shifting my weight from foot to foot as a rising anxiety began to creep from my stomach. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">With a deep sigh I swept my hands across my face, dreaming of nothing more than a shower and bed, when I heard a soft exclamation of 'You must be kidding' behind me. My head shot up to the screen to find the gap now filled, with an unapologetic red 'DELAYED 3 HOURS'. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Oh come on!" I yelled in audible exasperation, forgetting I was in public for a moment. I'd made sure to get up super early on the morning of my last day to make the most of my remaining time, and had spent hours wandering around the outskirts of the city, tugging along my little wheely suitcase over the cobblestone streets of Copenhagen. The previous day I'd taken a 4 hour walking tour, and the evening before that a bar crawl that extended long into the early hours, stumbling out of a warehouse rave in the meat-packing district at 5am.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">My bones creaked with every movement and my eyes could barely focus on the screens I'd been monitoring so closely for the past half an hour. And now it would be a further five hours or so until I would be home. I despaired.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"I guess you're on that Gatwick flight?" That same voice spoke, and I turned to find a flamboyantly dressed woman peering at me through thick, red horn-rimmed glasses. She was perhaps mid-forties with lightly greying chestnut-coloured hair, wearing a long camel overcoat, an elaborate oversize pashmina and red trousers tucked into sparkling boots. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Well, supposed to be." I sighed with a resigned grin. An ambiguous whooping cheer erupted from the baristas over at Joe and the Juice and I felt like crumpling to the floor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The woman and I exchanged the cordial phrases that cover the ground when two strangers are unexpectedly bound in mutual crisis. <i>That's what you get when you fly budget, hey? Do you think we should speak to someone? So inconsiderate announcing it only 20 minutes before we were due to fly! Some of us have jobs to go to in the morning right?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was too tired to even try and think of any other option than to just lay down on the cold shiny ground and try and sleep the delay away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"I have an idea." The woman said to me suddenly. There was a trace of a scandinavian accent in her voice but I couldn't quite work it out. "You see there, there's another flight leaving for Gatwick in an hour and half." She pointed at that screen, which indeed listed the flight and a gate number. "We are <i>going </i>to get on that flight."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I hardly took a second for me to agree.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And so we began to walk and I suddenly felt a bizarre wave of mischievousness invade my exhaustion. The woman's heels clacked across the faux marble floor dramatically and we strode in sync, two women on a mission to simply get home. People instinctively moved out of our way and when we reached the passport gates she did not hesitate. If we couldn't get on that flight we would then be stuck on the wrong side of the terminal. But the gates slid open and she turned back to me and winked. Genuinely winked. I couldn't help but grin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We power strutted to the gate to find it totally deserted. No staff, no passengers, nothing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"And now... we wait." She said, throwing her bag to the floor right in front of the check-in desk. I gratefully sank to the floor cross-legged, leaning my back against a pillar and she joined me. We settled into a comfortable silence and both retrieved books from our hand luggage. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"What's yours about?" she asked as I fished out my dramatic and colourful copy of 'LACE' a book I'd picked up in a charity shop a week ago and had proceeded to blow my mind ever since. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Oh it's incredible. Super trashy. It spans from 1948 to 1980 and follows these four girls who meet in a Swiss boarding school. One of them gets pregnant but you don't find out who... and then the book follows their bizarre lives as they get older and have these glittering careers and meet all these illustrious men and have affairs, and then culminates in this climax where a world famous movie star gathers them all together in this New York hotel in, sits them down and says 'Which one of you <i>bitches</i> is my mother?'"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Oh wow." she laughed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"It's truly a masterpiece." I held the weighty novel to my chest in endearment. "What about yours?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Ah, I'm reading the biography of a female Colombian politician who was kidnapped in 2002 by revolutionaries and held in a jungle prison for six years until she was rescued by the military. Her name is Ingrid Betancourt. My husband actually knows her and is introducing me next week, so I thought I had to read up on her."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"That's incredible." I breathed, feeling a little inadequate for my reading choice. She smiled and nodded and we began to read in peace. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was barely a minute later when she dramatically slapped the book shut, turned to me and said "I think we need beer."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">For the next hour and a half we sat sprawled across the floor by the check-in desk, books tossed to one side, beer in hands, discussing our lives. The stranger formality had long since dropped away and we were telling one another secrets we'd told no-one else before. Slowly people started to accumulate around the gate but we were somewhat oblivious, lost in this strange serendipity. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">After a while, an airline rep appeared and she jumped to her feet to speak to him. She took him to one side with graceful authority and spoke to him in a hushed tone of a language I couldn't begin to understand. After a moment and a lot of hopeful nodding, he took down our names and she turned to me triumphantly. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"We just have to wait until everyone else has boarded to see if there are any gaps. But it looks good!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"Well... then I guess we have time to drink more beer." We both instinctively held our cans aloft and clinked them together with a smile.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">She told me her name was Asgjard. She spoke 7 languages but could more or less understand 9. She was Norwegian, a fashion designer and lecturer, and has lived in London for 20 years. She'd been married for 15 of those years and had been cheating on her husband for the last 2 with one of her students. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">She told me she was in love with him. She told me she loved him more than anything and they even had a flat together in London. She told me she wasn't sure if he'd ever loved her, and at one moment I actually thought she might cry. She told me she never wanted to cage him, she was never ever one that demanded something of a man that would impinge on him to provide.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was so desperate to write down the things she said, because the words flowed so lyrically from her I was transfixed. A few stuck in my mind though. She told me: "You're never defined by the person you love, but we often forget the importance of seeing <i>how</i> the person who loves you most, defines you."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"It's so hard to know yourself, sometimes we can only see who we are through the eyes of the people who know us most." I replied. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"We should listen to every good or bad thing any person sees in us. People come into your life, however brief, for a reason. Every person has a chance to teach you something." She said, and we exchanged a mutual understanding smile. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A queue of curious people began to snake around us as we sat, luggage between us like girl scouts around a campfire and I told her why I'd come away alone for the first time. How I needed to be free mentally, despite the fact that I had been emotionally for a while. I told her how it had all fallen apart, how a creator can never hope to be understood by someone who just doesn't really ever feel the need to <i>make something, </i>despite how much they care about them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">After a while, we realised the gate was empty once again and the airline rep called us forward. I clambered ungracefully to my feet and realised that through the exhaustion, mischievousness, adrenaline and you know, probably something to do with all the beer, I'd somehow got a little bit drunk. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">After some frenetic radio-ing and some hastily exchanged Danish, two boarding passes were printed and it was official. Our semi-drunken sit in had earned us a ticket home. We sped through the tunnel joyously and just before we got on the plane, she touched my arm. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"I knew we could do it. See, everything happens for a reason. If we'd met anyone else this wouldn't have happened."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I smiled at her, overcome with a small sadness that I knew I would never see this woman again. "We stood up for ourselves and it paid off - we got what we deserved!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"No, no," she corrected me. "I don't believe anyone 'gets what they deserve'. If people really want and work hard, they get what they were working for."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"I'm definitely writing that down you know."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">She winked again. "Hey, maybe I'll see you on the other side."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And with that, we entered the plane and she shot off down the aisle to where her spare seat was, and I quickly snuck in between two people near the front. For those two hours my mind simply boggled, endlessly re-running our conversations and what happened, scribbling it down in my notebook and trying to remember every minute detail. I thought of all the things I wanted to tell her after we landed. That I really believed in fate. That she should read Vivienne Westwood's book and how she too fell in love with one her fashion students. That I'd love to attend a talk of hers if she was doing on in London in the near future. I almost found myself becoming nervous at the thought of our bizarre reunion back on terra firma. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">When we landed, my exhaustion finally overcame me and I could barely drag my feet through passport control. I stood at the back of the room and down the line saw a flourish of a decadent gold-laced pashmina against a camel coat. It was Asgjard, about 30 people in front of me. And she was deep in conversation with what looked like the pilot of the aircraft. She threw back her head and laughed. To my surprise, I almost felt disappointed. Perhaps I hadn't been a special stranger she'd shared a bizarre bond with. Maybe... Maybe that's just what she was like. Maybe she hadn't needed to talk to someone about what she was going through, maybe she just needed to say it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And I decided I was okay with that. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I watched her go through the gates, and by the time I had gone through, I knew she was likely to have already gone. I waited for a couple of moments, scanning the people waiting at baggage reclaim, but I knew the way we left was probably perfect. To try and reunite would mean a strangely sentimental goodbye, which seem both justified yet also unnecessary. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">After I got off the train from the airport, I finally sunk into the passenger seat of my Mothers car, grateful to be so close to home and bed, knowing if I'd have not been stood in front of that woman in the departures lounge back in Denmark, I'd still be a good hour or so away from take off.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"You must be so annoyed about that delay!" My mum said as we pulled away and began the final leg of the journey home. The trees blurred into the inky night sky and I closed my eyes, already feeling my body twitching in anticipation of sleep, and I gave a deep contented sigh. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">"It wasn't so bad." I replied.</span></div>
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-3482474745403410302016-03-15T14:06:00.000-07:002016-03-15T15:34:06.710-07:00More Than Just Fertility - Talking Ageism With Jo Cruse<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS2ETwpGU5xgYOAG0QC4hc5_2UhKTWSnMwzmbdDN-2bNvY2fsmualEeZJp7BD93AbBQT57mDlMA9OqL49YtjG1xUS_3M0UL74aMRxTw8dIbd0aBU5iRXtcJ8A-tznSdb0_X_iu64tw0BU4/s1600/12722477_10153396620476889_1365760943_o.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS2ETwpGU5xgYOAG0QC4hc5_2UhKTWSnMwzmbdDN-2bNvY2fsmualEeZJp7BD93AbBQT57mDlMA9OqL49YtjG1xUS_3M0UL74aMRxTw8dIbd0aBU5iRXtcJ8A-tznSdb0_X_iu64tw0BU4/s1600/12722477_10153396620476889_1365760943_o.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Truly nothing excites me more in life, than observing another human being - perhaps across the room, perhaps on a stage, perhaps half-obscured and wrapped up in conversations with other people - but someone who is simply </span><span style="font-size: large;"><i>dazzles</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Not long ago, I wrote about </span><a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/2016/02/an-evening-with-quarter-club.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">'The Quarter Club'</span></a><span style="font-size: large;">, a female-empowering event I attended with Emma recently, and there was one person in particular there who shone like a beacon for me. Not only from the speech she made, but the unapologetic fearlessness with which she confessed to having screwed up her whole life... but bounced back from it. I knew I simply had to hear more from her, so as the evening drew to a close, I propelled myself across the room toward her to insist we meet for coffee. Because there was one thing in particular that I felt compelled to discuss with her, and felt sure there was no-one on earth who could ease my worries like she could</span>.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Why is it, that a woman feels so much pressure to have all her shit together by 30? Why do we feel that once we hit 20, we're on a ticking clock to make it - whatever that means to us - or we've failed forever? Why are we told to be afraid of the big 3-0, as if after that, we women have no use, value, or purpose?</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A couple of weeks back, I got my wish. The incredible <a href="https://twitter.com/jo_cruse" target="_blank">Jo Cruse </a>and I met in a bustling little coffee shop in Soho, and we just unleashed for hours, excitedly chatting, theorising, and trying to work out why the world is the way it is for women. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I recorded the whole thing. At the end, all I could think was HOLY SHIT THIS WOULD'VE MADE SUCH A GREAT PODCAST EPISODE as our conversation was miraculously seamless and fascinatingly complex, but the recording was busy and loud. So instead, I've decided to just transcribe the whole thing, and so here it is, in all it's glory</span>:</div>
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<b style="font-size: xx-large;"><u>Jo Cruse and Katie Oldham; An Exploration of Female Ageism</u></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: For me, it begins with the fact that I’ve had a couple of really tough times in my life. It was a big thing for me to admit that I needed help. I didn’t realise how long I’d been in this funk, but I got out of it and that’s what gave me the courage to realise university wasn’t for me. So I quit, left everything behind and moved to New York, but when I actually got there it was a rude awakening, again, that I now had nothing and knew no-one. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And when you meet people for the first time you become really aware of the person that you put across to them that you are, and it was a massive learning curve for me, and I really began to analyse who I was and what I cared about. Whereas before – you know when someone says ‘what’s your favourite album' and you’re like ermmmmm, there’s just so much going on that you don’t always pay attention to who you are.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So I think from then - the start of June last year - until now, I’m definitely a different person. It was the end of a chapter and a new beginning, and I know it sounds wanky, but really a new epoch of time for me. Since then I’ve become really invested in educating myself because I do miss learning - hated uni but always loved learning - so I bought all these books and began to educate myself, and now, I just feel so sure about who I am and the true path I wanna follow in life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But I can't help but think that sort of awakening is one I wish I’d had when I was 18, because at 23 I feel like I’ve wasted so much valuable time. With writing, it’s different, but with music I feel so frustrated that I wasted so much time to have that awakening when I could have been getting better at guitar, making connections and doing gigs and putting stuff out there you know?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I just feel like the window of opportunity is slowly closing now, it was wide open and now it’s on the close and I’m freaking out that I’m not gonna be able to align my shit quick enough to do something that will keep that open and stop it closing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: And the irony is, that kind of energy is not constructive.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: That’s just it, it’s a block! It’s like I’m procrastinating over an assignment or something and I get in this self-destructive spiral, yet this is something I want, something I do want to do, but the stress about it is debilitating me even further from achievement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: Yeah it’s completely consuming. I used to wake up every morning and feel like I’m so far behind. I’d just lie in bed, the first thing I do is open Facebook or Instagram and see all my mates living these amazing lives and I just felt like there was this massive gap between my life and everyone else's and I was like ‘why can’t you get your shit together? Everyone else has sorted this out, how are you here living with your parents as you turn 30? This is not the plan’</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: Do you think there<i> is</i> an extra societal pressure for women? Because even at 23 I’m like, 'Most bands take at least 5 years to break into the industry, I do not have the luxury to wait that long!' and then even crazier ‘well if I do get my music career sorted then when do I fit kids in?' and I’m like oh my god!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: There is a huge pressure – I actually wrote about this yesterday. I think on the one hand our generation is really blessed because we can be and do anything, but its also the biggest pressure because what it does is it makes us feel like we have to be everything.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: Social Media and the hyper-connectivity of the world has opened so many more doors I feel like we get FOMO if we can't have all of those doors open at once. But that’s just not possible.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: Absolutely. That is actually one of the secrets – it is not possible to do it all at once. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: But then it feels like closing some of those doors now means they're locked for good, and they're never opening up again. I mean, I think part of this does come from dating a man so much older than me on and off for the past 3 years. He never held me back from doing what I want to do or anything, but I can’t help but have this anxious paranoia that he was some kind of anchor, because I feel I’m on such a strict fucking time schedule that I don’t have time for this right now! Which is stupid because I’ve got so much spare time because all I do is procrastinate!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I know it’s fucked up but it’s the pre-25 thing. I have to set these foundations, now or never. With writing I feel really comfortable that I’ve done that, I’ve done this blog for 3 years and I feel I’m in a good place with that, but there’s this other flailing intangible thing that I’m like trying to reign in… like a fucking squid on a harpoon right now, I’m like COME ON and it’s like battling, and I’m like shit, if I don’t get this in the fuckin boat by sundown I’m fucked, I’m absolutely fucked. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So I’m like what do I do? But then I’m like uhhhh it’s so annoying. These books that I’ve been reading, they’re memoirs from 1970’s musicians, so pre-internet obviously, and now I’m like ‘It’s the internet’s fault! It’s not my fault!’ I look back on timehop and stuff like that as if looking back on a girl who died. I look at that person it’s hilarious but also really sad that it’s just not me at all, it’s like… when I was 20, that girl died and this soul got put into that body and I just carried on. Like, it’s still the same memories but just not me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">At Uni I had no time for art or literature and that’s the stuff which is the most important to me now, I was just like 'social life, getting drunk, kissing cute boys,' I sort of had this prolonged teenhood. And I just look back now and think, fuck, if I’d have been like this then I could have started earlier and could be in a really great position with everything now. And then I sort of end up blaming the internet like ‘well if I didn’t care so much about updating my status or taking selfies with my friends, then I would have spent more time working on my goals' and I’m like ‘ugh it's the internets fault we’re never going to raise a good generation of thinkers’ but then I’m like ‘hold on a fucking minute, the internet has made everything I’ve built, what it is now!' So I’m like oh my god losing my mind about about this. This is pretty much the basis of all my blog posts – I fucking hate the internet but the internet is so great, hahaha.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And it doesn't help in these books that I’m reading, these authors found all these amazing artists and musicians and writers from when they were super young and it really shaped who they are – they were like 12 years old going through their dads record collections and listening to Ella Fitzgerald on a gramophone and shit like that and I’m like… I was listening to S Club 7. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And sometimes it's upsetting the relief I feel at reading like one of the writers moved to new York when she was 24 and I had this horrible moment of like YES! I did it when I was 22. Then I read another one where this musician didn’t start learning guitar til she was 23 and I was like FUCK YEAH! I didn’t start til 23 as well I’ve still got a chance! I get horribly weirdly competitive, like being a talented woman only matters when you're young and hot, and I can just about still win. It's fucked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But all of these people who have gone on to be successful way later in their careers like Blondie and Patti Smith because of the foundations they made when they were younger. I feel like there's no chance of becoming successful when you start as an… I was going to say ‘older women’ when I mean over 30, how sad is that? It's just like, no-one’s listening to a new band with a frontwoman who’s 30 shouting ‘kids, do your homework!’ off the side of the stage but… I’m inventing that, as a woman!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: It’s really distressing isn’t it? One of the things I was really struck with in my 20’s and still am now, is it I felt like I’d wasted time. I felt exactly like you did, a load of false starts and wasting time having fun, I didn’t know what I was doing, I chopped and changed jobs, relationships I moved countries, and I was quite recently on the phone to my mum and was like ‘I don’t even own a fucking sofa.’</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>She was like ‘why for you is that a measure of success?’ I was like ‘I don’t even know.’ And I think that whilst it was funny, was also really true, it’s like in a part of my head, I wasn’t an adult until I owned a sofa. Like, where the fuck did I get that from? No-one told me that. We are our own worst enemies a lot of the time, and I think the other thing which is really difficult is that women do not talk about these things. We’re really open when it comes to all kinds of stuff but not this.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: That’s why me and Emma were so struck by your talk, we were in the front row just nudging each other without taking our eyes off you because this was the first time someone was saying ‘you know what, you don’t have to fucking worry about that’… and I actually <i>believed</i> it. People say all the time ‘oh but you’re still so young!’ and it’s like ‘fuck off! You’re younger than me and you’ve done better shit!’</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But yeah, that was like the first time I’d ever actually believed that you actually can stop one life and start another one, and it doesn’t matter how old you are to do that. It’s not like, you’re that person as a child, that person in your teens and then from 20 onwards you have to stick to one life, and then if you haven’t sorted that by 30 then you might as well just die. Hahaha. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It was so nice to hear about it from someone’s whose done it. Like parents god love them, it’s all well and good them saying ‘you don’t have to worry about this yet’ but it’s like ‘…well I am so can someone tell me what to do about it?!’</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC:Yeah I had to have a really hard conversation with myself and be like, you have got to let this go. You can not spend the rest of your 30’s regretting everything you did in your previous life. So I had to really ask how much more time am I prepared to give to that, and I had to just say ‘whats done is done’ And it’s weird, once I made the decision to be like ‘fuck it, it’s done.’ All this amazing shit happened. Like totally amazing stuff. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: Yeah like I don’t regret any of the people I was or the mistakes I’ve made because, like you said, I know that if that hadn’t happened then I wouldn’t who I am today. And to be able to look back and cringe at yourself is such a beautiful thing because it shows how much you’ve grown, and to embarrassed about shit that you said is amazing because isn’t that magical how you’re the same cells and the same identity and the same name but a completely different soul?Isnt that such a cool thing that people overlook? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">That’s why I hate when people on twitter go back to like 4 years ago on celebrities feeds and try and find something problematic that they said and be like ‘erm can you explain why in 2009 you made this off hand comment?’</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I think its such a big thing to let go of, having regret because you feel like you wasted time when you could have been doing stuff that would have benefitted the who you are now. But most of the time what we’re doing in that time we said we wasted, was having fun. Maybe that’s what it is - We need to stop blaming themselves for having fun and counting it as time wasting, when in the present tense of it happening it was not wasting time. And I think the reason women do that so much is because we’re so anchored by the stigma of ageism. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: I think there is a biological basis too. Wether you want to have children or not, your body is on a timeline and mens aren’t. That’s why I’m doing this fucking crazy adventure for 9 months, I want to have experiences which aren’t conventionally defined as being valuable. Because we feel like we owe that time. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: It’s like, all humans are born with a mortal countdown… but women are born with two. And one of ours comes half way through. Like we gotta tick that one off first then get on with the other one. And because we feel we owe that time and as the older we get the more we owe it, like the more intense that debt becomes, that we don’t have the liberty to like do our own stuff we wanna do. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: It leads to bad choices too. You get into bad relationships, you rush into marriage, people take jobs they don’t like because they think shit I’m 30. Why do we talk about settling down? I hate the word settle. Like, why would you settle? I would never ‘settle’ for anything. Why at 34 do you feel like your life bit is finished and you’re now like locked into this drudgery until you’re 75? How depressing is that?!</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Our lives are constant waves of change and transformation and multiple careers and multiple versions of who we are and I don’t think we are accepting enough of that. Hillary Clinton is running for President at 70. At 70 she’s going to start a new career. That suddenly made me feel a lot less stressed about the fact that at 30 I don’t know what I want to do. I’ve got 40 years to become president! </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: I read in this memoir recently about a conversation the author was having with a woman at this cocktail party. This woman was like 92 or something and she has a new lease on life, and she said like ‘wow I can’t have seen you in like 10 years but you seem so young and vibrant. And it turns out, this woman just decided at 80 years old that she wanted to learn about ancient Mesopotamia which is like the middle east, or I don’t know really like Atlantis or some shit like that, but anyway, this woman and she went back to university, learnt all about it, wrote a doctoral thesis and now works for the university as an expert on that niche field of study because at 80 she was like ‘actually that’s what I wanna be now’. Fucking incredible. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC:That is incredible, and that’s the thing, we think everything that our lives are valued by, what will we’ll be remembered for, are the things we do whilst we’re still young.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: Yeah! Maybe part of this pressure is – I even said it myself – that pre-30 we have to put these foundations down and then when we hit 30 its take a deep breath, planning permission is in, now we have to start building. That structure you build on those foundations is what you’re gonna be for the rest of your life… But you can knock that building down. You can move to a new site… wow I never even really thought about that and it’s so true… </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: And the thing is, those foundations are what they are and you can’t change them, but you can build anything you want on top of them. Who you are at 23 is who you are, but you can do whatever the fuck you want on top of what you built before. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: Yeah and you say the different waves of people you are and the people you have been in your past… they are all foundations but they can have different functions, like one could be a… a load-bearing wall – I love metaphors haha. We’ve had building sites, a squid you’ve gotta capture before sundown, and now your childhood self is a load-bearing wall in your present moment infrastructure haaaaa – anyway but yeah like, you can choose what is an important wall, what’s a tiny brick, and what’s a ceramic tile in the fucking toilet you know. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It’s like building a spirit house or something, you can attribute certain amounts of weight and purpose to these things as to how important they are to you. That gross Uni me where I was like 'don’t care about learning let’s get drunk', I’ve removed a lot of weight away from that because it’s just not what I associate with anymore or care about. And I’ve shifted that energy back into stuff I do cared about. Doesn’t mean that stuff didn’t happen, but it doesn’t have to be an integral part of who I am.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And this carries forward – this would make a great podcast I just realised! Haha – yeah so like that doesn’t have to stop once you reach a certain age, you don’t have to get your affairs in order, practically and like spiritually, you don’t have to figure out what weight goes where, which pieces make you up and then at like 30 that gets cast into iron. All of it is like sponge. Like jenga SOUL JENGA. Let’s roll with this… you can pull out the pieces you want to continue with and build it on top! Let’s not think about it falling over hahaha. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: Wait but in the end it does… and then you start again!</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: Shit yeah.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC:You know, the best parts of my past year or so, having had a complete lapse, is being able to re-curate my life and select only the pieces I wanted to carry forward and leave the parts I don’t need. And you know you were saying you feel like you can’t have all the doors open at once? They can be open, but you can choose to walk through some at certain points. Some might close, but they’re not locked, and you can re-open them and it be at a much better time for you to do so. Life is so much more fluid that we think it is.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: I think a lot of it does come down to the fact that as a woman, I feel like we subconsciously owe something, like you have a debt and a responsibility because of your biology. Our gender has the responsibility to bare life, and although obviously we can’t do it without men, they can fuck off when they’ve done their bit, we have to fulfil our duty and invest so much time and resources in creating life. And I know that’s actually the root of decades of misogyny and sexism because in evolution, the female of the species has that major responsibility that the male is free of. That’s why there’s a lot of hate on women who, quite fairly, don’t want to have children, too. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And I do think there’s this massive knock-on effect from that first deadline, from having kids or being fertile, that has rippling undercurrents through all of that ageism stress. I think that’s genuinely where it comes from. Like 30-35 is considered ‘last chance saloon’ to get baby-making for a woman, so that has ricocheting effects on all other aspects. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: What's so frightening, is our understanding of female value is directly linked to our fertile value.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: Oh my god that is so true! </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: So suddenly at 50 we don’t exist anymore as humans because our job is over.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: Did you see that thing that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler did? They had a party to celebrate the last day of ‘being fuckable’ to celebrate them now forever playing mums in movies. Amazing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: I did! Amazing. And you know, weirdly without realising it, our generations still internalise that message, that we are at our most valuable before 30 because that’s when we are at our most fertile. And then from 50, we might as well just be dead. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: That’s so true and such an amazingly real parallel to draw between fertility and female worth. Because that’s been true from like… Neanderthal times. And even now when we’re such a sophisticated, intellectual and more aware civilisation, even now it’s like we’re born with that knowledge in our minds. Can we escape it? I feel like we need to tell everyone this, this is so important. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And I feel the easy option here is to blame men but I don’t think it is <i>entirely</i> their fault. I do think a lot of women put pressure on other women as well, even our mother’s and our grandmother’s who grew up ‘knowing their place’. And although that’s not the way we’re raised now, a lot of that early maternal care does have impacts. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Look at religion. The majority of western children grow up gently persuaded into believing in God, because its easier to teach about not being a little shit if you say God is always watching you so you better be good. And then look at the 'creation story' we're bought up on from day one, Adam was made from stardust, Eve was a reanimated fucking spare rib he didn't need. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And the birth of Jesus! Mary is just chilling there, gets knocked up without her will, just like congratulations now you’re pregnant, and then she’s like 'well, thanks', gets put on a fucking donkey and then what happens after that? It’s aaaaaalllll about Jesus isn’t it! Mary doesn't get a look in, she's done her bit. There should be an E! True Hollywood Story, Virgin Mary: Where is she now?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: Hahaha that's SO true, oh my god.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: We just grow up with subtle things like that, there’s messages everywhere. Even I’ve found myself thinking about those girls at school right, the ones who get pregnant at like 16/17 and your parents were always like ‘stupid little girls have ruined their lives so young’ like they have a duty to be a mother now, and nothing else, forever. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But then recently I was looking at these girls on Facebook who are now like 22/23, they’ve got this 5 year old kid who’s just gone off to primary school, and I’m like holy shit, they can do what they want! They’ve had three kids, got it out the way early, now they’re cracking on with life again, and now I’m like shit actually, they might have been on to something! </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I’ve always thought I won’t start having kids til I’m at least 30, but even that comes from the same pressure because I’m only saying that because I wanna make sure I do all of my shit before I effectively die to become my children’s mother. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: That’s another weird female thing too, that as soon as you give birth, your ‘self’ goes with it too, there can be no ‘other’ any more. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: It’s like that quote from Interstellar ‘When you become a parent, you are just the ghost of your children's future’</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: Exactly, like when you have a child, you cease to exist. You simply now serve as their guardian, just there to fulfil their needs. And once they’ve grown up, you just fade into the dust because its now their turn. But that’s why its so comforting to see women who are mums and have got amazing careers because its made me believe and know that it is possible.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>You know, when I started my old job, my boss said to me, 'One thing that I hope for you for the next year, Jo, is that you really fail in a really big way.' And I was like, well fucking hell that’s quite horrible, but he said ‘I have nothing but the best intentions for you, but you’ve never really failed before and you need to know what that’s like, and you need to learn that you can come back from it.' And then very soon after… everything went wrong. And the only way I can really think about it differently now, is I had to go through this process of losing everything to re-write all the rules I’d thought about life and career and age and everything.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: I feel a fucking million times better just having this chat because I feel like I’ve understood a lot of the origin about why I feel this way. I think part of the reason we can’t just learn to ‘let things go’ is because you can’t just switch it off, you have to learn why you feel like that in the first place. Maybe it is just a case of trying to work out what and who to blame ha. But now I can see this badass old granny whose a demon on guitar up on that stage... I'm not just going to quit something I adore if I don't make it by 30.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: Exactly. And you know what, I’ve achieved none of the goals I thought I would by 30 and I’ve had to get to where I’m okay with that, but what I’ve also realised is how much I was holding back. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>I think I liked to be in a relationship which was very safe because that’s what I thought you do when you’re 30 - you get married. And I had this career which was going to keep me financially stable for the rest of my life, but that wasn’t actually exciting me. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>And then suddenly when I didn’t have those things any more I just thought ‘well, fuck it. I’m just going to do this all over again, whatever my age.’</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">KO: Incredible. That's what we need to do. Spread the word start the conversation. Re-write the rules. We are more than just our fertility!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>JC: That's it. That's your title right there. More than just fertility.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">You know, listening back to our conversation as I typed it up, I was struck by the tone of the way we spoke to one another that I hadn't really noticed at the time; Both as equals, as easy a friend... yet the unmistakeable undertone of just a scared little girl, asking a grown up to tell her everything's going to be okay. And a grown-up turning around and saying the perfect response, 'I don't know what's going to happen, because not even I have worked that one out yet, but I promise you. You'll always be okay.'</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">In the face of adversity, when you don't always have the solutions, never underestimate the power of someone who knows what you're going through. The power of hearing that you're not alone, and your feelings are not alien, not invalid, but real energy felt outside of you, however uniquely also within. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So we must tell our stories, we must ask questions, we should find ways to facilitate the gathering of passionate people and extraordinary women, because we never know who we might be reassuring when we simply admit our fears, and who out there might be listening who can help soothe them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This conversation with Jo was restorative, therapeutic, invigorating, inspirational and soul-hydrating - the words I so desperately needed to hear and hear myself say, and believe, too. I only hope that by sharing this, it may have the same effect on you, too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The world is different for us, in ways that we can not justify and sometimes feel we can do little to control. But even the tiniest drop will make the ocean vibrate, if only for a moment. And if we can change attitudes toward women by opening up these doors of truth and connection and community, then we can make the world a better place for the girls of the future. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We are <i>so</i> much more than being young, fertile, fuckable and worth eyeballin'. Our value as humans, creators, intellectuals, and game-changers does <i>not</i> weaken as the streaks of silver illuminate from our scalps and our voices become scratchy from the battlecries of decades. As our skin collects scars and our faces tell our stories, call them <i>not</i> imperfections and flaws but trademarks of experience, and education, achievement and purpose. <i>We</i> are the remarkable of the species because we have superpowers - we divide, we multiply, we have the power to create new, sentient versions of ourselves, metaphorically and physically, and it only ever makes us <i>stronger</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We never begin to fade once a man stops believing we can shine. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">We link arms with our sisters in our matching rhinestone-bedazzled leather jackets and rev up our motorbikes, and scoot off into the sunset, laughing as the reflected light blinds the magpies and leaves them spluttering in our dust.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I am a woman, and when I'm 23, 53 or 83, I'll still be a woman, wether I'm fanciable, childbearable, marketable or not. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And in that expected silence from that demographic of us, there's just <i>so</i> much room to roar.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">You can find the amazing Jo Cruse on <a href="https://twitter.com/jo_cruse" target="_blank">Twitter here</a> and her <a href="https://jocruse.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">blog here</a>!</span></div>
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-56580023275068393812016-03-07T05:29:00.001-08:002016-03-07T05:34:37.979-08:00Top 10 Most Life-Changing Quotes from 'Vivienne Westwood'<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm7Pd2CC6wS6pf_2enq99ClxRJIcFuvdo3Y0y7KqSL4K-Ebwn3YJxYFLcRDBMth3AKk_RiRKHB09wRvpe1-2PNnk_mXp2SBetKK0VNzBCLJXaiFgGUd_OQaN9EyfeX8Wn3Wp7X6OiweyTR/s1600/12837364_10153375055591889_38553924_o.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm7Pd2CC6wS6pf_2enq99ClxRJIcFuvdo3Y0y7KqSL4K-Ebwn3YJxYFLcRDBMth3AKk_RiRKHB09wRvpe1-2PNnk_mXp2SBetKK0VNzBCLJXaiFgGUd_OQaN9EyfeX8Wn3Wp7X6OiweyTR/s1600/12837364_10153375055591889_38553924_o.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"I guess my greatest inspirations at the moment are anything to do with pop culture of the 60's and 70's,"</i> I replied to kind folks of the </span><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.thewilloughbybookclub.co.uk/">Willoughby Book Club</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">when they asked what kind of books I'm into. <i>"Especially musical memoirs. I loved Clothes, Music, Boys by Viv Albertine for the reveries of punk rock London, and LOVED Just Kids by Patti Smith for the wistful nostalgia of love and art in New York City."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">A week later, a hefty, beautifully wrapped green parcel was dropped through my letterbox. I unwrapped it with curious glee to find a hand-written inscription reading 'This book belongs to Katie Oldham'<i> </i>inside possibly the greatest gift I'd ever received.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"Well," </i>I said holding up my new copy of Vivienne Westwood's memoir. <i>"Looks like they've absolutely bloody nailed it."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So before I get into just how much this book has absolutely CHANGED MY LIFE, I wanna talk a little bit about <a href="http://www.thewilloughbybookclub.co.uk/" target="_blank">Willoughby Book Club</a>. I discovered them on Twitter, when I asked around if there were any book subscription services. Subscription boxes are such a huge thing now, and there seems to be for everything - from makeup miniatures to cheese samples. There simply <i>had</i> to be one for books right? It's no secret that I simply adore to read, and am always seeking to broaden my horizons yet often feel overwhelmed by the choice. With my new phase of Scarphelia that's something I'd love to begin to offer - book reviews and recommendations of shit that has changed my life, and if you get me, will sure as hell change yours too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And so I stumbled upon <a href="http://www.thewilloughbybookclub.co.uk/" target="_blank">Willoughby Book Club</a> and was instantly awed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">With a selection of subscription packages ranging from 3 months to a year, The WBC guide you through a brief interview to gauge your reading habits, then source the most amazing books you are yet to read and deliver them straight to your door. Packages range from £29-£44, which works out to be as little as £10 a month - often cheaper than books instore, and beautifully gift-wrapped and hand-dedicated. What I love most is that this is not just an automated service that send out the same book to everyone when they come in, but a bespoke, tailored service to make sure you receive a book that you will love. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Vivienne Westwood had been lurking in my Amazon wishlist for months, and I think I did a little squeal when I opened it and realised it was now finally mine. As I said, they truly could not have chosen better, and now I've finished, I kinda sorta hold them accountable for changing my damn life for the better. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As I often do, I took to this book with a pen ready to underline the pearls of wisdom, but little did I expect just how I was going to be blown away by the first line on the very first page. I even used it as the start of <a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/2016/03/the-one-where-she-finally-realises-its.html" target="_blank">my previous blog post</a> explaining the change in my attitude toward writing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">That foreword outlined exactly the education I was about to receive, but also precisely what I needed to hear to soothe my worrisome soul about my own future. </span><span style="font-size: large;">And so alongside that, these were my top 10 quotes I pulled from this literary masterpiece. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9fsjeT-56Kn5xFR2XZqGKsbe9P6SeZZzqJLe5R7ZPrTVNwhfQ-tZfK9nsSq4fF8uK3_SeE1P64VSKQcmoi7wnHjuJoVjOdT_3LodF9CxOixi7BXkaGcgiUO7k-C5opo6xdO-Yj5r4whEM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-03-07+at+12.30.39.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9fsjeT-56Kn5xFR2XZqGKsbe9P6SeZZzqJLe5R7ZPrTVNwhfQ-tZfK9nsSq4fF8uK3_SeE1P64VSKQcmoi7wnHjuJoVjOdT_3LodF9CxOixi7BXkaGcgiUO7k-C5opo6xdO-Yj5r4whEM/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-03-07+at+12.30.39.png" /></span></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJq3j7YPoRNrfik6iAmih0MQzSys2d51A44NnuiJVY1svIPXFo4OUvl0JIWsVhhZHA2Dtk7En5NZ-VOaB1tU3vEukQRRaLSHG9Tr_ggfkVGDwdDS5w8pYdVETowWrcKTR6wrKdUR-8iMLm/s1600/12842595_10153375163046889_1837590751_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJq3j7YPoRNrfik6iAmih0MQzSys2d51A44NnuiJVY1svIPXFo4OUvl0JIWsVhhZHA2Dtk7En5NZ-VOaB1tU3vEukQRRaLSHG9Tr_ggfkVGDwdDS5w8pYdVETowWrcKTR6wrKdUR-8iMLm/s1600/12842595_10153375163046889_1837590751_o.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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<b><u><span style="font-size: x-large;">On lessons from history that will save our future:</span></u></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"My duty is to understand. To understand the world. This is our exchange for the luck of being alive. From people who have lived before us we can rediscover different versions of the world through art - this is the true meaning of culture - and by comparison, we form our own ideas of the world better than the one we are in, the one we've made a mess of. We can change our future. In the pursuit of ideas you will start to think, and that will change your life. And if you change your life, you can change the world."</i> - foreword </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>On forgiving our previous selves:</u></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"Everybody knows their past life is like a series of different little scenes. It's a story and you've selected from your memory the things that you think are important. Nothing from the past is entirely true. But you are only in those scenes properly when they are put together. That's what we should do, sew together all the scenes. I look back now and I hardly recognise myself, or I only recognise this tiny piece of what I have become and I think 'You silly, silly little girl, how could you be so naive?" But then again, naive gets you places too, and it gets you hungry to learn. That's what I'd say to the girl in that photograph, actually; 'Don't be afraid. Keep reading. Say it like it is. And then think for yourself.' </i>" - p63</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>On storytelling through clothing:</u></b></span><br />
<i><br /></i><span style="font-size: large;"><i>"The ingredients of punk are various. The idea of people wearing clothes that were a bit too big or a bit too small - like hand-me-downs and everything. That was all a part of the look... It's all about stories." "Even worn denim gives the idea of experience. If you wear old clothes, then you can look like you have the experience, the story that the clothes carry."</i> - p136, p239</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>On inspiration being the key to education:</u></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"I don't believe in closing in. You don't make people want to change things by making them realise how poor and humiliated they are... you have to make people feel great before you get change."</i> - p239</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>On enduring love with a soulmate:</u></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"It was an heroic time, that's how I think of it. We were on the road. We slept together. We stayed in the same rooms together and we drove the van together... We were fighting in the desert together. We were comrades-in-arms. We were not some bourgeois couple, we were soldiers in battle."</i> - p268</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>On aging:</u></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"I really like myself physically. I see all kinds of things in my face; secrets and depths. I wouldn't dream of having a facelift."</i> - p322</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>On marriage:</u></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"And whatever he does, I would stick by Andreas. The way I see it, he can do whatever he wants. And I don't just mean creatively. I like to think for myself. I am proud and I am a rebel. So I would not stoop, ever, EVER to expect anything from anybody that they didn't want to give me. I would never, ever demand anything from a man. He can always do what he wants. There's a wonderful Chinese proverb: If a horse is yours, it will always come home. And you've got to understand Andreas is a horse. A wild, horse."</i> - p344</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Ian Kelly on Westwood, the brand:</u></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"And there is now, for anyone intrigued by this story or by her shops and her clothes, much more than a promise of something finely made. There is the whole iconography of a story. There is the narrative of a woman and a series of ideas. When you buy Westwood you buy something backed with a story, like a recipe with true history. Something anti or something ante. Something with the scent of her learning and her reading, her picture-gazing, her rows with The Establishment or indeed with Malcom; something wrought with human graft."</i> - p368</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Ian Kelly on the origins of an icon:</u></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"She remains rooted in the world of punk - it is the wellspring of her credibility within fashion, and it is also one of the very few moments in the history of dress when the language of a culture was shifted by clothes."</i> p371</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b><u>Julian Assange on the global power of Vivienne as an activist:</u></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>"She is inconvenient; people cannot handle the consistency and seriousness with which she sticks to her politics. They are made uncomfortable by the way she injects politics into everything. But politics is everywhere, and if we didn't have bloody-minded people like Vivienne, we'd have no chance of changing our world for the better."</i> - p396</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">*</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I can't really deduce what I love most about this book; the power of a self-made woman, the punk rock guide of sticking your finger up to the man and doing it yourself, the defiant battle against oppressive men, the seamless way she raised children whilst fighting for her goals, the infusion of music, art and literature into fashion, the foolproof formula of learning from the past to save the future or the sheer scope of one very famous person using her power, money and stature to save the world from injustice, inequality, climate change and deforestation...</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">This book, and this woman, are simply <i>everything</i>. And I'm pretty sure I'll be raising my future kids on this book, Vivienne being their non-fic fairy godmother of badassery.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">And thank you so much for the <a href="http://www.thewilloughbybookclub.co.uk/" target="_blank">Willoughby Book Club</a> for this generous gift as part of our collaboration - you've truly given me a key to the blueprints of my own future. </span><br />
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3776844365882116506.post-61502293832138661572016-03-01T04:48:00.000-08:002016-03-01T04:48:33.654-08:00The One Where She Finally Realises It's Not All About Her<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">I could sit down and explain all of the epiphanies and inspirations which have instigated what I'm about to say and do, but I'll leave you with just this one:</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: large;">'My duty is to understand. To understand the world. This is our exchange for the luck of being alive. <br /><br />In the pursuit of ideas you will start to think, and that will change your life. And if you change your life, you change the world.'</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-size: large;">- Vivienne Westwood<br /><br /> *</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-size: large;">Throughout my conscious existence, there is one remarkably wonderful thing I have learned, which has proved itself true so many times, that I'm starting to think it might actually be called <i>growing up</i>. And this is it.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1">There’ll come a day in your life, when you run your fingers across that open wound where you bleed out into the world, and on that day you’ll finally stay; </span>Stop. That’s enough. I can’t do this, like this.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-size: large;"> And so you pick up your needle and thread, and you decide to stitch it closed for a while, sealing in your focus, facing inward. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-size: large;">That’s the most important day of your life, because it’s the day that you admit that you need fixing, and that you are the only one who can do it. So you pull down the shutters and board up the doors and you think <i>I’m going to heal now. I’m going to love myself now. I’m going to be a better me when I leave here.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1"><i></i></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-size: large;">It might take days, weeks or even years, but as the sun and moon pass above you, one day you’ll begin to notice the light creeping in through the cracks in the shutters over the windows. You’ll walk over, place your hand against the wood and it’ll just crumble, light streaming into the darkness. That’s when you’ll realise that it was not the most important day when you came here, but in fact, the day when you realised you were ready to leave.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-size: large;">Now the boards are falling away and the light doesn’t burn you. You’re peeling back that plaster and you don’t bleed. You emerge from the chrysalis and you can stretch your new wings. There might never be a day when you are invincible, but you look down at your body and see, at least for now, that you are full. You are whole. You are ready.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-size: large;">Only when you realise that nothing is more important than putting yourself back together, can you begin to restructure the broken parts of you until you realise that in fact… <i>everything</i> is more important. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="s1">Because only once you emerge, can you see that by focusing inward to make a difference, you're now strong enough to turn outward and do the same. You can finally feel strong enough in your own bones that you can reach around the cracks of the earth and start to lift with the others who are trying to do the same. It’s a moment where you understand that what you are, what you stand for, what you can do, and what you have the power to become, is more important than just who you are. That, healing yourself was a negotiation with your ego, and now you understand how and when to leave it at the door. </span>That’s when you’ll realise that the most important day was not the day you came here, but in fact, the day when you realised you were ready to leave.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fefefe; color: #373e4d; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 15.36px; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-size: large;">And I think for me, today is that day. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The day I finally realised that it's not about me anymore.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Although over these three years that I've run this blog I've written mostly positive things, I won't lie in admitting that I believe they haven't always come from the best place. I end up writing 'how to deal with loneliness' because I'm experiencing crippling levels of isolation. I sometimes write about my adventures because I don't really know who else to tell. I give advice under the guise I practice what I preach whilst knowing I'm a massive hypocrite. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This blog has always been a catalogue of self-reflection because I've had so many issues I've had to work out with myself. This has been <i>my </i>chrysalis. And I didn't realise it until recently, when I wasn't using Twitter, I couldn't be bothered to write new blog posts, and I was letting days go past without sharing anything online about my life, that it was because for the first time in my adult life... I just didn't feel the need to talk about myself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've always thought I was 'falling out of love with blogging' or 'had a love hate relationship with the internet' but that wasn't the case at all. I just didn't want to be doing what I was doing online. I didn't feel good about what I was putting out there anymore. I think the breaking point came when I wrote a very candid and painstakingly honest <a href="http://www.scarphelia.com/2016/02/the-problem-with-loneliness.html" target="_blank">post about recent loneliness</a>, and sending that off into the world of a million eyes suddenly didn't feel like I'd done the right thing. I've never before written and posted something and not felt like I was putting some kind of good into the world by doing so. Until then. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Writing and creating has always been the most important focus for me, but over the years my focus has become blurred by using it as a kind of self-therapy to heal past wounds. And I could never quit writing, of course not, but I simply no longer wish to keep blogging in this way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What I'm getting at is, I'm not moving out, but I'm redecorating. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've done the same thing on this blog for the past three years, but I've outgrown it. It doesn't do anything for me anymore, and I've had this complete revolution about the fact that I actually <i>like </i>keeping some things to myself. It's liberating to be like, actually I don't need to tweet about that. Maybe I'll keep that photo album on private. It's like reclaiming ownership over my shit, you know? I no longer feel like I want to present my entire life as a museum exhibition, obsessing over ways I can get more and more people to come and visit. I don't want to present my thoughts as clickbait or relay my memories in seasons and episodes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm not quitting this blog, but my attitude for it has changed dramatically. I just don't want to publish my innermost thoughts to the entire world any longer. I feel exposed and vulnerable, and end up watching my worries float off into the ether in an inky dark cloud which fills me anxiety that I've potentially done a deconstructive thing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I guess... I don't want to be a reality show anymore, I want to be a documentary. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I don't want to <i>just</i> talk about myself, I want to provide a varied and rich platform of inspiration, something which educates and motivates while spreading positivity. I want to rearrange the furniture and paint the walls, so that they reflect a more accurate version of who I now am as a grown-ass woman, and what I care about. And the answer to that is: everything! I care about everything! And I want to tell you all about the things that I care about, and why they're so fascinating, not try to tell you how fascinating <i>I am</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I was always so hung up on the idea that <i>I </i>was going to be the one to change the world, that I never questioned myself as to why I thought it had to be me. I think secretly, maybe I always wanted it to be <i>me</i> who made the difference, more than I actually wanted to <i>make</i> the difference. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">But that's another thing I've outgrown. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I now finally understand what I want to do with the internet, and how to draw the line between personal and project. I have disbanded my 'scarphelia' twitter and am probably going to start a fresh new instagram, as these are things which I started alongside my blog, and the context is just no longer relevant. I hate standing on stage in front of five thousand faces and trying to be as funny and exciting as possible to make them care, only to realise they're all just mannequins. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So I'm not going anywhere, it's just going to be a little harder to find me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But, if you wish to come with me on this new journey then, well, that's just pretty much the greatest thing in the world. Let's go hand in hand in search of all the extraordinary and important stuff in the world. And if you want to leave me at the door then I completely understand, and can do nothing but thank you for being a part of this for the past few years. We had a good run, didn't we? Thank you for the time you lent me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So if you've made it this far... I guess you're in, right?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Well, then here's some exciting news about things I am doing moving forward which are making me happier, healthier and more determined than ever:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have started writing and recording with my band again, and I wanna & I'm gonna share music with you that's gonna make you wanna take on the world. Watch this space.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have started writing a book (like for real this time, I'm already THREE CHAPTERS DOWN) it's fiction, I'm head over heels in love with my characters, it's going to be good, and <i>you</i> can be a part of it. It's safe to say, watch this goddamn space. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And lastly, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I am starting a monthly newsletter of joy, which will be a short sweet burst of positivity in your inbox every month ft everything which I have found bloody amazing about life and the world recently, and cool as hell people you should know about. And THIS is where you'll find my little snippets of my personal life and thoughts and stories, shared safely among people I love and trust - among friends, in a warm little internet blanket fort.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">You can <a href="http://tinyletter.com/scarphelia" target="_blank">sign up to it here</a> in anticipation if you'd like. It'd be really really lovely to see you there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And so yeah, that's basically where I'm at right now. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">It's a good place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">*sloppily raises glass of prosecco* </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">To the future.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYpB83hWZhqbmFva5d0ivYXEXjiGHuVpUz2npMN0A9OkMqeOcIKB6kAh2uzCRZzsEZMKduDuqPtvnOvyPdLOAZjL-J18yzNwuWwReOxMHwX4wkREMZNgEtKgxJTKegRdt_9g1F4NCCOqbr/s1600/BIZ1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYpB83hWZhqbmFva5d0ivYXEXjiGHuVpUz2npMN0A9OkMqeOcIKB6kAh2uzCRZzsEZMKduDuqPtvnOvyPdLOAZjL-J18yzNwuWwReOxMHwX4wkREMZNgEtKgxJTKegRdt_9g1F4NCCOqbr/s1600/BIZ1.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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scarpheliahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06150514074592364909noreply@blogger.com