22 & not a clue

My boyfriend showed this video to me in bed the other night, and after it finished I was in tears and he smiled and said 'you don't see who you really are'. That got me thinking, no I'm not going to start Carrie Bradshaw style asking ridiculous rhetorical questions, but we as women are really quite hard on ourselves. The simple act of describing our face to a stranger does not marry up with how that stranger would necessarily describe us.

Yet we're becoming a society who take 'selfies' and send 'sexts', we are giving away our bodies soo freely these days thanks to the internet. It's this perpetual contradiction that we take photos of ourselves and yet can meet a stranger and struggle to say one positive thing about our physical selves.

I've struggled with my body image all my life. I am still struggling. I have never met a woman who is  100% happy with herself and I don't blame the media, I see it more that we don't promote a healthy outlook on our bodies within society from a young age. Mum better not be reading this, but daughters don't grow up being told to love themselves, instead mothers take the chocolate bars away and furrow their brows. Words like diet and weight creep into everyday language as that little girl creeps towards tenuous teenagedom. There's suddenly this sense of urgency that she'll become a hefty teen, life will be difficult for her, the other kids will pick on her because she's heavier.

Life will always be difficult, instilling a sense of foreboding about body image at the tender age of 11, 12, 13 and beyond isn't going to help. We need to teach our daughters to love themselves. Then teach them to make better choices, involve them in cooking, make them do at least one kind of sports or regular exercise from an early age. Basically, encourage being healthy to be happy over being thin to fit in.

It is my sincere hope that this generation of women, who have grown up with slut marches, fat shaming, thin privelege and rise of the plus size modelling world will go on to raise their daughters to love themselves first and appreciate being healthy second. Loving the skin you're in should be a given.

It was the moment when I lay back & thought about falling asleep right there on my Australia towel that I knew trying to do pilates today after work was too big an ask. Motivation is hard. It only gets harder when you add in a 9-5 & take away a support network. You reach a stage in your adult life where you have thrown yourself so far away from your family in hopes of 'independence' a word you have bandied about since the age of 15 that you realise you are either too proud or too far away to ask for help; literally and metaphorically.

You have gotten yourself up on your feet by hook or by crook, you have savings & a flat & maybe even a boyfriend. Ok maybe not. What you don't have is sleep or a stress free mind but you are independent. Welcome to adulthood. The next step? Keep going. No one is behind you cheering you on, you're past that now. You are out there, on your own & the only person stopping you is yourself. Aim high they said, dream big they said. Well you did & you're out there. Now what?

Telling yourself to keep going is tough. It is hard bloody work & sometimes it is so exhausting all you want to do is spend the day in bed watching Geordie shore. We all need an off day from being an adult; to revert back into your 17 year old self. But how do you keep motivating yourself day after day? Life now is mapped out in weekends. It is about getting through the next five days to revel in the remaining two. Pretty depressing when you put it like that really. But that is our reality. We are striving for everything, fighting tooth & nail to get recognised, earn our place and prove our worth. Will it be worth it? Who can honestly answer that.

But the truth is you have gotten this far; don't stop now. Keep aiming high & keep fighting the good fight because there's space in this world for you; you just have to earn it first. All that you sow so shall you reap. It may just take the best part of the next decade. In the mean time remember to appreciate the little things. Like the fact that your crazy family will be there come what may, whether you want them to or not. Like the fact that as you move through life you will not know why you meet the people you do until they are there just in time.

Relax & enjoy the ride the say? I say sit back & give yourself a break. You've made it this far. You're doing alright kid. Breathe.
Now what's the next plan & how are we gonna do it?
Thatta boy.

In our grandparent's generation you met someone, fell in love & got married. There was only one experience of love. You did not have many boyfriends or lovers. You met, courted, met the family, fell in love & lived out your life together. That was what happened. In some ways it appears simpler. It seems idyllic. Personally I can't imagine getting married to my first boyfriend as we were children at 15 and I barely know the man he has become now.

There is something to be said for how things used to be in the art of love. If your first love was your only love, and if that was all you had known then surely there's an argument to be made that these people knew less loss. I have yet to experience anything as painful and lasting as the loss of love. Some of my own break ups I will never forget, and will undoubtedly immortalise on a page at some point. If I haven't already. The countless poems, sentences & ruminated thoughts that the average teenage girl collects so early on these days must baffle the older generations. We must appear in constant states of heartache or heartbreak to our grandparents, who ask how that boy you dated 10 months ago is doing.





I can only assume as I no longer have grandparents. But I did introduce my ex to my Grandpa, I don't regret it but I do remember his guffaw at my words 'he's a keeper'. How right you were Grandpa. Do young women now not have the first clue as to what a 'keeper' actually is? Or maybe the concept is just null and void. It's a shame because we are conditioned to want the 'first, my last, my everything' and maybe this vicious hunt causes us to hold ourselves less dear and in doing so we rack up notches on our proverbial bed post.

Either way one thing is clear, we just don't fall in love the way we used to. Not most of us anyway. Even our parents can boast more lovers and a mysterious past. The twentieth century has ruined courtship and classical romance. I should know, I have spent the past three years studying this. I am also a veteran dater and renowned for my terrible taste in men. Until very recently I hasten to add.

The casual use of terminologies such as 'seeing' & 'dating' are alien terms to our grandparents. That's just it I suppose; casual, our relationships, our bodies and our hearts. We are too flippant about all of these things; I feel conflicted as I want to exercise my right as a woman to have casual sex. Yet I feel we may only be doing ourselves and perhaps our sex a damage in the long run as we do not place enough value on ourselves.


I will continue blindly stumbling through love regardless of everything I have just said. But I would say, that it would have been nice if it had happened that way. But in truth what are the chances. We don't wait anymore, least not the way man kind used to. Fewer women know now what it is like to wait for a man to return, not only from war but from life. Why can't two people wait for each other? Why won't we is a better question.

It's Valentines day. My day was unexpectedly full of good things. Starting with the IT guy in my office giving me chocolate. Pleasing result considering I thought he'd been staring at my chest all week. He probably has, if I had standards I wouldn't have eaten it but I don't.

This was followed by one of those conversations that leaves your stomach doing somersaults with a certain man who has my heart like melted butter in a croissant; deeply layered and bad for you. But oh so good. French butter. The kind Julia stiles could only dream of.

The day dragged on & I began to daydream about things that may never happen. The bad things & all the worries of the tomorrows that may or may not ever come to pass. The way you do at 3pm after your third green tea of the day and a full inbox. This was until I was pulled up by my ears by my best friend who is freezing her tits off in the bowels of England teaching wretches for pennies. She basically slapped me about with reality for a while thank god. We all need someone who is willing to tell us what we need to hear & not always just what we want to hear. Only true friends have the balls to tell it to you straight.
Follow this by a very emotional youtube video of US Marines surprising their loved ones and I'm feeling suitably positive and appreciative of life.

That is until I have thwacked my way through several dozen walking rose bushes, pushed past the women dragging boxes wider than themselves & just generally hissed & spat my way down most of Elizabeth street where I get to salsa and we decide to warm things up a little with a glass of bubbly.
Definitely a good idea as there were more couples on bad first dates than ever before.

Fast forward a few trodden toes, my bruised ego & we are back at the pub.
Conversation ensues & it turns out everyone is keen on this. We all want to get it right. I want to get over myself and 'let it go' the irony being all too obvious I know. The guys want to get the steps down & lead & the women just want to be lead.

We are all looking for a partner with whom it will all just click. Did you see what I did there? Yet another relationship metaphor. But it is the truth. Come right down to it & every individual wants to get it just right with the right partner.

Its just you have to let go of all the other crap first.

And it's not until I sit on the tram home, noticing the scuffs on her heels, that he hasn't ironed his shirt, that her skirt is too short & she's conscious about it, he's got a rip in his jeans & she looks a little sunburnt, but that they all look happy. That I remember, that life & love for that matter are not about perfection.

It is not about getting it right. It is about the scuffs and the creases. The rips & the burns.
It's about making all the mistakes with someone willing to make them with you.