22 & not a clue

She had the kind of beauty that doesn't need or ask for make up. Three small brown moles on her wrists which were slender with thin brown hair which caught the light - perhaps she had been in the sun recently. Her long legs were folded under her, she sat on the tube as if they were on a sofa. She leant against a thick browed man who appeared to be miles away.

Every few seconds her head would lift up and she would stare at him and say something with a smile on her lips. He would nod and continue to stare off. The smile would leave the corner of her mouth and thin lines appeared across her forehead. Digging around in her handbag she produced a note and laughed, showing it to him. He eventually turned and looked at the note, his eyes moved upwards and finally met hers which were dancing in a beguiling way.

A slow and uncertain smile made its way across his swarthy face, catching the shadows from his facial hair. His back softened and he seemed to lean in towards her smile. She leant her head again on his shoulder. He lifted one hairy paw and stroked a few brown strands across her face, tucking them behind her ear and then stroking her neck.

She smiled.

Here's a thought, if Eve hadn't tempted Adam with a delicious apple then man would never have come to exist. That pair would still be living it up up there and our blue dot of a planet wouldn't have happened.

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.

Last Saturday a good friend dragged me to the Liverpool match. Despite being two of four women in the entire pub, we had a great night. That being said there was one incident that added a slight ugly undertone to the evening.

Whoever said sexism is dead needs a slap in the face. I narrowly avoided a fine on the tram this morning because of these babies, how easily distracted the inspector was is entirely beside the point. What is, is the fact that there is no getting away from these bad boys. Figuratively or literally.

Do we need things to stress over? Things to disappoint us? To teach us to demand more and accept less? Or is our lot simply that we refuse to be satisfied. 

The trouble with being alone & single for an extended period of time is not that it gives you unrealistic expectations, but that it teaches you what you need. You need a man who asks how your interview went, who responds to his emails & who is sensible with his money. You don't want someone who talks about themselves, ignores their emails until asked & is forever broke.

Unfortunately the longer you spend independently fine tuning all the things you did badly in your formative years, the less likely you are to accept that shit from someone else should the opportunity for commitment present itself.

Accepting yourself and working on the flaws should teach you some compassion & patience, you would hope? Wrong. It teaches you life is short & other people don't work things out unless they're forced to. If you get into a relationship with someone who doesn't know how to be an adult how do you ever expect them to be a man.

Perhaps leaving him out to dry, whoever he is, for a little longer is for the best? Because frankly if you haven't sorted your own shit out then how do you ever expect another persons problems to work with yours in a relationship? People throw themselves together in dire hopes of happiness without ever truly getting to the bottom of what made them miserable or useless in the first place.

He may need to grow up, but you sure do as well. Take time to consolidate where you're going wrong with people, life, career or worst of all your day to day emotions. Only when you work those things through will you be in a place to meet your man half way.

I am fortunate to have a trio of wonderful friends who span 3 decades ahead of me at 32, 42 & 52. Each one tells me a different story of their 20s, how they too spun circles around themselves and the many men they were involved with in an effort to better understand themselves. Or how they also made spontaneous decisions & wondered six months later how all this had come to pass. Their stories all differed from one another, but their uncertainty and doubt did not.

Now they smile patiently over many a glass of wine as I sit opposite & ask 'why? Where to next? How will I do this? When will I do that? & worst of all is it enough?'. Their beautiful yet bemused faces take in mine & in that moment I know they have been there. It is wonderful to have older friends. I am privileged to witness the progression of woman through so many beautiful souls. I am even more privileged to learn from them.

Eventually after a few more glasses and a lot of laughter they all, in one way or another make the same point – what you want now will change & who you are now will change too. Don’t let that scare you, accept it as part of your journey.

It seems we don’t ever fully master dealing with our lot, we are in an ever evolving state of acceptance. Learning to deal with one shitty situation better than we did the last. All the while dreaming big and aiming high don’t forget. The dreaming and the aiming doesn’t stop it just accustoms itself better to our reality. We tailor our next endeavour as we grow through the last. Our wants will wain and our desires differ, but as women it is an innate part of our programming to want more.

What I believe is the actual goal in the meantime isn’t happiness or success; but contentedness. Happiness is a long term goal, but if we can’t appreciate being content in the here and now then how do we ever fully expect to enjoy true happiness when it finally shows up to the party.

We are all just walking through the wilderness on sand, hoping the next step will be less precarious than the last. The truth is that we have no control over that aspect of our lives, in fact we have no control whatsoever. All we can do is cling to yet more metaphors and hope we make the best decision as to where to place our feet next.

'At 22, if your dreams don't scare you then they aren't big enough my darling'

It is a truth universally acknowledged that thinking too much leads to imploding and wrinkles. Which is why, dear readers, at the age of 22 I can plant potatoes in this forehead of mine.

I am a bottler. I bottle everything up, flood the lives of my friends with positivity, advice & motivation whilst I drown in an inner emotional whirl pool of self doubt & negativity. I don't take compliments and there are few people whose opinion or advice I trust. You can't tell me anything because either I've heard it before or I think you're full of shit anyway. I am a pathetic emotional enigma & the older I get the more I just roll my eyes at myself and get on with it.

That said, the more I open up about this & the more I write what I am truly feeling at that point in time; the more positive a response I receive. Are we all whirling alone together? Take the oxymoron however you like but I have evidence to suggest we are. Maybe it's the female condition to over think, worry and generally go mad about all the possible tomorrows? Or perhaps the people who respond to this blog are just crazy too.

Regardless of which ever unfortunate truth you choose to believe the fact still stands that if we do not communicate and process our thoughts productively it all just builds in our head till we find ourselves screaming at our psychology student Flatmate who is only trying to help as we row with every inanimate object in sight.

Breathe.

Ok so from the top. Take a pen & paper & list the main negative thought that circles through that brain of yours. Write a list of reasons for and against & then examine that list. In all likelihood it's an irrational thought which if you use your mind over your mood you should be able to reason down to a more manageable size. It's all very well indulging it to have something to stress over. However if this thought is stopping you from sleeping at night then this may not be such a bad idea.

If you continually practice the attitude of:

"If you don't like something: change it.
If you can't change it: change your perspective".

Then you will find your mind will be stronger than your mood. The brain is not a muscle however it works in the same way. Being ruled continually by your emotions is exhausting. Take control of your thought processes by merely reasoning them out.

That being said you'll have to excuse me; I have unfinished business with an oven & a heap of worrying to do for tomorrow.