heart breaking.

today i met a canadian girl who has come to australia to be with her australian boyfriend.

she hasn't been to uni yet but she really wants to, but she can't afford to study here and her boyfriend can't get a job in canada.

she wants to travel with her friends in asia.

she loves her boyfriend but she misses having her own friends and life.

she doesn't want to make a decision, so she isn't going to yet.

spaces.

we have been apart before, but this feels different, further. even though i am in the same country as him now, i still feel further away than i did when i was in a different hemisphere.

i have built my own life in this little town, far away from the city we live in. i have friends, a job, a schedule, shared experiences. i settled in faster and easier here than i did when i was living with him.

it's very hard not to try and plan and predict what could happen. it's only very occasionally that i let myself just be with what is here and now.

ldr.

We flow and merge like fluid; We can inhabit just one space, one body, one mind, where words are unnecessary to communicate the intimacy, the connection, the undeniable wholeness that We occupy.

that ‘space’ between Us is merely physics, a force unrecognisable in the luminescence of the energy We effortlessly generate.

the weight of each other’s hearts  presses in on the distances between us. We feed on the strength and consistency of each other’s longing and loving and We know We will be together again.

equilibrium, where no forces oppose Our state, is met in each other’s arms.

life is not a collection of metabolic processes, but the collection of the numbers and ways Our hearts respond to each other. responses when they beat against each other or when they call out to each other across the time and space that may fall between Our bodies (but never Our minds). 

acceptance.

a great way of encouraging all the best parts of you to shine through,
a great way of stimulating of your own acceptance of who you are and where you fit;

is to surround yourself with good friends whose diverse characters and skills have led them through equally diverse places and positions and experiences,

...to remind yourself that the entire notion of 'normality' is utter bullshit, and that happiness is everywhere you care to look for it.

everything is going to be ok. it's easier to remind yourself of this when your friends are supportive, and not competitive.

rushed.

a couple of years ago, i was lucky enough to get away from just about every part of the world that i was familiar with (ok, except for the english language) and find myself living in the homes of some inspiring people whilst i worked with them on whatever projects they had going. these projects included, but were not limited to: rescuing tropical birds from orchard netting, ripping up parasitic plants from their non-native soils, tending generous vegetable gardens, walking escaped ponies home along winding roads at 5AM, teaching english to french, korean, japanese and belgian people and building kangaroo-proof fencing.

while i took the time to complete said projects, i also used the time to think. i think a lot already, i know this. but having the time and space to think in a completely new and unfamiliar framework, surrounded by people who i didn't know and who didn't know me, let me rebuild a lot of my preformed opinions and interpretations.

as the time between this period of rejuvenation (of myself, and of several over-grown gardens) and 'now' gets longer, i can feel those vital thought processes and conclusions slipping away. they don't feel relevant anymore.

it's so easy to get tied up in the now. there are so few occasions these days when i feel i am in control of my feelings and my fears. though i was able to take that time, so long ago now, to regroup and to reassess my attitudes, the lessons i taught myself are getting forgotten. i feel as though every day, i am standing in a hole, and all this dirt keeps getting shoveled in on top of me. i keep forgetting to step up, and so i am slowly getting buried.

it's sad to think that the only way i can regain control of my thoughts and my well-being is by going on holiday, and physically removing myself from the world i have come to associate with negativity. i can't afford (financially and temporally) to go travelling for months at a time every time i start to feel inundated with pressures. which are going to be coming fast and lose from now until the day i die.

i need to start to be able to channel all my lessons and my love into a place where they can be addressed and taken care of, properly, or i'll sink. i am hoping that by moving closer to some old freinds, i'll find that place.

aspiration: kingfisher.

...........sigh................

the little prince.

flexible.

i know i'm only 22, hardly a lifetime of wisdom. but it keeps hammering down on me, this one chunk of advice, mantra, testament, whatever.

rigid plans are pointless. fluidity is a necessity and so, with this comes acceptance; comes contentment.

splitscreen: a love story

fighting.

every time i tell someone new or old, a relative or a friend, a co-worker or a stranger about my plans for the next 18 months of my life, i find myself fighting.

admittedly, not aggressively, but definitely passionately. i fight to defend my plans against their criticisms or implied opinions. i also have to fight to stay positive about my plans in my own mind, which is difficult when no-one seems to have many qualms on giving me their thoughts about it all.

i can't expect people not to give their opinions, and i know that no-one does it to upset me, or even to provoke any sort of emotion or lingering thought. but obviously it does.

i have to keep asserting the facts and the reasons as to why i am doing what i am doing, and also why it really doesn't matter what 95% of people who have an opinion on the matter say or think.

although i know that this could all fall down, and that i will miss my family, friends and this country, and that   i didn't work hard for four years as a scientist to be a waitress or a cleaner or a telemarketer...i also know that 

this is the oppurtunity of a lifetime.

my passion, my qualifications, my ambition and my spirit aren't going anywhere. my career can wait. my heart can't. i'm not throwing anything away. quite the opposite in fact; i'm spreading my arms so far wide with such enthusiastic openness, a willingness to learn, and no pre-judgement or specified intention that i'll scoop up anything i can get.

this is what i tell anyone who doubts me...

...but it's also what i have to tell myself. 

yvonne.

I went to the funeral of my great aunt on Friday. She will always be remembered for her loud and beautiful laughter, her love of family, friends and parties and her amazing nail varnish and stiletto collection. This passage of the Bible was read at the ceremony, and even as a self confessed athiest, I can still appriciate the bible as literature, ok? You will be greatly missed Yvonne.

"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails."

pushing forwards.

musings in the marks and spencer underwear department on a very slow and hungover day

with most feelings or experiences, when experienced for a set duration, they come to a head and culminate in some sort of expression or occurance.

with pain, you snatch your hand away from the hot surface, say 'ow', get your burn treated and eventually it subsides.

with happiness, you smile and laugh.

with sadness, there is a process of grieving. 

but when i miss you, it just keeps going. i'm not grieving, because we are both in each others lives. but i'm not happy, because we are not in each others lives the way i would like for us to be. i'm just stuck here, in this same place in my head and my heart, with no real change or relief, as the missing feeds forward and forward into more missing.

cutest TV couple.

bright.

So there...so there was this woman.


...and she was on an airplane- she was flying to meet her fiancé seaming high above the largest ocean on planet earth. She was seated next to this man who she... she had tried to start conversations, but the only thing she had really heard him say was to order his Bloody Mary. 


She was sitting there and she was reading this really arduous magazine article about a third world country that she couldn’t even pronounce the name of. And she was feeling very bored and despondent. 


And then suddenly there was this...this huge mechanical failure and one of the engines gave out, and they started just falling thirty-thousand feet, and the pilots on the microphone and he’s saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh my god... I'm sorry” and apologizing. 


And she looks at the man and says “Where are we going?” and he looks at her and he says “We’re going to a party. It’s a birthday party. It’s your birthday party. Happy birthday darling. We love you very, very, very, very, very, very, very much.” And then he starts humming this little tune, it kind of goes like this: 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4...

kate & will.

Yes, OK, I'm going there, a royal wedding post.

I didn't think I would be bothered by it, I didn't plan on watching it. But I did. And I enjoyed it too.

It's wonderful that we can feel so united as a nation. It's happened a lot in recent years; I don't know if it's because I'm just old enough to notice it or because of the economy that it's happening more.I think it's great that we can come together to protest and be passionate. But today, for once, we all came together and were united in celebration. Royalty amongst politicians amongst celebrities amongst everyone else, we were all celebrating one occasion together.

I think that's really beautiful. That the country (and the world) can be so complicated and divided, yet we are all united with the genuine happiness and hope that comes from seeing a young, beautiful, dignified couple starting their lives together.

A lot of the time I find it hard to find energy to be optimistic about my future in this complicated world, so apparently full or turmoil and traps; that everything will collapse on top of me as I struggle to strive forward into adulthood. As a soon-to-be graduate, I am genuinely concerned for the my future, my family's future, my future family's future and the future of the world, when it so consistently feels as though the odds are stacked against all of us. Days like today remind me that, no matter how complicated and difficult and intimidating times can be, love is a constant and over-riding factor.

Congratulations to William and Kate. xx

heckyeatumblr#10.

http://tumblr.com/xsx1xkgzm5

10. Write about your proudest moment.


The weekend in Sydney with my boyfriend when we first realised we were in love. 


I felt, as of that weekend, that I had seen every side of him that I needed to see in order to come to this conclusion. 


I saw that he was and would be everything I could and would need him to be.


On the train home on Sunday afternoon, in our hungover state, I lay across his lap listening to the new Biffy Clyro album (no jibes here people, I'm not a newcomer to the 'stadium sensation', don't judge) as he slept (probably snoring), and I clearly remember thinking that it was one of the happiest moments of my life.


I had never been more proud. And it was all because I felt (and still feel) so lucky to be with such a loving, gentle, generous, thoughtful, beautiful and selfless man. 

heckyeatumblr#9.

http://tumblr.com/xsx1xkgzm5

9. Write about each of the places which you have called 'home'.


Kelso Road, Bury St Edmunds


This is the house where I grew up. I lived here for 11 happy years with my Mum, Dad, sister and number of guinea-pigs and gerbils. It was a smallish house, with a little garden. I remember that every surface was covered in ornamental pigs or pot plants, courtesy of Mum. We had a rubber plant which grew all the way around the living room ceiling. There was at least one cabinet full of the pigs, and they filled the mantelpiece of the fireplace, in front of which sat four very heavy brass crocodiles, which were most definitely not meant to be toys but were always used as such.


There was one bathroom, which was decorated luminous turquoise and black, with some sort of fish in every potential fishy space (ie on top of the toilet, on the window ledge, on the ceiling).


The upstairs hallway, like the rest of the house, was small, but it managed to have room for a huge copy of Steve Pearson's 'Wings of Love', with an overly ornate gold frame.

The Warren

This is the first house my parents ever looked at buying, but as a newly wed couple they couldn't afford it. Fifteen years later the house went back up on the market and they could - so we moved 10 minutes up the road into a beautiful chalet bungalow with a large (for a town-house) garden. We've been here 11 years now, and since then basically re-built the whole thing, as a lot of work was needed. I love this house. It really is like a warren; there's a main hallway with lots of little rooms coming off it, including a hidden staircase which leads to the upstairs, where I live when I come home now. Nice and private since my sister moved out two years ago. Mum and Dad spend all their time in the garden with various odd jobs and gardening, Mum grows heaps of vegetables when the weather lets her, and Dad takes care of all the fruit trees and rhubarb. There's lots of 'stuff' everywhere, but I love all of it, because it's home. Since my grandparents died, we took on some of the ornaments and furniture and paintings. They lived in a really big old country house with high ceilings; their things look COMPLETELY out of place here, but I think that's pretty cool. My great-grandmother was a painter, and we have several of her paintings up, even though they take up half the bloody wall space.


The Ziggurats
 I lived on campus for my first year at university. I had my own little room in a flat for 14 people on the ground floor of the the 'ziggurats', which are listed buildings. Sharing a kitchen with 13 other people was...interesting. And I definitely wouldn't live there again. But I made some really cool friends, and I am glad I spent my first year there.

Bland Road

I have lived here on and off for the past three years, though with different people as registered 'tenants' at each of the addresses, I have more or less lived with the same group of friends, as everyone loiters and we hang out a lot, and cook for each other. I spend a lot of my time being miserable and whining about the state of the house, as it's pretty gross...no-one else really cleans apart from me. To be honest, it's a shame that I have had to live with the friends that I have lived with because if we had never been housemates I think we would all be closer, as I wouldn't be so angry with them a lot of the time. Despite this, I love being able to eat with my friends every evening, and I love that I have met and got to know some of the most interesting, independent, cultured, obscure (?!), honest, loving and passionate people I think I have ever met. As well as this, adventures with aforesaid house mates make for i) some pretty cool anecdotes and ii) some vital life-lessons in patience....

Evatt House

This is where I lived during my year at Newcastle Uni, Australia. I loved it here. There were two 'quads' comprised of 10 blocks in total, each block being two flats of 10. Each flat had their own 'Residential Assistant', and participated in 'blunctions' regularly, which could have been trips to a restaurant, to a movie, dessert night etc...The college had heaps of activities going on all the time, games and nights out....I miss it :( It's also where I met my boyfriend, Sam. He lived just across the hallway from me...we would stay up late talking on facebook chat because we were too shy to go and see each other...sometimes I could hear him typing...Unfortunately keyboards are a major part of our relationship again now, but not for too much longer. I made some really awesome friends here, and even though lots of them have moved on to new cities/ states, I really hope they can come visit/ I have enough money to go and visit them.

Writing all this is making me very sad. So I'll stop now. 

the beginning of the end.

Today I handed in my dissertation.

But there were no fireworks, and there was no confetti, and there wasn't even any heroic music in the background.

This was strange.

I proceeded to drink four pints and two shots (on my own partially), then go home and sleep for three hours. Tonight I was supposed to go out and party...

But TBH all I want to do is cuddle up and watch a movie film with my gorgeous boyfriend. I think tonight be the most I have missed The Boy since he left. At least until now I could re-assure myself that I could be productive in his absence. And I could distract myself. 

I want someone to be here to hold me, and tell me I did good. I want someone to eat ice cream with (not that I don't eat ice cream...on my own...in the dark...sobbing). I want to hear all about the random shit he did when he was little. I want to feel awesome about a decision to not go out cos I know there is no such thing as wasting time when I'm with him. 

I just miss you. I am watching Muppet Treasure Island in your honour. And Little Tom gave me ice-cream for my birthday so I will probs eat B&J in your honour too. If I had rum, I would drink it.

I can't wait to share my life with you, even the naff bits where there aren't any fireworks.

heckyeatumblr#4.

http://tumblr.com/xsx1xkgzm5

4. When I was younger...

Dear 14 year old Chloe,

Happy Birthday. Have a wonderful day. See you in six years, where I would like to tell you that you will be living in an exotic land, chasing dreams with a gorgeous boy holding your hand, succeeding academically, loving your life and grabbing every single chance with (a little bit too much) intense devotion to being happy. 

You have no idea how much more complicated life will get. Don’t feel patronised, no one expects you to understand. In fact, you should embrace the fact that you don’t, and probably can’t. Life is huge. You are huge.  Continue. So much can happen. So much will happen. I can’t tell you how best to deal with it and you wouldn’t listen anyway. There are no messages you can leave yourself that will make a remote difference to how you will deal with a situation or emotion that will make a blind bit of difference to any of it. Just feel what you feel when you feel it and never be ashamed.

You will never truly or fully appreciate how beautiful anything is until it’s over or gone. But try. Don’t get annoyed with yourself when you fail: it’s ok to be sad sometimes. No one ‘expects’ anything else.

There will always be idiots in your life. There will always be idiots in the world: you can’t expect to get on with everyone and you can’t expect everyone to get along with you. It is hard, and it is upsetting. Know that they don’t have to have a huge impact on how you regard yourself. You have family and you have friends who love you the way they are. And if sometimes you feel otherwise, maybe sometimes you feel alone, just hang on. Hang on and remember: you have a lifetime’s worth of friends out there. So many people will pass in and out of your life, and you always have the opportunity to grab onto the ones who you feel will enrich it. And there will be plenty.

Life carries on after school. Don’t tell anyone I said this but: (it’s not such a big deal.). Life gets bigger. I think life is getting better. Every birthday I have had so far, I think to myself: “That was the best year of my life.”.

Know that your motivation gives you the fuel you need to follow your ideas, intentions and dreams across through to the next ones: and these journeys are made by you. You can chose to let who shares it with you in most respects. You chose the paths you take. You are making this. Credit yourself.

That’s a bit of a joke coming from me.

You will say ‘I love you’ to five different men by the age of 20. By the age of 20, you will only really be sure about one of them, and that might just be because of a chord you just heard a few hours ago....No, this doesn’t get easier. Yes, it does get better.

You owe your family everything. Get to know your grandparents. Get to know your uncle. Immerse yourself in your family. Let them know what they mean to you: never let this pass them by.

By the end of this year, you will have a boyfriend. So stop worrying. (Because we both know that that's all you're really worried about.)

Love you,

20 year old Chloe x

NB this may have been recycled from when I wrote it a few years ago...

adele.