shipping, body image and just more venting

Hi guys. Firstly, I just watched the new Vampire Diaries episode and please just let me freak out for a minute because OH MY GOD. The rain scene! The! Rain! Scene! I did not know such beauty could exist in the world. I cried/am still crying/feel this deep ache in my chest when I think about it. 

 This happens me with any Damon/Elena scene in that show, there is something so captivating and fascinating about their relationship. And how impossibly HOT Ian Somerhalder/Damon Salvatore is. Like really. I honestly have never seen a more beautiful human, but you really need to watch the show to understand it. I truly love Damon's character so much, even when the show becomes mediocre his character has always been written so well, so impossibly complex. Not to mention, Ian Somerhalder himself is SUCH a kick-ass person with the ISF and everything. His acting is so unbelievable, like in the last episode in his speech to Elena when they were dancing, ahhhhhhhh. I'll stop. I can understand if you don't find clips that interesting without having watched all the seasons of the show, you really have to have seen the build-up and pain to this point to appreciate it.
I'll link it here if any of you want to put yourselves through the one minute and eight seconds of emotional turmoil that simultaneously made me love the world and hate it. I warned you.

 Secondly, something that has been talked about a lot on social media recently is people saying 'Victoria's Secret models should be real women!' and the popular response being 'Umm they're real women too! Do you think they're sims? Holograms? LOL.' So this is definitely true, but to an extent. Those women have worked for their image and are still, shockingly, living breathing humans. But, not everyone can look like that. Whether it's due to physical conditions such as illness or other health issues, genetics, circumstances etc. And so as this image of these models is presented as the ideal, perfect way to look, an abundance of women are left feeling unjustly inferior. This can be the cause of illnesses such as depression or anorexia, which are so devastating and it pains me that something as worthless as a marketing ploy can cause someone's health to deteriorate. But even if this isn't the case, I know I've watched fashion shows and even if just temporarily, hated my appearance, everything about it, because I didn't, and would never look like them. I would never be able to feel comfortable in my skin because why should I when I'm so terrible compared to the beauty of people like that. It's toxic. So toxic. 

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“To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.” 

― Simone de Beauvoir

(This quote has been floating around in my mind all throughout writing this. Hm.)

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 I also disagree with those campaigns where they show a picture of a row of 40-year-old not-the-skinniest white women and claim 'Now THESE are real women!' It actually worries me that some people don't see the errors in this. It's so clearly contradictory and just, agh. Now if they had a range of ethnicities, weights, body types, and physical states then I would have agreed. 

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“What becomes of a man who acquires a beautiful woman, with her "beauty" his sole target? He sabotages himself. He has gained no friend, no ally, no mutual trust: She knows quite well why she has been chosen. He has succeeded in buying something: the esteem of other men who find such an acquisition impressive.” 

― Naomi Wolf

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So one thing I've realised lately - I love things too much. I do. I know it sounds silly but let me explain. I love things or people or ideas so much that no one could ever feel equally towards me, it's seems physically impossible. For example, when I think of someone I love, I feel to such strength that I worry myself. I'm at a constant state of seeming inferiority, slight emptiness and, well, delusion. I don't know if it stems from my desire to be positive, or to be love and be loved, or simply to feel things. I've always found feelings wholly uninteresting unless they're intense and memorable. Does anyone else feel like this? Please don't think this is some cry for help from a perpetually insecure teenager because it's not, I could change this if I wanted, but I won't. It's not hard to imagine why. I think in my lifetime, above everything, I just want to feel things. From new experiences, people, places, perspectives, stories, music, tragedies.

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since feeling is first 

- E.E. Cummings

since feeling is first

who pays any attention

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,

and kisses are better fate

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry

—the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then

laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

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(Any excuse to include an E.E. Cummings poem. How I wish I could write like this.)



 SONG: Make This Go On Forever - Snow Patrol

I have been SO excited to write about this lately because it's clearly not new or anything and I've heard it/seen it live (sigh) years ago but you know when you're in the mind state for a certain song and sometimes, just sometimes, you find it just when you need it and it feels like it finds you too.

 Snow Patrol have always been my favourite band, and I love so many of they're songs, their lyrics, their power. I really want to learn this song on guitar, but I'd never be able to do it justice. In this song there is just something that enthralled me when I listened to it randomly a few weeks ago. I love the lyrics so much. They really make me think. And create a movie in my head. Which has been happening with certain songs I've listened to lately. Consequently, I have a lot of (terrible) short film ideas, many of which revolve around the mesmerising Bon Iver song 'Wash.'

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"First kiss and the first time that I felt connected to anything
The weight of water, the way you told me to look past everything I had ever learned
The final word in the final sentence you ever uttered to me was love."

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TV SHOW: AHHHH! I just realised that I still haven't mentioned my love for The Mindy Project on here yet. Basically, I just really, really love that show. I caught up over halloween break and it is so well-written and truly hilarious. I was such a huge fan of Mindy herself before watching the show and now I'm in even more in awe of her.

My next post is going to be about more life-related-rambling as well as some books (although most books I've read lately are just old poetry anthologies I found in my house and I don't really have much to write about on them here) and pictures of the AMAZING package my penpal and favourite human Kara sent me. 

As usual, it;s 12:45am. Ha. Ha. Ha. Goodnight. I'm so tired I'm not even going to check this for spelling mistakes. Or add photos. LOL I am so bad at this. GOOD NIGHT.

rambling about italy, exhaustion and self-worth

Hey there! I'm currently listening to Ed Sheeran's album X and freaking out because I love him and I love his music and I'm seeing him live on Wednesday. EEEEEEEE! 

 In other news, I got back from Italy last night and so now I am so exhausted. I have a ton of school work to catch up on but I needed today to recover from a week of 1. barely any sleep and 2. SO. MUCH. WALKING. Including trekking up freaking Vesuvius. Tons of walking/standing around etc. + scoliosis = not good. But I'll be fine in a few days. It was SO worth it! 

 So our hotel was in Sorrento, which was so beautiful! And our hotel was so so lovely, it was right on the beach and ridiculously picturesque. We climbed vesuvius, went to the solfatara, shopped in Naples, visited Pompeii & Herculaneum, sight-saw in Rome, and visited a farm where we got the most authentic italian lunch which was amazing and made everything else I've ever eaten seem unhealthy and stale and boring. But the best part of the trip was easily the fun everyone had together, having 42 of us on long bus journeys and site-seeing led to a lot of singing and laughing and selfies. Especially at night in the hotel everyone from my year would pile into one room and play 'never have I ever' and talk about boys and eat sweets and dance to terrible dance music. Such fun times.

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“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.” 

- Simone de Beauvoir

(Obviously I get all my quotes for these posts from the internet but this quote has been floating around my head all week. Let's just say I relate.)

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The weekend before I went to Italy I went out with my friends, which was so fun! And then saw my sister become an All-Ireland Champion in football. I was ineffably proud. 

Being the supportive lil sister I am. And the only person in the country not wearing a jersey.

The dress I wore out from (asos) the brand Lavish Alice. I really loved it!

So that's pretty much a fill-in on my life lately. Now onto the actual post. I feel like unless I talk about life at the start of the post then I'm being secretive or something for the rest of the post or I'm always leaving something out. I don't know. If the life updates are annoying/boring please comment but I kinda like them. I'm just narcissistic, really. 

In this post I want to talk about the things people value in life. I don't know why exactly, but it occurred to me while I was in Italy and I thought about it a lot. I think it stemmed from how this girl I was on the trip with was so obsessed with instagram likes, follower counts, who you know, who you go out with, all that kind of stuff and she really saw it as this hugely important thing and said it was one of her life goals (not even with sarcasm) to get like 200 likes on an instagram post. 

 It really saddened me because you could tell that comparing herself to more popular girls in these things really got to her and lessened her feeling of self-worth. She idolised the people that got hundreds of likes etc. It really did sadden me and make me grateful that I realise and can see the triviality of those things and wish I could get her to agree with me. I mean, I love getting likes on instagram and I'd like more followers and that kind of thing but I don't strive to have them. I don't base my self-worth on them. And I wish no one did. The thing is, it's so obviously ridiculous to do that, but so many people do. 

 I'm pretty sure I've ranted about self-esteem enough but really I just wanted to think about what I value, what's my equivalent to that girl's social media popularity? I think I value when people are friendly, more-so as I get older and people become more and more gossip-y and I become more aware of how everyone deserves to be treated kindly and inclusively. That sounds cheesy but I really believe it. I value treating people nicely, regardless of who they are. It's something I've always, and will always, notice first about someone.

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“I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.” 

― Virginia Woolf

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 Side note: I'm not saying I'm some angel when it comes to being friendly, when I'm in a bad mood, which is not un-often, I am definitely not able to fit in the 'friendly' category. Or even the 'some-what nice' category. But everyone has those days.

 Okay I wanted to also talk about being a fan of things and pushing people away but it's 1:06am and I, as you know, am currently in a constant state of exhaustion. So they can wait until the next post. Thank you for reading this far, see you next post!

P.S: Song of the week: Hospital Beds - Cold War Kids. It's been in my head all day. Such a classic.