Letters to Juliet

I always thought that the agony aunt/problem pages of teen magazines were so complicated - but in a real way. I always felt that the young girls who wrote in had problems which were so complex, even a grown up wouldn't be able to solve them. But now I look back on them and they are such desperately insignificant situations that it angers me to read them. Its got to the point where I have to hastily skip the couple of pages in which the problems are located and just look at everything else. But the fact I study Media means I am always having to read up on whatever it is young teenagers do today. And the thing that gets to me most of all is the fact that there are some urgently real issues that such a huge scale of young teenagers suffer from which are never mentioned or acknowledged by these problem pages or agony aunts. The magazines seem to continuously select (and write) such pathetic questions about puppy love and periods. I know 'pathetic' is probably the wrong word to use when describing such situations but have these magazines simply forgotten about the teenagers who feel so badly pressured under the media's constant injection of 'bones are beautiful' and 'fat is freakish' that they feel the need to starve themselves of absolutely anything with the idea that saying "no thanks to food is saying yes please to beauty"? Have they also abandoned the teenagers who feel such a tremendous surge of guilt whenever a single crumb slips into their bodies, they recklessly charge their fingers down their throats to vomit it all back up? And what about the ones who have absolutely no idea how to express their inner loneliness and tangled up feelings; the ones who are daily ripped apart and beaten by their parents who are in an uncontrolable fit of rage; the ones who go through an exprerience they should either never go through or have gone through far, far too early and then just to cope with it all, smash razors up with their bare hands in order to retrieve the blade and cut real scars over their innocently screaming skins? We, as a living broken society, are always, always, always going to be served everything with a pink, fluffy, sugared coating around the edge because we are too afraid to admit that anything is wrong. And maybe this is a good thing. Maybe its better to have everything served this way because at least then we won't always be living in the dark. It's good to have light in our lives. But we are still swerving round every single bump in the road. We are still hiding the truth about the way in which some people out there live. We are still avoiding and running from the past, and the mistakes within that past, that so many have made. The only way to get through a problem is exactly that - get through it.

This is why I think that the problems which are addressed in teen magazines are something we really don't need to focus on as much as we do. As we get older, the problems continue to be fluffed up, however they are focussing on more mature and adult situations like sex, debt and marriage. Whilst these help a great deal, I have come to the decision that it is far more worhtwhile (and if not a cheeky little bit more romantic) to write a letter to the one woman who knew women inside out, more so than women perhaps know themselves. Whilst the above situtations conform to the typical problems in which we always seem to be faced with, they all have one thing in common; Love.

There must be something absolutely wonderful in writing a letter to someone who will reply with the utmost honesty and simultaneously achieve a sense of pleasure whilst writing it. Whatever your 'love problem' is, whether it is big or whether it is small, Juliet will answer without the slightest hint of judgement or critique. And this is what must be so satisfactory. Just imagine writing something to someone who won't think you are overeacting or dramatising a situation that can be helped with the click of a finger. Bliss. So therefore, I am going to write what will be an epically long letter to Juliet about my misfortunes (and delights) with the emotion that affects absolutely everybody on the whole entire planet.

I'll write back soon.

Speech Writing

So its my twin sister and my birthday next week and in celebration we're having a family party in which my parents want me to write a speech and inform the world of my unconditional adoration for this girl I've spent the entirety of my life with. I understand my parent's reasons - I mean, I was even with this girl in THE WOMB, so surely that must count for something? She and I go waaaayyy back.

It's Saturday and what better day to write a speech about this girl. The sun is shining and its the most perfect day for all the world and it's happiness to blossom. I was contemplating simply voicing the poem I wrote abut my twin sister last year but she figured I might do that and therefore, my speech would not be original and she wouldn't find it interesting. Perhaps I shall incorporate it somehow. Maybe I should talk about the day she forced me to pour plant soil all over the living room of our little cul-de-sac home when we were too young to understand that carpets don't need to grow; it is their purpose to appear lifeless. Or perhaps the time she prayed to God for her safety whilst my mum, in a fit of absolute rage and despair, took off with the two of us cursing the day we were born, purely because we had left our PE bags at school. Or even better, the day I passed my driving test first time, four months after she had had failed her first test, and had continued to fail two more in the meantime.

My twin sister is my life. Without her, I wouldn't be Me. When you share the beginnings of your life together, even though you scientifically cannot remember a thing about it, in the unconscious self we all appear to have, I remember. If I didn't, there wouldn't be a hole in my heart every time I am away from my twin sister for longer than 24 hours. We have learnt from each other and we continue to learn from each other. I trust her judgement more than I trust anyone else's and that isn't because she's a good judge, it is simply because she is part of me and whatever she believes has an influence on whatever I believe. We are defninitely two very different people - she brushes her hair and I don't - but our mindsets and the way we both know each other more than we, on the surface, realise, makes us one.

So to you, Rosie. 'Sisterhood' to me, means you. A place I can go when my head keeps telling my heart to stop beating. I love you.

And Happy Birthday.

Japan

I'd like to thank Marny Kennedy for her own personal blog 'blimey teddy'. Her words are really beautiful and inspirational so I thought if she could write one, so could I. It seems like a nice place to start if you have something you would like to express and I seem to have quite a lot to say today.

First off, I'd like to admit that I haven't really paid that much attention to Japan and their recent earthquake. But after catching a glimpse of, to put it as it is, heartbreaking picture of a Japanese woman clutching on to her daughter as tightly as she could, it suddenly dawned on me that what is happening there is real and we cannot escape it. So many people have lost their lives and may they rest in peace from this day on. I also noticed that the woman is crying and for the first time in my life I finally realised that other people feel emotion too. Too many people, who find themselves on the news due to natural disasters, be it Japan or Haiti, show so little emotion that it almost appears as if they expected it to happen. And I used to unconsciously believe that was because it was true and that so much happens to them that they have lost the will to be emotional. But how wrong I am. I have learned that people simply show their emotions in their own, personal way. And I admire the people that feel their emotions but have the strength to hold it together for the sake of others. Its amazing. How do they do it? But now I'm going to totally contradict myself by saying that I have also learned that those of us who do show our emotions are the strong ones because we allow ourselves to let part of what we feel go. Crying is good. It releases something that needs to be released. I know that by keeping in emotion, because you have no idea how to escape it, only causes far deeper problems in the future. I think its important that we learn to understand this because it must help everyone in some way. The weak ones are those who refuse to let their emotions out but dont accept, or admit, that by doing so they are not getting any better - the ones who tell others they are weak or pathetic if they cry. The ones who mock others for doing something admirable...... Maybe I am wrong but this is what I have come to recognise in our society today.

This earthquake in Japan also made me wonder, whilst I was sat waiting for my exam to finish, why on earth Edexcel insists on asking me about my interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. Surely they should be asking me about how I want to help the less fortunate or what I have done to help others in the world? There I was, sat in a silent exam room, twiddling my thumbs because I'd finished explaining how I wanted Juliet to be played by a young girl, whilst a poor old Japanese woman is taking every breath with absolute gratifacation because she is alive and she has been saved. The air that we breathe is taken for granted too much and from now on, every time I step out of my front foor, I'm going to take one long, deep breath and thank whoever is up there for my being alive. I know that sometimes we don't feel alive and we feel like we have no way to escape a tricky situation, hence the rates of suicide in more fortunate countries. We take everything for granted so much so that the smallest problem can be mistaken for a giant mountain of which we cannot move. The people in third world countries are so happy and upbeat because they take every moment with an ocean full of thankfullness that we have simply forgotten about.

So to you, Japan, and to whoever is up there, please, please, please allow them to feel contentment once more - as much as you can - and please let them have their homeland back. No more lives need to be taken. Mother Nature, you have made your point. Enough.