"I want to be remembered as the girl who always smiled the one who could brighten up your day, even if she couldn't brighten her own."

I can keep your secrets
I can try and hide your cigarettes
But I'll never be able
To hide every sharp object


The worlds not as cold as you think
And you're not as alone as you feel
The first cuts never the deepest
But some wounds they never heal


You don't have to bleed to feel alive
You're hurting on the inside, why scar the outside?
I know you're scared but your scaring me this time


I don't understand how someone with the loudest laugh
Can feel the way you do
When you smile it means the world
But I can see right through


You don't have to bleed to feel alive
You're hurting on the inside, why scar the outside?
I know you're scared but your scaring me this time


It's not your fault
Don't blame it on yourself
It's never been your fault
Now you're just hurting everyone else


You don't have to bleed to feel alive
You're hurting on the inside, why scar the outside?
I know you're scared but your scaring me this time


You don't have to bleed to feel alive
Your hurting on the inside why scar the outside
I know you're scared but your scaring me this time.






These lyrics, for some reason, really got to me when I first saw them and when I first heard the song. The song is called Sharp Objects by an Australian girl called Alex Robotham and it's just beautiful. These are the type of songs that need writing and being sung to the world - not just to the singer/songwriter's who listen to them. It's funny how she describes the person as having the "loudest laugh" and a smile that "means the world"; sadness and anxiety can often be disguised in the shape of laughter and a painted smile.

The one thing hurting people simply want to hear from another hurting person.

“You’re okay.”

He said, taking my delicateness in his arms and my vulnerability in his hands.

“You’re okay.”

"when life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

It takes time to understand how to make lemonade out of something so bitter and so, generally, fruitless and often we do not possess that time. It is a luxury we sometimes have to live without and living without it can result in, occasionally, consequences which cannot be removed for perhaps a lifetime – but only if we let them. It is at these times when we have to find something and hold onto it for dear life – treasure it and never let it go. This is when your strength can actually begin to be truthfully tested. And I believe that strength can be found anywhere. In other words, to find something is to keep going - and that something is Strength.

Strengths can come and go and be emphasised or lined out at any time. They can suddenly lose you and this can bring horrific sadness, or perhaps shadowed hope that life sucks and there is no point to it anymore. However, if it is an honest strength – if it is genuine and truthful – it will always return; once pen touches paper it cannot reform to its original appearance.  No matter how many times you think you have lost your strength, it will always come back to you because it believes in you.

Strengths, I think, can bring you dreams and it is dreams that fuel the fire. From October 2009 to about November 2010, I believe I survived what I think was the first toughest time of my life so far.  During this time, one by one, I discovered five very different things that would soon turn out to be my strengths.  

The first was one that I lost at the start and that was ‘The Saturdays’ fandom. It may be a laughable matter that this band and their fandom means so much to me but from what I can see, and from what I can tell, without them, I wouldn’t have had one of the best days in a long, long while. The Girls know who they are and they also know that whether I am speaking to them on tinychat or pegging it across Oxford with half eaten McDonalds, just to hear Frankie tell us that we all need to buy decent coats, I am content and I am away from whatever trouble is threatening the making of my lemonade. I am glad that I met them and I am glad that I have that day in Oxford as a keepsake. Arguably, this could be seen as a separate strength but I found this at the same time as the fandom so I’m going to count it as one. The musical, Wicked, is something that I will never be able to fully appreciate. Every time I see it, something different always, always shows up and the performers never, ever fail to impress, inspire and irrevocably shake me. I will never forget my first time seeing that show, and I will never forget the first time I sat at the front (well, second row – close enough).  

The second strength I came across was someone who is now known as my mother’s second son. We didn’t meet in the greatest of circumstances and the first month of knowing him was slightly harder than it should have been, but I was meant to know this person and so here I stand a year later, pledging my gratitude for his presence in my lemonade-making. He knows me almost too well and because of this he now treats me like a younger sister and therefore I am continuously teased about my (to him) strange and unhealthy obsessions with certain things such as Higher singers and loser show choirs. Anyone? I also lost this guy last summer but basically, as I said above, he is a genuine strength to me and I need him in my life and I guess I am lucky in saying he came back and we are really close again. I love him, even if he does insist on calling me gay (really?) and being so competitive on certain home gaming activities. Brilliant.

My third discovery of strength was, as my second strength mocks me about, the loser show choir programme about a glee club called New Directions. I have been temporarily captivated by certain shows in the past but never to the extent that this one does. I can’t even begin to express my idolisation of what the show stands for and how they represent that through their characters and the actors who play those characters. You may think me shallow and “so twenty-first century” for saying this, but the characters, from where I’m standing, are heroes. The show acknowledges and respectfully explores bullying, drinking, peer pressure, eating disorders, sexuality, religion, mental illness, race, death, bereavement, cancer and marriage with such a warm and accepting embrace that it is almost impossible not to fall in love with what it stands for. Never mind the singing and dancing and the ‘gleeified’ gloss that the show is finished off with – look past it and see a detailed portrayal of a culture and a society in which we are all trying to make lemonade from. We are all losers. And that is why this is my third strength. And I can tell you wanna be a loser like me. I can tell.

My fourth is perhaps the brightest in terms of freshness and colour; it really helped to lay a hand on the grave of damn sadness. It involves two people – one of which is a fellow midget of mine and the other, a selfless and wonderful Les Mis’ lover with the most hilarious natural sense of humour and comedy timing. Both have brought with them a kind of consistency that I think was lacking before. I could not have come to school every day this last school year without knowing I was going to see Melissa’s beautiful (if not rapey) face to greet me and Sam’s cheerful smile and rainbow coloured shoes to lighten the morning first thing. I have never made the trek into town with these two as often as I have this last year and more than absolutely anything, I thank them for finding my laugh again. They say that a day is mostly wasted if it does not hold at least one laugh and I had plenty of those before I met these two. They’ve added the sugar to my lemonade.

And the final strength is one in which I didn’t realise I had all along. I thought they weren’t helping at all and I truly believed this until my mum met this springer spaniel called Ralph. The dog wasn’t actually the specific and main reason, it’s just that, for me, he seemed to bring the family together and I began thinking that actually, my mum does know best and I saw that her happiness encouraged both my sister’s happiness which sparked my brother’s happiness, making my dad even more happy. And as I stopped to think about the things they have all told me, I began to think of everything my wider family has told me and then to my chosen family - my best friends and my blood sisters. And onto my pets, my baby boy Scooby and my little girl, Lucia - even my six chickens, Minge, Tesco, Genie, Nala, Brittany and Santana and to Ralph, the little dog that made me realise. My family is my biggest strength-giver and for me, they provide not only the fizz to my lemonade, but the tall, straight glass, the chilled, crisp ice, the curly whirly multicoloured straw and perhaps, if I’m lucky, the newly sprouted, lush green sprig of freshly picked mint.... (from my dad’s garden, naturally).  

“The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.”

"One doesnt discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time..."

"the course of true love never did run smooth"

Thanks be to God Love Actually for informing the world that love, actually, is all around us. Love can also be lost if we do not handle it correctly; it can dissapear in a matter of moments and along with it, goes it's memory and it's comforting, and highly winter-warming aura. But love can actually be at its most powerful when it has been lost and then rediscovered. And this is what gives us, as a race, hope and the strength to love again, in that we will remember what is always, always going to keep our world moving.

Love can be seen in so many wonderful and heartbreaking shapes and forms, it is difficult to know which love we are treasuring and which love we are craving. There is the love of a sibling - be it a brother or a sister - both types of love are proufoundly seperate. There is the love of a parents, and likewise, be it a mother or a father, we will naturally behave and respond to the love we feel for them in different ways because they are both entirely different types of love. There is the love we feel for an animal whether it is a loving pet, or an unfortunate 'stumble-accross' whilst out walking in the gentle summer breeze. Another love is the type we feel for each other - our friends. Even if we do not know someone, if put in a life or death situation, ultimately we would experience the natural instinct to help - to help others. We are told this every day and no matter how selfish people presume or imagine themselves to be, that can all change in an instance for that is the power of love. It is not the feeling we get when we think about the word 'love' but it is the sense that with anything, we want to help them. We are driven through fear and therefore we are heavily dependable on love. Because love is what keeps us going.

Love can be expressed in any form; there is absolutely no way that love cannot be portrayed. Scriptwriters and songwriters, novelists and poets, painters and chefs, actors and carpenters - everyone - has been inspired and influenced by the feeling and the general experience of love itself. Think of all the beautiful films in which love has been depectied and in all the many, many different ways:

Disney's Pocahontas: "I'd rather die tomorrow, than live a hundred years without knowing you."
Peter Pan: "You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you, Peter Pan. That's where I'll be waiting."
The Wizard of Oz: "Hearts will never be practical, until they are made unbreakable."
Titanic: "A woman's heart is an ocean of secrets."
Glee: "I love you. I don't wanna be with Sam, or Finn, or any of those other guys. I just want you."
The Notebook: "It wasn't over for me. It still isn't over."
Dirty Dancing: "Most of all, I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life, the way I feel when I'm with you."
Taylor Swift 'Crazier': "I was trying to fly but I couldn't find wings, then you came along and you changed everything."
Shakespeare: "Shall I compare thee to a summers day?"

Love is everywhere. I know this was obvious before but without sounding too naive, it comforts me. Love is a massive word and is something that cannot be defined in several seconds. It takes time, just as it takes to grown and develop. Because that's when it is special.

I want to fall in love. I understand that 'I want' doesn't always 'get', but I do. I want to know what it feels like to be absolutely head over heels, besotted and irrevocably soul-intertwined with someone else who completely understands you and etternally accepts you for exactly who you are and what you stand for. Maybe I should blame my childhood interests and obbsessions (Disney) for my dreams and hopes about love but if my mother is anything to go by, I know that love can arise more than once and just as incredibly overpowering and passionately as the first time. I read all these delicious stories and poems about women who feel "inextricably attatched" and "overwhelmingly relieved" when they discover love. I hope that there is someone in this big and crazy world who will take me for who I am and look past the tatooed mistakes and solely see someone who wants to be held without asking why. And I wish that for everyone, because everyone deserves to experience love. It shouldn't be bruised and it shouldn't be mistreated, but it is, and it cannot be helped. I love that there is over 6 billion people out there in the world who could be your soulmate. And I love that they could be anyone. Absolutely anyone. And everyone (yes, everyone David Cameron), should have the freedom to express their love for whoever that is in their own, personal way. Love is something which shouldn't be restricted and held back because when it is, no wonder we are left with conflict.

Love is a treasure which cannot be buried.

Who is David Cameron?

First off, just because I have gay friends and I am a huge shipper of Britanna does not mean I am biased towards completely hating what David Cameron has recently said. What he has said, in my opinion (many will not agree), is universally wrong and something young people, who look up to David Cameron, should not be hearing. They should be allowed to make up their own minds and in their own time. To say that we should ban gay on-screen kisses is one of the most ignorant and oblivious statements I have ever heard. I understand that it can be hard and/or uncomfortable for someone to watch an on-screen gay kiss because they are not used to seeing it publically and because it wrongly fits into the taboo category, but if it is that bad for them they shouldn't watch it - it is not aimed at them. Gay people are portrayed in the media because they are portraying reality - the world we live in today. It is okay for them to laugh at such stereotyped gay characters such as the likes of My Best Friends Wedding and Kurt in Glee but as soon as it all gets serious and something physical happens on-screen, everyone goes stupidly mad. Think how hard it must be for all the people in the world who completely recognise in themselves that something is wrong - or "not normal" - because society and David Cameron tell them that men like women and women like men. It must be SO hard for gay people to come out, no wonder they struggle! No wonder they all stay closeted for such lengths of time and go on to marry in such pain purley to be 'accepted'. Thank god for films such as Brokeback Mountain and Glee. We shouldn't stop gay kisses because people aren't going to find them more comfortable if we do that. They need to see what actually happens in real life. We can't stay hidden in this protected bubble in which we listen to exactly what we're told and do exactly what others say. I know it's hard for many people to accept that but gay people aren't going anywhere and I think it's about time that this society - and gay Davod Cameron - sorted it out. For once, some media professionals may have done it right.