The Dissertation nightmare

It has just occurred to me that it's been ages since I posted anything here, and not that I am under the impression that my (ha!) readers are eagerly awaiting the next update in my boring life with bated breath, but still, I like the fact that someone may be reading my chaotic ramblings, and getting something out of them. I've been busy to say the least. I should be busy right now, but I'm nursing a massive tequila fuelled hangover, and am lying on my bed, feeling bloated from a massive Nandos feast, so yep, I am not being the constructive person I need to be. My final uni assignments are due in 7th May. After that, it's game over. I will officially be out of the education system after years of school, sixth form and university. As of July, I will be awarded my DEGREE!!! What! I know, I can't believe it either. Still a few hurdles to go, but the one suggested in the title is settled at least. 

My dissertation. The thing I was dreading the most. 8,000 words of prose. I pride myself in being able to write prose at ease, and yet I underestimated the workload. I took on a massive challenge in my piece's structure, and it's taken me months of drafting, reading, redrafting, moaning, swearing and sending passive-aggressive stressy emails to my tutor, but finally, it's done. I need it binding and handing in to the office, and then that's a weight off my shoulders. With a Shakespeare essay, and an Eastenders portfolio still to tackle though, I can't relax just yet. With the aim to finish my work almost a week early, I am stressy! I'm uninspired, bored and just ready for a break. I have absolutely no career path in mind. I have no future prospects that are practical or in any way probable. I want to write. It is my passion. It runs through my veins and it is the only thing that has ever come naturally to me. To pursue a career in it, would be life changing. I'm a bit lost though, as I am a student and I need the money, as I'll soon have over £30,000 of student debt (HAHAHAHA WHAT.) and I have no idea how much money that is, and I'll never know. But still, I hope I get somewhere after three gruelling years of hard work, stress and tears. I've met some lovely people at uni, had some genuinely brilliant laughs, learned things I wouldn't even imagine, and yet, given my time over, I'm not sure I would make the same choices again. For me, uni, even from living at home, has been hard. I am not a naturally gifted person. I work hard for my marks, I've had three 1st marks in as many years, and I honestly felt like framing them, because I was shocked and proud to get those marks. I've never ever not put work in and fluked something. I'm the kind of person who has to read the novels, revise the plays, recite the poems, turn up with annotated copies of things, make notes in lectures and pay attention to what I'm told. Nothing about these last three years has been easy. There were times I've been ready to chuck the towel in, ups and downs like you'd never believe, and not just in my uni life, but it's been an experience all the same. 

there will be a certain amount of nostalgia when we raise a glass to the last three years, say a fond farewell to our fellow students and step out into the cruel wide world as graduates, as adults with degrees who are supposed to have their shit together. I'll miss it, maybe not for the reasons I should, but God, there will be a teary moment somewhere down the line. I'm leaving what I've always known, because it's time, I guess. It's time to be the person I've become. 

Bear with me.

I'm exhausted, stressed and close to tears. It's finally happened, my belated January blues, the winter depression everyone talks about. That's what I feel like now. The bags under my eyes get darker every day, I'm irritable and getting lazier as the mornings get darker and colder. Uni is just causing me a lot of unnecessary stress, and I hate that. Assignments are flooding in, deadlines are looming and decisions have to be made, fast. I feel like I'm losing my friends, to uni, to other people, to everything. I can count on one hand how many times anyone has attempted to contact me in the last couple of weeks, and it scares me. It seems like everyone knows what they want, what their end goal is, what they're aiming for. While I sit, twirling a pen between my thumb and forefinger, absent-mindedly daydreaming about one day writing some fabulous bestselling novel or something. I want to scream (into a void, perhaps) or just disappear for a few days, hibernate and pull myself together. Sort out my work, and my immune system, and boost my mood. I'm a nightmare lately, I'm moody and stressy and I'm intolerable when it comes to anyone else. I feel like I might just eat everyone alive that comes into close proximity with me. I'm constantly checking my watch, counting down the days, until my week off. I need some down-time. Some rest. Some peace. It's hard, I feel like I push people away sometimes, I know I do, but that's only because it's for their own good. I'm just saying, if I want to be on my own, it's because I need to be. I really need to stop stressing and start smiling again.

Would you like a gag with that compliment?

Receiving a compliment is weird. It's kind of positive, but it's also kind of negative in one sense. While I like to think I'm quite good at accepting compliments, (not because I'm vain, or think the person is right in what they say) but purely because I think sometimes, it's better to accept a compliment, than deny it and somewhat publicly humiliate the complimenter by throwing it back in their face. Its like, that just isn't very polite. I also feel that if I deny a compliment, someone might actually take offense and feel that I'm being weird and stand-offish, when that wouldn't actually be the case.

Meanwhile, refusal to accept a nice remark or comment made by someone, whether it be a friend, relative or stranger, can actually make you question yourself further. Someone recently told me they thought I was pretty, and I immediately jumped up, defensively, and shrugged off their compliment, when deep down I could have (and should have) just smiled and realised that actually it was a nice comment coming from a nice place. While this person was complimenting me, I was going over and over in my head listing the things that were, in my opinion, wrong with myself, both internally and externally, and why, in my opinion, this comment was not fitting for little old me. Compliments are sometimes back-handed, yet this is unintentional. Cue a Mean Girls quote: "Oh my god, I love your bracelet, where did you get it?" and shrink back with disdain and hatred we collectively share for arch-nemesis and ultimate bitch, Regina George. What about these: "Is your hair different, it looks nice" makes you think "does it look a mess usually?" "Have you lost weight?" Is that a hint that you probably need to shed a few pounds? A comment on your physical appearance makes you feel analysed and subjected, and yet happy/sad/worried at the same time. I don't ever think I've had bundled of self-confidence, but every so often, there will be peaks and troughs, just a everyone has.

When someone comments positively about me, maybe I don't believe them because previously, someone who has said the same or a similar thing, turned out to be lying/not really bothered/not who I thought they were, so maybe their judgement isn't to be trusted. Am I afraid of what the compliment means, in both surface meaning and deeper meaning? Yes. What if someone I like tries to flatter me and I turn all gullible and believe every word they breathe in my presence, then later turn out to have been taken for a ride, and end up looking stupid and foolish. Yet another reason to avoid accepting and believing compliments. An outfit praise, a "thin" comment or a realisation that my hair is different to what it was yesterday can all spark the same gut-wrenching reaction. We jerk backwards. We recoil. We hide away from the positives and seemingly attract the negatives like magnets. It is, of course, proven that while you can receive a hundred compliments and doubt every single one, yet one insult or negative comment, and it will dwell and stay with you for years.

Ross: Rach, come on, look, I know how you must feel.

Rachel: No, you don't, Ross. Imagine the worst things you think about yourself. Now, how would you    feel if the one person you trusted most in the world not only thinks them too, but actually uses them as reasons not to be with you.

Ross: No, but, but I wanna be with you in spite of all those things.

Rachel: Oh, well, that's, that's mighty big of you.

Ross: You know what? You know what? If things were the other way around, there's nothing you could put on a list that would ever make me not want to be with you.

Rachel: Well I guess that's the difference between us. See, I'd never make a list.

Don't kick me when I'm down.

The human body is only as resilient as the beating heart, or so it would seem. Humans, by default, are supposed to be resilient, easy-going creatures, who have the ability to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and plaster a smile on their not-so happy faces. But, how many times can you fall before you hurt yourself, how many times can you be kicked before you fall down, never to get up again?

Recently, I have experienced a handful of things, a huge variation of events, which opened my eyes to the fact that I, am not as resilient and adaptable as I'd like to believe. I'm what you could call a pessimist by default, but not without reason. Lately, I've had so many knock-backs (both mentally and physically) that I've found it hard to not dwell on the all-encompassing negativity in my life. Don't get me wrong, I fully realise the extent to which I am lucky, and appreciate what and who I have in my life, but for the last few weeks, I've been totally, utterly and completely miserable. There's only so many times that you can break down before it starts to get to you. I recently lost someone very special to me, which I have previously blogged about, and which I suppose, as it were, the last straw, the final, hard-hitting piece of news that would shatter my soul and my whole belief system, if only temporarily. To say I've had a really bad couple of weeks, would be like sugar-coating Hell, or putting lipstick on a Doberman (any shade) It just isn't right. It doesn't work.

You could say I haven't had much luck when it comes to romance. So much so, that that word makes me draw back with repulsion. For every time I've ever been lead on, or let down, or told I wasn't right, or good enough, I've come to HATE that beautiful thing we call romance. Cynically, I don't believe in it. I don't believe that there's such thing as soul mates or fated plans, written in our stars, because, if there is, why are there so many good people, unhappy and lonely? Is it just simply because they haven't found The One? I've been screwed over too many times to just think it coincidental, or a mere work of fate. It came to the point where I didn't know whether I believed in it at all. I was sat down with some of my friends, and we were discussing boys, and the conversation came to The Keeper, as it were, the relationship that belittles all predecessors. Cue another disgusted face, because frankly, sometimes, it's necessary. There's nothing more condescending or aggravating than when someone who's in a relationship just tells you "you just haven't met them yet" (to paraphrase Michael Bublé.) Especially when you're in a wounded sorta phase. 

I actually blame my ever-so-trusting self. That makes me want to curse in itself, because I feel like i'm being punished for being a normal (cue the laughter from anyone who personally knows me) trusting human being. However, it can and has been said, I have a slight tendency to be gullible. I trust people too easily, and then, for some mad reason, I'm surprised when they let me down. In a world where we're surrounded by romantic, lovey-dovey propaganda, it's hard not to fall into the jaws of The Romantic. I know this too easily. Something happened quite recently that not only maddened me to my core, but temporarily lose faith in that so-called True Love concept. I put my trust in someone who I believed to care about me, and instead, after months of lies and mockery, I realised that it was just one big, hilarious joke to him. This isn't the first, or probably the last time something like this will happen to me, but all the same, it was unnecessarily cruel. I don't understand why anyone, male or female, would lead someone on, lead them to believe that they felt something they didn't, and then, dispose of them when they've served whatever sick purpose that may be.

It's hard to put your feelings on the line. It's even harder if every time you do, you get hurt and treated badly. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, or how long you persevere, there's always someone waiting to spoil your fun, break your neck or kick you when you're down. But, as we are, by default and necessity (with the combination of an open heart and a dash of hope) resilient, controlled little figures, we do what we know how to. We cry when we're upset, then seek consolation. We scream and shout and throw things and swear under your breath, or get drunk and stupid, rely on sarcastic texts and down-trodden glances. And in the end, we repeat. We DO pick ourselves back up, we DO dust ourselves off, and we DO slap a smile on our faces, and show them that no matter how much they try, or how hard they kick us, we will always, get back up again.

"YOU CAN'T BREAK ME."