these are troubling times

hand-me-down jumper, thrifted skirt, new look belt, necklace from a school trip to Trewern

Transitional periods like this one, the one in-between the seven-year arc of secondary school to three years of university, are very awkward. Not in an endearing, 'awkward turtle' way, but a full blown 'shit-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life-and-my-time' kind of way. When I go through one too many awkward-scared-confusing-sad moments, I write it out in my diary. There's something profound about getting miserable thoughts and experiences down on something as tangible as paper. It turns abstract thoughts into a physicality and though they are no easier to handle, it gives me hope to flick through old pages (that I can't ever bring myself to read because it's so embarrassing) and think, 'I was cripplingly sad when I wrote that. I'm okay now'. 'Fear of the name only increases fear of the thing itself', and fear of my future is as irrational as it gets. After all, as Saphira said, 'Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn't exist and never shall. There is only now.' (Okay, no more fantasy-book name-dropping.)

Still, I do get nostalgic to think about the old times, before I needed to document things to remember them. I remember having deep conversations with my friends during so-called 'maths lessons' (so-called because we didn't even have a teacher for most of the year/s) about philosophy, religion, life/death. We'd stay up till silly-o-clock talking about the scientific impossibilities of a higher being, the way our lives somehow seemed to be pre-determined even in a stuffy classroom, how we thought everyone we knew would turn out, how we thought we would turn out. It was typical angsty-teen stuff but at the time it seemed like I lived for those conversations. Now the ones that I used to speak to are going through similar phases as me and I wonder if we're all dealing with our teen-to-adult growing pains in the same way. I guess I don't really know what that way is for me, let alone anyone else.

Today, I'm going to the theatre with my English class to see The Duchess of Malfi, hence my early blogging. And also, I'm trying to go into school a bit later because they've tightened their maintenance of dress-code and Doc M's aren't allowed. Does this make me a rebel, for being late, or a prude, for not wanting to get caught? I'm going to go with prude, because techically, I have no lessons till 2.