sometimes quiet is violent

So, long time no see. I had an intense summer serving breakfast lunch and dinner to Italian summer school kids, and showing people to their seats at Edinburgh Castle. I worked so much this summer that after my last shift in August I spent a week and a half going out and doing things every day in a row to make up for the not-summer that I had, which, if you know me, is not my style. I'm very much a "give me a few days to recuperate after an outing" kind of person. But, today's post is actually not about my work experiences, but about more positive things! The last post I wrote on this blog was quite sad, and I'm happy to say I've gotten a lot better from then on. I've noticed some things in myself that have led me to be quite happy right now, and I want to share, lest this blog always be about me being pissed off or sad or anxious. Lately, I've found myself engaging (mainly online, but also in person) with people in a way that I couldn't have be...

"You must allow yourself to outgrow and depart from certain eras of your life with a gentle sort of ruthlessness." I saw this quote today, from a book by Katy Maxwell, and it brought up some things I have been thinking about for a while. These thoughts are mostly about letting go of people, and simultaneously letting go of that 'version' of you that you try to cling on to and pretend to be when you interact with these people. Discussions about letting go of people in your life that may be harmful to you in some way or another are often made to be more serious than they should be. Words like "toxic" and "cutting people out" are thrown around and it makes it seem like only people who are actively abusive towards you, be it emotionally or physically, "deserve" to be cut out of your life, whatever that might mean. This is insinuating that something extreme has to happen in my relationships for me to have the right to "cut them out...

I think it's in Easy A, where the main character Olive talks about how it's funny that in movies the material you're studying in school always seems to have some relationship or meaning in the struggles you're currently going through. I guess I could say something similar to my own life, though it isn't material in school, rather just a book I'm reading on my own. The last month or so has been really tough on me, mentally speaking. I'm not going to go into the gory details as that would be over sharing and would possibly lead to me never being able to look anyone in the eye ever again. But, this tough time has made me feel a whole bunch of feelings, mostly in the negatives. Now, however, after the biggest storm has passed, I'm left feeling very apathetic. You know the kind of apathy that permeates your whole life, where things you were previously interested in just don't seem that great anymore, and you don't feel like putting in effort to se...

Before I start on this seemingly bitter and cynical rant about love and soul mates I need you to understand that I am not, in fact, either of those. Well, not completely. Hell, I'm 20-years old, barely dipping my feet in the pond of actual life, who am I to talk about love with any kind of authority whatsoever? So let it be known that I'm writing this post merely from the point of view of a young woman who has grown up in modern society, drank in the discourse surrounding love and relationships, and as someone who has never been in love. There's a specific set of ideologies and thoughts surrounding the idea of soul mates. Usually these revolve around there being one soul, or person, out there for you, and that you are meant to be together, and that cosmic forces have determined this. Take for example the story Plato tells, where Zeus in his anger split up us humans into two pieces, condemning us to spend our lives searching for that other half that would complete us (usef...