What 15 Years of education has taught me.

Hi I'm Leah and I have just completed 3 years at University.

That was almost as terrifying to type as it is to think and say. The idea that after 15 uninterrupted years of formal education, I am closing that book for good (hopefully).

I don't regret spending so long confined within the realm of classrooms, books and teachers, however( although, student loans are a thing I'll spend the next 40 years of my life chasing), about 12 years in, I did start to wonder when actual real life experience would present itself to me. This was about the same time I began to question whether all these qualifications were even going to get me anywhere I want to be? But honestly that was a whole other kettle of fish.

My point is, yes I am for the time being, done with formal education, this doesn't mean I expect to never have to sit in a formal teaching setting ever again because I fully understand that a lot of life is about learning new things in order to progress. What I mean is, for the foreseeable future, I feel I can safely say I have no intent of stepping foot back over higher formal education threshold unless at gunpoint (and even then...)

Of course not everyone's experience with education can be a bright and shiny one (, I know mine certainly wasn't) but I personally feel grateful for the years I have spent staring at white boards and then at interactive boards and then (for some reason) at blackboards, because it has taught me a great many things and here a just a few of them.

1. Never stop learning.

Self-improvement is such a big part of life. If you don't adjust to the times, you will be left behind. Learning is a huge part of our childhood, we spend most of our waking hours as children, picking up on things from the adults around us, learning what is and isn't acceptable. When we reach schooling age, the same method applies, we continue to learn appropriate (and inappropriate) behaviours alongside subjects that we may grow to be passionate about.

I love learning new things and I strive to learn something new everyday and be conscious of it. Even if you don't enjoy leaning a particular subjects (Maths am I right?) there are so many other things to learn and be passionate about, be it a hobby or a lifelong career, learning is always fun and it doesn't have to be in a classroom.

2. Creativity is applicable to almost anything.

Having a creative mind can be one of the most frustrating things growing up and especially in school. When everyone else is scribbling excitedly through Algebra and Biology, you're dreaming up how to build that perfect sand castle during playtime or a more efficient way to not get 'stuck in the mud' it can be terribly painful to sit through the more 'academic' lessons when what you truly long to do involves paint or glue. Of course, I mustn't discount the people who found that their creativity blossomed during Maths and Science because again creativity is applied in a vast array of ways to anything you set your mind to.

A lot of schools especially in secondary education look to the academic students for their statistics when trying to recruit a new group of students (poor things) and often the creative types are left by the wayside, all I have to say to this group is, just you wait until you reach university or the world of work. The world is your oyster then, you're strict pompous geography teacher won't be laughing when they're standing in a building you designed with your messy glitter brain!

3. Question EVERYTHING.

Possibly the most important point on the list. Don't be afraid to be the Socrates of your class, friendship group, office where ever. The world needs more sceptics, we keep the world spinning with our inability to just accept something at face value. Pushing yourself to question what you believe is the only way to truly know what you stand for I've found. It's also a great way to keep that mind of yours wide open to other people's theories and ideas and discussions or debates are much more interesting with someone who has the intelligence to know that they don't know and take on other people's perspectives from time to time.

4. Try different things.

Take it from someone who is still learning to be more adventurous, trying things is a fantastic opportunity to find out what is for you and what most certainly is not! Most regrets come from what you didn't do and lessons come from what you did (even if perhaps you shouldn't have). While I do believe that there are certain things, you just know you won't enjoy because of who you are at the core, the sceptic in me refuses to accept that some of these absolute no's can't be transformed into maybes or a yes or two. It all ties back into the idea of questioning everything, that includes yourself. You just never know how you might surprise yourself trying something new.

5. Learn to let things slide.

Holding grudges is painful. It harms you way more than it harms the person you're holding it against. Negative feelings come with the burden of human emotions and the burden of interacting with negative human beings. You'd love to avoid them if you could, but in education you soon learn that no matter how far up the ladder you climb,  you will meet unpleasant people some of whom make it their personal mission to make everyone around them feel as miserable as they do. But here's the thing, holding a grudge against someone you don't even like, is so much a waste of your time that when you look back on all the people you let get to you, it'll make you sick.

It's a much lighter load to carry when you make yourself untouchable to those who would knock you off your horse just to watch you fall. It's not an easy task but well worth practising as you go through life.

6. Talent needs to be crafted.

Its one thing to be talented and quite another to be hard working And talented. The two are not the same thing (obviously,) one is the improved and more successful version of the other. Having a natural ability is a wonderful gift but an even better gift to give yourself is the passion and dedication to turn a talent into something you're mastering. It took some time for me to learn that while I have always had a natural ability to write, that this didn't mean that I could just stop progressing and learning or that I could say hand a story in after only one draft and expect my creative genius to be felt and rewarded with a high mark. Everything can be improved upon and if you have a passion for something and you plan on following this passion down a career laden path, what possible harm could you do admitting to yourself that you are NOT the master of your craft but you aim to be and just going for it? In short, nothing!

Improvement is never a bad thing.



7. The Education system is NOT for everyone.

The final thing I learned in my 15 years of education is that school is NOT for everyone. Well for the first 10 years it kind of is and has to be but there are just some people who know from an early age that sitting in a classroom is just not the way they like to learn. And for those types of people, the education system is kind of the shit they badly want to scrape from their shoe. I know just as well as you do that there is a LOT of pressure to go into further education when you first leave school. My main reason for going to university wasn't anything to do with what I wanted to do, it was because I had been told from an early age, that this was the best possible path. For me personally, it was, it gave me three extra years to figure my shit out and put a name once and for all to what I want to do. It also allowed me to meet some of the best people I know and continue my no. 1 passion, learning! But I get that some people who did pursue higher education have come out of it feeling worse for wear and that it was a waste of their time, I can't look at the things I have done in life that way or I'll spend most of it lying of the floor, staring up at the sky asking why I've wasted so much time sat behind a desk.

I just hope wherever you are in life, no matter what stage of education at whatever age, you know this, school ends eventually and those horrible teachers who made you suffer are still probably doing the same to other kids, only now their eye sight sucks and they're doing it because they hate their lives. I hope you can get whatever you can out of your education (especially if you're up to your eyeballs in debt right about now!) and just never stop learning, inside or outside the classroom.

Have a great day.

Love,

The Girl In Blue
xoxo

'Fuck Boys/ Girls'

Calling all fuck boys, users and friendship abusers! This one is about you. I would dedicate this post to you but I'm pretty sure you're all too self absorbed and unaware to notice anything you're not tagged in on facebook.

This is an anger fuelled post, have no doubt about that my friends.

You see, I like to think of myself as a fair minded person, am I cynical and a bit of a bitch? Yes. Do I sometimes have strange reactions to situations? Hell yes BUT then again couldn't most well rounded people claim the same faults? I hope so otherwise this will be a waste of your time.

As a millennial, I am well acquainted with a lot of throw away terms, Lol, BRB, selfie, fleek etc. and I'm not goanna lie, I try my best to stay away from most of them (Lol excluded, I use it way too much,) mostly because I find them to be an insult to my English Lit university education. However, the words 'fuck boy' seem to transcend time itself or rather the meaning behind the words do.

Everyone has at some point come into contact with a 'fuck boy', this particular person does not have to be male to qualify and other words used to describe them would be. user, player, dick, jerk, waste of time. They seem to have the key to that locked and double chained door in our lives we swear we'll never re-open and any time they're feeling bored or like they deserve a second (third, fourth,) chance they just pop up and ruin everything.

Now of course most of our 'fuck boys' come in the form of an ex we can't seem to shake, or that one really annoying flirtation-ship that never had the chance to turn into anything facebook offical, but sometimes these fluctuating pests can be friends we've run miles from only to be surprised instagram messaged by them at 1:00 in the morning with them acting like they didn't delete us from their phone years ago. This does not make them any less irritating or inconvenient though and still sometimes we find ourselves entertaining the notion of unlocking the door for good, letting it swing open to welcome them back into our naive and trusting nature.

Having just mere moments ago broken a cycle (hopefully,) that has lasted 6 years of my life, I can say this with absolute certainty. Once a 'fuck boy', always a 'fuck boy'.

Hey, you know that guy/girl that keeps letting you down say maybe once a year and then disappears until it's time for their annual return? And you know how they keep acting like they've done nothing wrong, that you've got a really shit memory or that they've changed? Yeah it's all total bullshit.

Who'd have thought eh? I'm so angry that it has taken me this long to realise how much of a waste of time this person is. 6 years and he's matured as slowly as that fucking bottle of cheap wine you're waiting to become valuable. What does my head in the most though is, that I honestly never even believed half the crap that came spilling out of his mouth. I knew exactly how it would end, I just didn't know when. And 3 years in, I feared that I would spend the rest of my life getting that sinking pit in my stomach when my phone buzzed and it was him returned from the great land of empty promises. I knew all along he was suffering from a strong case of talkingoutofhisarse-itis but I guess even the cynic in me couldn't overpower my need to see the good in people.

Even when he'd ultimately let me down and fuck off for months sometimes a year at a time, I could never find it in me to say aloud what a shitty person he was. I'd always chalked that inability up to that idea that I just didn't care enough but now I realise that I just hadn't been pushed to my limit yet.

I like to see the good in people just to occasionally prove myself wrong, that maybe this time we could just be friends and I wouldn't be forcing myself into a label I've never wanted for the sake of pleasing yet another undeserving dick.

Personally, I think the worst part of being caught in a destructive cycle with a user, 'fuck boy' whatever, is that it stops you from seeing what the people around you see when they see this person using you. They don't see what you see, to them, this person is not a lost or broken soul reaching out to another nor are they good people with issues. They are bad people who like to use good people for their own entertainment. They do it to validate their self image.

It's like they figure if they can get a 'good girl/guy' to be with them, it won't matter how it ends, it won't matter if they break your heart, or just severely piss you off because they'll have proved to themselves that they are good people, they are capable of being true. All the while being 'true' to several other people as well. Fucking delusional the lot of them.

It finally hit me tonight, when he hung up on me after not getting what he wanted this time, that he was never a good person and more than that, he will never be good enough for someone like me. I got to tell him that tonight (I rang the ignorant pig back! Gave him the shock of his life,) and boy was it liberating. Just knowing he heard these exact words come out of my mouth filled me with guilt free glee. 'You are not a good person, you are a dick and this is the last time I will have anything to do with you, go to hell you waste of air'.

I guess some people who read this will think that was a little rude, so would I a few years ago but after wasting the best part of my teenage years on this cretin of a human, I honestly feel great about sticking it to him one last time, the first time actually. There is something truly awesome about breaking the cycle and setting yourself free from a person who is destined and content to repeat the same old destructive shit with anyone who will enable it. Today I made damn sure that my 20's will not be dominated by the same 'fuck boy' that messed with 15,16, 17, 18, 19, 20 year old me.

God this was a long one but I just needed to get it off my chest so I can sleep.

I hope you all deal with anyone who disrespects you in a similar or more awesome fashion, just remember that they're in denial about what they are, but so long as you know and stay away, they don't need to matter to you any more.


Respect yourselves,

Love,

The Girl in Blue
xoxo

Don't Be A Doormat!

Are you an easy going character? Do people find you easy to talk to, confide in, walk all over? If you answered yes to the last question (because lets face it the other questions were pretty pointless,) then this post is for and about you.

There is a big difference between being a nice person and being a push over. A nice person has limits to how far they will allow themselves to be pushed by people who like to take advantage. A push over has no concept of limit and most of the time has little in the way of self respect.

 Hard fact here, this world is full of people who are nice, people who pretend to be nice and then there are the people who are not so nice (although I realise its not so black and white). The key to learning what your limits are is to ask yourself what that person trying to use you as a personal foot wiper has ever done to deserve the many favours you do for them. Better still, ask yourself, which type of the aforementioned person(s) are they. If the answer ranges from very little to nothing at all or anything from pretending to be nice and onwards, you have your answer. And that answer is no. Its a word many people I know and I include myself in this have a hard time saying (and accepting.)

Being the type of person who walks all over people is nothing compared to being the down trodden one. For the former, people already know they're arseholes so mostly steer clear, you learn everything you need to know about them just through watching them trample all over their 'friends'. The latter however can be misjudged based on how they allow themselves to be treated, nobody likes a spineless lass or lad. I mean for one, they're no fun to mess with because they have no limits and two, it comes across like they have no respect for themselves and that is not a fun person to get drunk with.

Even if half those negative traits aren't true about you, it won't matter anyway because it's not like you'd actually have the guts to correct them would you? Its a loser's game being the pushover and trust me never saying no means you will never win.

It's so hard to tell someone, a friend, a loved one the 'n' word. Maybe you're afraid they'll lash out, take it personally and never speak to you again. But if I were you, I would question whether or not that particular person deserves to be in your good graces anyway. Drama queens and spoilt brats please exit stage right!

Telling somebody no doesn't mean you're a bad person. If you're uncomfortable with the favour they ask of you, it is well within your right to politely (or rudely,) decline without feeling like you've stepped on their puppy.

I think the best reason not to be a total pushover stems mainly from within. Do you really want to have no respect for yourself? Like really? I think you should have most respect for yourself before anyone else because you are the only one who has to live with yourself 100% of the time, no time outs. Could you look at yourself with anything but loathing if you're only identifier was that you could never say no? I know I couldn't.

Its a shitty hand you get dealt, being the nice one, the quiet one who will let your 'friend' get away with anything. And that hand will only get shittier once that friend has used you all up and fucked off to find another chump to screw over because you won't even have your dignity at the end.

Look my point is, you don't have to be a total bitch (although it is fun,) there is nothing wrong with having a bleeding heart (trust me I know,) but for christ's sakes please don't be a bloody idiot and stand up for yourself from time to time because at the end of the day, you're all you've got.

Respect yourself,

Love
The Girl in Blue
xoxo

Drowning In Sh*t

Feel like you're completely out of control in your own life? Yeah me too. 

This isn't going to be a post about how I deal with feeling stresses and overwhelmed because that would be misleading you to believe that I have any idea how to deal with it. I don't. I am currently sinking in stress and general feelings of negativity and I see no light at the end of the tunnel. Rational tells me that, like most shitty things, this too shall pass. However, I don't want it to pass in a few weeks or months or days, I would quite like it to take a hike right now!

Phew, now that I have all that out of the way, let me offer up some potentially useful advice to myself and anyone dealing with similar feelings.

1. Let yourself drown.

And by this I don't mean let whatever you feel overwhelmed about gradually make your situation worse until it becomes the worst possible scenario, I simply mean let yourself feel panicked for a moment or two (or three if need be.) Chances are if you suppress the feeling and drown yourself in denial instead, then shit is most definitely going to hit the fan because eventually those suppressed feelings of anguish will resurface and slap you wholeheartedly in the face. Better to let the waves of fear wash over you and drift off into a calmer state of mind later.

2. Don't do nothing.

Another absolutely terrible thing to do when the going gets tough is stand and watch. Productivity feels pretty damn good in moments of turmoil and its also a sure fire way to gain back some of that pesky control. You don't need to do the thing that's currently winding you up exactly, simply tidying your room, washing up, reading emails just basic chores that don't require too much in the way of brain over-activity. These things act as semi-distractions and give you a chance to feel like less of a useless human being.

3. Find something to look forward to.

A different way of wording this would be to say 'find a silver lining', but since that sounds ridiculous to my cynical ears/eyes, I'm not putting that as the bloody title. But seriously, when I think of the bleak potentially jobless months I have ahead of me, I could happily run into oncoming traffic but while I feel almost certain that unemployment awaits me, what also awaits me is a summer of fun with my friends, my 21st and a holiday. Finding things to feel excited about is a fantastic way of wading through the current awfulness of the now.

4. Lists.

Okay, so this one might be too off base for some but what I find helpful when it seems as if the world is imploding (which it is actually but anyway,) I make a list of worse situations I could find myself in. And no it's not a list that names all the blessings in my life because as anyone with the same level of irrational anxiety I have will understand, your anxiety doesn't care that you live in a warm house with a loving family and a good head on your shoulders. What I have found helps is to list things like, at least I'm not starving to death right now, at least I'm not currently being hunted by the Mexican drug cartel or in prison. Yeah as I type this, I realise it's not the most moral way to calm oneself down but it sure does do the trick sometimes.


There you have it, I hope this helps someone out there. As I post this I am currently 4 weeks away from my dissertation being due, so one might wonder why I am writing this instead of that, the only reply I can give is procrastination.

Blah blah usual sign off who cares?

Girl in Blue
xoxo

The Art Of Letting Go.

I find letting go of anything, a very hard thing to do. As a friend I am loyal sometimes to a fault but as an ex-friend, I am fierce and unforgiving. Very unforgiving. I guess my point is, I'm fantastic at holding grudges and it acts as a cloud which hangs above my head for the longest time.

But this post isn't exclusively about letting go of ill feelings towards someone, it is also about learning to care a little less and forgive a little more. Hard goals to achieve I know, believe me I'm still working on it but just know if you are like me and love to hold a grudge, that it does you way more harm than it does the person who has done you wrong. Whether they deserve your anger or not (and in my case they certainly do), at some point that anger ought to turn into a lesson.

Someone hurts you? Don't trust them again.

Owed something from someone and they won't give it back? Don't lend to them or anyone you can't rely upon again.

Not happy in relationship/friendship? Let it go, as cleanly as possible.

Learning to let things go in order to make yourself a better, lighter and happier person, to me is all about putting things behind you by putting yourself first. It sucks to feel like you're giving up on something that was once special, it's even sadder to know that it's not special to you any more and one day you won't care at all. As sad as it is, it can also bring comfort to know that with every friend lost, a much better one comes along. I believe that people are in our lives for as long as we need them. Friendships I no longer have are ones that I needed at the time but people move on and change and that's okay.

All this being said, I know that there are people who (like me) will always find it harder than others to let things rest. People like us love deep and hate deeper still which is what makes us able to forge strong friendships that are hard to give up when they become weak.

Letting go can also be applied to relationships too. Disregard all the fluffy nice stuff I said about friends being in your lives when you need them for this section because this particular thing is not at all like the other.

There is one major example that rushes to forefront of my mind when I think about the struggle of letting go of a relationship or an 'ex' (shudders.) Actually scrap that because I can think of two and although they differ in their crimes against me, the severity does not. Forgiving someone who broke your heart is something that even I can't put into words. It feels unending and just when you think the worst is over, you hear that specially assigned text/ring tone on your phone and you know that the cycle is about to repeat itself.

But unlike friendships, most awful exes deserve to be in the past and they never should have been in your life because all they taught you was how you must really hate yourself more than you first thought otherwise why would you put yourself through their bullshit? I know personally, there are two people I would rather have never met at all. They didn't manage to teach me anything useful and they still hover around me like vultures waiting for the more skilled predators to clear the lot so they can pick away at the rest. They are sucky people and it often feels like there is no art to 'letting go' of the fact that they suck but I am slowly (very slowly,) changing my attitude towards them by realising that I can't change the fact that they existed nor am I likely to forget it, but what I can do is forgive them while swearing to myself that I won't go there again.

People can change but they need to change away from you, let that ex gooooo.

The one thing that makes shaking off a grudge or hard feelings, slightly less painful, is the ultimate pay off of it all. Once you realise that they don't matter to you or that you're through allowing them to hurt your feelings, everything just gets that little bit brighter. I don't believe in karma so my mantra is less What goes around comes around and more Well, that suckers goanna die too! Perhaps I could learn something from Buddhists but hey I won't lie, there are still some people friends and others that bring a foul taste to my mouth upon memory, its all a learning process.

Let yourself be pissed off about things but then let them go, you'll be a healthier person to be around if you do.

Be good sports.

Love,

The Girl In Blue
xoxo

5 Lesson 15 Years Of Friendships Has Taught Me.

Friends are great! They can be our home away from home in many respects. The family you chose, the sibling you actually prefer yada yada yada. This is not a post to praise the sanctity of the friendship, this a post reviewing the last 15 years worth of friendships what it taught me and what was learnt along the way.

Strap in it's a bumpy ride.

It all starts at 5, the age of the innocent (or if you're anything like me, the annoying, the whiny, the snotty) but I digress. Making friends at 5 was pretty easy. Of course there were a few unwritten rules to follow and this all depended on whether you were a girl or a boy. If you're a girl, its simple, boys are disgusting and are only to be looked down upon, not to be trifled with. If you're a boy, girls are disgusting and are only to... Oh well I guess its pretty much the same across the board.

When you're little making friends is just part of the fun of playtime. And lets be honest with ourselves here, the friendships we had when we were young were made of fragile yet stern stuff. One broken rule in a game of tig/tag could send you running to the teacher in fits of tears vowing never again to speak to the friend who wronged you. But then the bell would ring and you'd be forced to sit next to them in class and as if by magic, you'd be best friends again. Still it made a great home time tale for mum.

All this being said, I still have friends I have know since I was 5 and believe me everything mentioned above was not entirely hypothetical (but this is a blog about the shit that happens to me, so that was probably apparent right?)

As you graduate through the education system, you meet new classmates and start to call them friends (mainly because you have little choice you're in this together for the next 5 years...)

But sometimes despite being thrown together in twos and threes completely against your will, the niceties stick and you wind up being friends with people you thought you had nothing in common with. Similarly what can then happen is as you grow, you learn that having things in common isn't the irreversible glue that holds you together anymore.

But enough rambling lets get on with it shall we?

1. Wonkily built mud pies equals long lasting friendships.

This one probably won't apply to everyone but to those who have known the joys of building mud pies using that bucket and spade from the time you went to Blackpool and tried to no end to build a proper sandcastle worthy of Henry VIII, you'll also know what I mean when I say I probably owe my parents big time for the many times I would offer them up a slice (most likely a mound,) of mud 'pie' and watch with expectant eyes as they did their best to press it as close to their face as possible and make eating sounds. But the friends I made mud pies with and had other such fun home adventures, really helped to shape my imagination. Everything from scouting out a den in the areas behind our houses (or as we called it the backings,) to playing bull dog on the field next to the local pub and playing tig over the road when we were old enough. For me those wonderful summer days and the people I shared them with, hold a special place in my nostalgia bank.

2. Playground friendships are not classroom friendships.

Okay so you know how in primary school you would have the people you HAD to sit next to in the one classroom you stayed in all day and so it was more likely than not that you formed a sort of warped, love/hate bond with them. Things that involved sharing your new coloured pens or laughing at them when they painted their hands with PVA glue and pretended to be roughly the age of the school secretary, who had a severe skin shedding problem. You had fun together while you had to share a desk, however, when that bell rang to sound break times and it was time to hit the playground, all bets were off! It didn't matter if they were your best friend during English and Maths, playtime was sacred and so reserved for your 'real' friends. The friends you played stuck in the mud with or made scoobies with, those friends. And you never felt too bad because your classmate had their own thing going on too, they had friends that preferred playing in the sandbox to running around screaming bloody murder to avoid having to be 'it'.

And the same can also be applied to secondary school friends. If you were lucky enough to be one of the kids in school who had a never ending line of 'backup' friend groups (the ones you'd run to when you're main group were busy arguing, over who told who what about the other), then you were also most likely the type of kid who knew everyone in your year. Not to say you liked everyone, but you certainly knew the popular kids alongside your own friends and knowing the not so popular kids, but you resigned squarely in the middle. This meant that you and the most popular girl/boy in school could be thick as thieves while sat in History wondering why learning about European History pretty much only involved one country.

3. Filtering the bad ones out takes a while.

This is a lesson that is ongoing if you have standards for your friendships. I've spoken about this on here before, the idea that you should not have to settle for the crappy flaky friends anymore than you should put up with horrible bullying racist, degrading ones. Sorting out the bad eggs from the goods ones (getting a strong Willy Wonka's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory images here,) takes time to get right, you might have a close friendship with a really shitty person right the way through primary school, and feel like secondary school is a great way to break free of that person. Secondary school shits unfortunately are harder to shake off and that is mainly because although you are both older, you are going through a really weird time (also known as puberty) and its easier for you to be manipulated and mistake it for guidance and love.

Even as you get older and leave school, the bad friends keep coming around like the clap while the good ones often linger in the background, waiting for you to grow a backbone. Nevertheless its such an important lesson to learn when it comes to knowing exactly what you expect from your friends and what you expect from yourself as a friend. Your choice of friends it a reflection of who you are, you are the company you keep.

4. You learn how to lose friends.

Linking to the previous point, as I get older, I get so much better at no longer being friends with people I once thought would always be in my life. In a way it is sad because now it doesn't happen due to a horrific fight, time itself is the cause, conflict and the consequence. It used to be me fighting so hard to keep in touch with people who just had better things going on in their lives and the sooner I realised I was no longer a priority to them, they no longer mattered as much to me. Some people just always will matter to me though that's just the kind of person I am but I must say this,don't spend too much time and energy trying to pump life into a dead fish, at some point, you will run out of air.

5. Friendships are relationships to be cherished.

This is the final point I want to make about friendships. I may only have a handful of real friends in my life at this time but I cherish future, past and present friendships for being around when I needed them most and in some cases for what they taught me in their absence. Friends are amazing people who alongside family or sometimes in place of them, get you through times in life that are too hard to face alone (school is included in this), and in turn, you get to be there for them when they need you most. I love to laugh with my friends, I'm thankful that I don't have any friends I no longer speak to that I don't feel I could just reconnect with them some day if only to catch up. I'm grateful for all of the friends that I have had, do have and will have because honestly for me, they are my relief from myself.


Cherish your pals.

Love,

The Girl in Blue
xoxo.

Opinions.

Opinions. Everyone has their right to one. Even if (and when), people strongly disagree. Two entirely reasonable statements in theory  but when these are put to the test, even the most morally upright, open minded people tend to struggle stretching their patience for the outcasts to the folks prejudicing against them.

A wonderful mantra I like to live by is this crazy notion that you have a right to your own opinion, I have a right to disagree with it (and I find myself disagreeing with people a lot these days) but despite this I will fight tooth and nail for us both to have our own opinions even when they directly oppose one another.

Sounds pretty fair to me. And if you like to think of yourself as a fairly open minded, rational person, driven by logic and reason but also by a level of human understanding then it probably doesn't sound too far-fetched to you either. However, the internet is a tricky place, it's a place where you can post an opinion too foul to say aloud and walk away from your keyboard feeling like you got away with murder. It is also the kind of place where real life morals get put to the test and then put to rest in the face of an irritating commenter. By this I mean, it is so easy to preach proudly to your friends about how much patience you have when debating with seemingly irrational people about the more controversial topics of life but when it comes to arguing your case to anonymous on Facebook, it seems that you couldn't care less that 10 short minutes ago you believed that everyone was entitled to their own opinion.

I have just witnessed this in the heated comment section of a video about abortion. Pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike clashing with characters. Most of the pro-lifer arguments made me roll my eyes, all blathering on about how selfish abortion is and how evil it is and 'oh life starts at conception don't ya know!'. And the condensation that comes along with the delusion that you are so in the right, that anyone who disagrees is the epitome of stupid.

I used to waste my time trying to out mean the people with opposing opinions to my own but the time came when I found it to be too tiring to keep up with. It's just as stupid to be just as ignorant as someone to try and prove that you're better than them.

1. You waste good time and energy forgetting how to be patient and respectful in the face of idiocy.

2. Your opinion does not automatically make you a better person than the stranger on the internet who just happens to be cursing you into oblivion (especially if you're cursing back!)

As much as it pains me to go in on my fellow pro-choicers, yall' can be just as much of a mess too. Everything from calling the opposition dumb idiots to claiming that they have 'no right to say anything about it'. And while the morality snob in me wants badly to agree with them (well at least the whole dumb idiot thing anyway), something holds me back from giving them a virtual high five. What makes their opinion any less valid than your own? Is it the whole it's not your body argument that I have made many times? Because while I agree with that sentiment as an argument against making abortion illegal anywhere in the world, it just doesn't hold up for an argument based on someone simply stating their opinion.

Believing something so strongly you become a bit of an arsehole, works both ways as far as I'm concerned. Whether you believe people have the right to their own bodies or not, putting down the people who don't by rendering their point of view invalid just makes you a hypocrite. This is not me defending the people who are against the right to have an abortion because I'm not, I'm just not willing to group all those people under the category names YOU'RE WRONG AND STUPID because I don't agree.

And this stance doesn't just apply to this particular subject, it applies to all of them. You don't always have to like people's opinions, hell you don't necessarily have to respect it, just respect people's right to have an opinion because, the way freedom of speech is going, you might just find yourself fighting for your opinion right along side them.

Be kind(er) to each other,

Love,

The Girl in Blue
xoxo