A moment of seriousness 😐

I didn't know Robin Williams. I mean, I knew of him, but I can't say that I'm heartbroken that he's died, because I didn't know him like his friends and family did. I do think his death is very sad nonetheless. If the rumours are true that his death was related to depression, it just goes to show that this illness is a killer, and is very serious.

Many people forget that this is an illness in the process of trying to help someone out of depression, and the sufferer can feel as though they have little or no control over their own feelings. That is a terrifying experience, and may be one of the main recognisable feelings, given that almost everything else is just absent, or a void of negativity.

It's not that those who suffer depression don't want to feel better, they literally don't know how. It feels like digging your way out from the underground and having no idea when you're going to see the light, or if there will ever be any. As you start to recover, you observe everybody else functioning as normal above the surface, like a strange glass ceiling is between you and them. You want to be up there with them, but you have no idea how that's going to happen.  You want to be there, really there in the moment with them. You want to talk about how you feel and not scare anyone. You want them to be there for you, but if you're honest, you might lose the last thing keeping you going.

Fuck it. If you need to talk, talk honestly. If you lose people, you lose them. It doesn't really matter, because you would have lost more by trying to be cautious, which could delay your recovery.
 As you get better, you do see light, but this time it's like you're underwater and you need to find the whole in the ice to escape from. You feel like you're cold and numb inside, and sometimes it dawns on you that you can't breathe, and the overwhelming sense of uncertainty and self-doubt are the primary feelings you wake and sleep with.

People around you may not know what to do with you or say to you. But if you know someone with depression, all you have to do is be there. Don't set up an itinery of 'fun' things to do, your presence is enough. Understand that the person you're trying to help needs your support just as if they were suffering a physical illness, and if you were close to them beforehand, you will already know that the best of them is yet to come. That person who literally brought light, life, energy, happiness, positivity, good stuff to your day is in there somewhere and they can get better. Yes, they might feel like they have nothing to live for, but they do.

I'm not a medical expert but I do know that depression is a horrendous and dark illness to suffer from, and that you can feel happy again one day. Maybe not immediately, but if you compare it to the seasons, to get to summer you have to go through spring. That takes time, and even then, sometimes it rains in summer, but when you're at your best, you'll realise everything good that you can offer. You can appreciate the view the most when you're at the top of the mountain. It's just that when you're stuck in a metaphorical forest on the mountain, you can't see the view, or the big picture.

You can one day be there in those moments you observed under the ice,  you can even create those moments. People can love you for everything you are, see your lust for life, your energy. You end up feeling things again, like, you really want to go out tonight, you'd love a giant rack of ribs, you want a glass of wine, you'd have a great day if you went to the beach next week, or booked a holiday, or went on a shopping spree. The simple fact that you want to do stuff is what makes you who you are and have an influence on people.

This might sound like a strange kind of cheesy rambling pep talk to anyone. But the audience is anyone. Depression is indiscriminate of age, gender, racial background, and wealth. You, or someone you know could suffer from it.
This should not be a taboo subject. People should be talking about this.

Gymming it

Gymming it

So, I recently joined a gym, which seems a bit insane, because I'm probably the laziest person I know. I don't do any exercise, I hate sport, unless it involves walking upstairs to climb into bed (make of that what you will). And I always thought the gym was a bit soulless, and a bit naff.

Anyway, a load of my friends are members, and I've been peer pressured into exercising. So I thought I'd educate you on my recent PT session. My aims are to tone my core, bum and thighs.

We took my fat measurements alone in a spa room with candles, which felt incredibly awkward with a man I just met. Anyway, I managed to avoid exposing my knickers. Thank God I invested in those stretchy pants from h&m that can be forced backwards over the knee.

Back to the PT session. I have never felt the presence of my arse so intently in my life before this hour in particular. And it has definitely been there for 23 years, it's been very much there for about 10 years. So I did all these exercise things, he was firing info and technical terms at me, which I don't have the capacity to understand because I'm an RE teacher and I'm too busy memorising the Hail Mary to cope with adding muscle groups into the mix. All I could grasp was that my legs hurt and my arse hurt more.

So we got to this step/platform situation which was super high. So I was told to step on it and lower myself down which was supposed to make my legs look super hot eventually. I did not look hot as I fell to my gluteus maximus (I do know one muscle!) however, because I could not cope with the height of this crazy platform situation. My legs literally just failed me.

Anyway, he then walked me into the weights room. From the outside, there could have been a gay orgy going on in there, men were leaving sweaty and looking flustered, and questionable moans and grunts were emanating from the vicinity. Anyway, I put my assumptions to one side, and strolled in, a bag of pale scrawniness hoping to look casual. I think I pulled it off.

I almost died in there, I had a seat for a little rest between each squat. My thought process was, 'ok, nrghh, don't make an orgasm noise....owwww this hurts....how did I end up here....what if I fart from this effort....?...now I can sit down, ah what a---argh, oh God I bruised my arse when I fell off the too-high platform!' And so on.

It did not help that my PT kept saying things like 'explode', and 'the deeper you go, the better the result'. Maybe it comes from working with teenage boys that makes me suspicious.

We concluded with what felt like simulated childbirth by working on my core.

5 days on, all of the whatever they're called muscles feel ok again. I might go back soon. But getting my tattoo was genuinely less painful.

Regrets I have and how to overcome them

This whole idea of having no regrets? Well, everyone has them, and the only way to avoid making the same mistakes again is to learn from them. Everyone has regrets.

So here's 3 things I regret and what I've learnt from them.

1. Going on a second date with someone that you have absolutely no interest in. After feeding the ducks on date 1, walking round and round the same lake, getting colder, all of a sudden the heavens opened. Sadly, it was not the dawning realisation that I'd discovered 'the one'. The sun was not smiling it's rays down upon us, it was in fact pissing it down.
So we ran back to the W reg Renault Clio and did not passionately kiss like the scene from the rainy boat from The Notebook. We drove to Morrisons.
After all this, I decided for some reason that date 2 (bowling) would be a good idea. This resulted in 'Jack's a dick', which is now widely known as the get out clause for any bad date in my entire friendship circle. I literally had to ask a friend to ring me fake crying. In future, I'll just be honest. Lesson learned.

2. Underestimating myself. I'm aware this sounds a bit cheesy. But I've come to realise that I'm actually quite good at a lot of things. I'm just incredibly harsh on myself in lots of ways. I'm very good at 'what ifs', but when I actually take a step back from the situation, I realise that things really aren't that bad.
It infuriates me when other people tell me I can't do something, or will find something hard, and it infuriates me even more when I soak it in and say nothing to them. Actually, who is anyone else to say you can't do something? No one. They aren't in your head, your position and haven't lived your experiences. How do they know? Well it's quite simple, they just don't.
If someone tried to tell me I couldn't leap across the Grand Canyon in one jump, I'd be like, 'cheers for that advice, thanks for the tip-off', but I've almost abandoned my career before it started and spent a year feeling worthless because I listened to someone else underestimating me in the past. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. What a waste of time. You make yourself happy, if you know you'll be fine, chances are you will be.
So when I feel rubbish, I try to make myself aware that I'm underestimating myself and that others might be too.

3. I will eternally regret trying to grow up too soon. Through my whole childhood I was desperate to be a proper adult and glamourised almost every aspect of what that would be like. I wore make up when I was 12 because I felt like I needed it, and something like that just seems ridiculous now.
 I remember being 3 years old, eating marmalade on toast with my Mum. She went to the loo, and when she came back I demanded to know whether she'd washed her hands, because that's what all grown ups say when you've been for a wee. Little did I know that they only speak in that way to children. Fail mini Liv, fail. I just wanted to be one of them! I relished being a big sister, even though my little sister was bossier than me in her shiny red boots. The devastation.
I think I never really did being a teenager, I felt like I did being 13 to 18 in one year, and I went straight into my career after uni. Part of me wonders, if I just enjoyed being young, how much more really awesome stuff could I have done? I'd probably have made tonnes more mistakes. I could have just been really skint. But that's part of it perhaps. I still really want to go travelling. Maybe I will one day.

So my advice to myself is, be honest, value yourself, and don't grow up too soon.
Hmm, I like that. I'm off to eat some cheesecake.

The reality of your twenties

Being in your twenties is all about realising that how it looked when you were a teenager is in fact nothing like the reality. In your teenage mind, you WILL be a goddess of all things, constantly stunning, (even in the morning) you will be amazing at your job and as a result very rich, and sickeningly happy, because there will be so many people dying to go out with you, and of course you will have met THE ONE (if there is such a thing). Your hair would always be perfect (because you can obviously afford a haircut, yes?) and your skin would be positively glowing. Your chest would also be spot free, above the magnificent boobs that would have sprung into being by your twenties. You would sleep like Snow White, serene, elegant and dignified. There would be no hangovers, and being drunk would never go wrong, because you could only be effortlessly cool, because all of the being uncool would be over by the age of 18. Obviously. Mistakes would also be a thing of the past.

Haha ha ha HA. In actual fact my life is very little like that, so I thought I'd write a post about it, because it's what I fall back on when time is on my hands!

My reality is that I am not a goddess of all things unless that is being a bit weird, and increasingly like Bridget Jones. I am not constantly stunning, but I am quite good at make up :) I usually wake up looking like a deranged panda. A bit like Tim Minchin combined with the hair.
My job is nothing short of challenging at best, but is getting better slowly but surely, and it's been the hardest year of my life, but something I'm very proud of doing.
I'm not rich, but the richest I've ever been, and I'm not sickeningly happy and the crowds aren't clamouring at my feet for a date.
My hair is far from perfect especially in the morning, when a few birds raising their young in there wouldn't look out of place, and I still cut and colour it myself, sometimes, GREAT SUCCESS, others...moving on.
My skin is also a bit poo, but again going back to the make up thing, thank God I have the gift to gloss over Pompeii with limited success. Chest is ok, although my boobs are not magnificent, I can run downstairs without a bra. A minor victory.
I sleep with my knees bent and the duvet over my head, and I'm aware this is bizarre. Neither elegant, nor serene. I am also frequently uncool, as I'm reminded by my students several times a week, and also not so cool when I'm drunk either. And I do get hangovers, and wake up with morning breath that is reminiscent of a mcdonalds that I have no recollection of desiring, purchasing or consuming. With tinnitus worse than yesterday. RINGGGGGGG.
Getting out of bed is also still a royal pain in the arse.

Additionally:
Not getting ID'd being a bad thing
People saying 'oh..you've graduated' then backing slowly away.
Moving back in with your parents
Being the least experienced of all your colleagues ('oh, you'll look back on this and see how far you've come'--Christ, am I that bad?!)
And finally, this little gem..

'When are you going to find a nice young man and settle down?'
Shoot. Me. Now.

All of this is a bit tongue in cheek as you may have gathered. I just have to laugh at my 15 year old assumptions. There are many things I love about my twenties too, in many ways it has been awesome, but the stupid stuff is far more interesting don't you think?

The PGCE 'I can't do this' moment.

So whilst my blogs are few and far between these days they are definitely something I’ve had every intention of returning to.

A lot has happened since I last wrote as I believe my last bit of inspiration came around the time of my Grandma’s funeral, but I've been so busy ever since.

To update you, I’ve almost finished my first placement, have passed Stage 2 of my PGCE and have joined a dating site which has been the source of a few interesting evenings!

I really didn’t know what to write about tonight, it was a toss up between several things but I picked the PGCE 'I can't do this' moment.

I think everyone gets to a point on the course where they have had absolutely and utterly enough. You have moments every day when you think ‘why am I doing this?!’ but this is next level. You actually write the email to say you’re going to quit and are on the brink of sending it. For me I’d worked 18 hours the day before, had 4 hours sleep and had an unbelievable amount of work to do in just one day in order to meet an important deadline, and I just didn't have time to do everything. I’d been having one meal a day for several weeks and just had no energy to go in and tell children to turn round and face the front, stop swinging on their chairs and shut up.

These are some of the reasons why I reached ‘Black Tuesday’ as I like to call it:

• ·         My lessons are never good enough. There is ALWAYS room for improvement.
• ·         I’m a perfectionist. I can never plan or evaluate in enough detail to satisfy me.
• ·         I miss my old life. I’m not a student anymore. Someone has abducted my social life - taken it from me, and at some points I wanted to ring that person up and give them Liam Neeson’s ‘I will find you…’ line from ‘Taken’, with even more conviction than he showed.
• ·         Some of the kids have literally no respect whatsoever and will treat you like you’re subhuman.
• ·         You get put in a school, you can’t choose where you go on placement. That’s not to say I hate my school, I don’t at all, but it might not be the right place in the long term even if you get fantastic experience there. I did find it hard at points.
• ·         People who just don’t understand telling you that you don’t even know what stress is yet because ‘you’re not even a real teacher with a full timetable yet’. That is not a helpful statement in the least. Have you done this?! Oh you haven't? Then be silent!

However, there are obviously reasons why I haven’t dropped out yet. The golden moments that make it worth it – here are a few:

• ·         ‘Miss, I really enjoyed that lesson’.
• ·         When kids say thanks to me for teaching them.
• ·         Meeting their parents and realising they actually give a shit about their child’s education.
• ·         ‘I’ll be sad when you leave Miss’.
• ·         Whilst a lesson will never be perfect, there are elements of some of my lessons that have come close.
• ·         ‘You have created some fantastic resources’
• ·         When someone tells you they can tell that you genuinely care about what you do.
• ·         ‘Why was John afraid to baptise Jesus?’ ‘He thought Jesus would beat him up?’
• ·         When a teacher comes up and asks if you’re ok and says that if you need anything to just ask.
• ·         Random texts off my Dad to say he’s proud of me and Mum calling to check if I’ve had a good day.
• ·         Getting told I look like Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Alice in Wonderland all in one week by the same child. The first one?!
• ·         When an experienced teacher tells you that they think you will make a good teacher.

So to anyone thinking of doing a PGCE, prepare for your ‘I can’t do this moment’ because it will probably come at some point. But when it does, bear in mind you aren’t the first or the last to feel like you can’t even look at the school logo without wanting to vom! If I can do it, then anyone can!

To all my fellow PGCEers, we made it this far! I’m so proud of us.

How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?

So yeah, this is something I have thinking about a fair bit recently.

How do we judge if someone is acting their age? Should we?

Well for a child there are loads of ways to determine this, mainly through developmental stages that broadly follow the patterns of the levels of their education, emotional capacities and behaviour patterns, but what I’m talking about is adult age.

There comes a time, when we seem to plateau, but in levels and for a very long time. It has only recently hit me that this is the case, really, through just talking to people and looking at photographs of my Grandma and Grandad from their youth.

I mean, the plateau starts when we get to roughly 21 and this is when we’re expected to be pretty much responsible for ourselves, for example, be in a job, possibly running a car, paying our own way, doing our own laundry etc. 

Between 25-30, parents may start to hint that you should be thinking about settling down, because ‘Amy’s a lovely girl’, or dumping Martin for ‘that nice boy over the road, because Martin is not good enough for you’. You’ve heard it all before.

Then, you might decide to have kids. Of course, this may have happened in a different order, sometimes surprises happen! Sometimes, the surprise is that none of this happens at all.

Then, after the husband and kids, comes the process of keeping the whole thing stuck together, not fucking it up, and being happy until the end of your days. 

For some people, this picture perfect scene is a reality, but for many, the pattern doesn't ring true.

With all this in mind, its no wonder that we lose sight of who we really are and what we were meant to do in the first place. In my opinion, the only thing we can really do with life, is live. Given that, we might as well just get on with it. Don't worry about other's expectations, concern yourself with your own.

 Instead of thinking about what we should be doing at our age, we should just let things happen, obviously applying a level of responsibility, such as don't just leave the iron on forever, just in case. If you get married at 21, then good for you. Personally, I would rather die than marry someone now, because I don’t feel ready and to be honest I don’t know when that will be. I might be 25, I might be 35, but when the time is right then its all gravy, and hopefully there’ll be some roast potatoes to join the party if I’ve learned to cook better by then.

I know so many people who are hung up on what they should be doing for their age. To be honest, I can be just as bad. I started out on my course thinking I was too young, but who says? Just because I’m the youngest in the staffroom doesn’t mean I’m any less ready to be there, or any less willing to do the job properly. Age is really just a number (says the 21 year old who hasn't really lived yet I know, I know - contradiction right there! Case in point).

We’re all born, and we’ll all die. What we do between these times should happen when we feel ready, not when we should be. You can never predict when something is going to happen or feel that you have let yourself down if Plan A doesn’t work, because the more you worry about it, the less likely Plan B, the better plan, is to succeed.

So for anyone who is curious: how old would I be if I didn’t know my age?

To be honest, I just don’t know. Some days I feel 5 because I’m hyper and silly and do weird voices, other days 15 because I have a giant spot on my chin, no one fancies me and my life is OVER etc, and other days I feel 25 although I’m not even that old yet, because I’ve moved out, have a car, manage my finances and plan on teaching kids for a living. Sometimes, I feel 70, because I'm in bed watching repeats of Coronation Street on a Saturday night, with some cheese and biscuits. Too cool.

But really, I’m 21, and concerning myself because I’m 22 in a month and that’s OLD right?

 It isn’t at all, but things are expected of us at certain ages, 22 is now seen as an age where we should have some sort of idea what our 5 year plan is. 

When the fuck did someone come up with this notion? 

I’m sure it didn’t exist back in the 1950s. I don’t have a 5 year plan really. Although if I set myself targets the top five would be:

1.       Be alive

2.       Be a teacher

3.       Have been on several more ridiculously wonderful nights out that I will never forget

4.       Have taken Mum and Dad out for a meal and paid, just to be nice

5.       To stop blinking when fireworks go off, or at loud noises in general

I think that’s an ok list to be getting on with!

Happy Monday everyone!

Custard Creams and Car Boyfriends

Today. Is it today? I’ve come to a realisation of a few things. Truth be told I feel on the cusp of being old and young. (Cos Liv hasn’t blogged about THAT before…) But seriously this time I’ve thought of actually why – a bit. More..?

Old because I’m no teenager, young because I’m far from being seen as ‘established’ as an adult. Established adults seem to have their shit together.

In the staffroom at school I feel so young and so naïve, and so overwhelmed at talking to any other teacher that I wonder if I’m in the right place at all. They seem so busy, bustling around from lesson to lesson, discussing things I have no idea about, and laughing at things I don’t understand, vaguely aware of my existence over their cups of tea and custard creams someone brought in I haven’t met yet. And they all look 50 and bring their own sandwiches, sometimes hummous. That makes me want hummous. The spicy ones are my personal favourites.

I still feel like one of the kids, but teaching is a pipe dream I’ve had for a while now. I just want my life to cohesively just - work as a unit, rather than be stuck in a strange place between study and work, waiting for lots of things, for my career to slot into place, discovering who I am and where I fit in to the whole thing along the way.

I also want to be liked, as in some silly way I feel this verifies me as a person which I know many people will find ridiculous, but not me, because I live in my head all the time. I have no idea why I’m so preoccupied with being liked because I know I’m liked, loved even by people that matter. Its not something I spend my whole life worrying about by any means, I just want to get things right with people. That makes me sound a bit pathetic, but I don’t really care because I think everyone secretly feels this way, just we all hate talking about it. Its hardly a conversation you have at the bus stop is it?

I go out at the weekend but also get my work done and that makes me a well-rounded individual right? A little fucked up perhaps but who isn’t? Not fucked up in a bad way, I mean just a bit imperfect. I’ll also (when the time is right) find a man who can appreciate all my subtleties, dispel my fears and protect me from all the hurt I could imagine. I like this general plan. I might have to cook the odd tea for him though, and suffer his annoying little ways, but he will be like my car – rough round the edges, smells interesting sometimes, yet is reliable, adorable and understanding of the things I get wrong. That sounds great to me!

So this is what was floating around my head over the last 5 hours, although most of it I deleted.