BULLY 4 U

Hola,

Right now, its 3:14am and I cannot sleep, no matter how hard I try, and believe me I've tossed around for a good couple of hours my lack of sleep lead to the creation of this...

 So I've been thinking alot, as I do, and reminiscing about Highschool, but not in a nostalgic sense, to be honest, thinking about my experiences in highschool makes me feel a little queasy. So this post may or may not resonate with you, the following is a collection of thoughts and memories...

Highschool, I feel is one of the most pivotal parts of your life,  in terms of cognitive development, because in a way you create the foundations for the essence of your being. Your social interactions and experiences are so different from that of primary school, you transform from pre pubescent child to gawky hormonal teenager, and experience new emotions and desires. I firmly believe that had I not gone through the experiences that I did when I was in high school, I wouldn't be the person I am today and in some ways its a great thing and in others obviously not so great. In primary school I was this confident young girl, I finished primary school as school captain, house captain, I was a library monitor, I got the Citizenship Award, I was in the choir, I'd been to nationals for athletics. I LOVED my primary school, I was friends with everyone and never really had a problem with anyone.

Then my family moved from the Inner West to the South, and shit got real..bad.  I hadn't wanted to move from a secular school to a Christian one, but my parents thought it'd be an ace idea so obviously I had no say in the matter. I remember Orientation Day and thinking, man everything is going to be sweet, after meeting some people and having a semi decent time with them, I'd also gotten into all the top classes and was eager to learn about stuff because I was your textbook nerd back then.

But then obviously shit went awry, once I started school I didn't fit in for a lot of reasons because I had never heard of brands like Roxy or Billabong, and coming from an area where there wasn't really any water, I wasn't down with the surf culture, I could barely swim. I got bullied for a long while, by some of the most popular girls and guys in my year, I had no friends, I tried sooo hard to be friends with people and they used that against me, I HATED my life, I begged my parents to let me move schools, my parents put me in therapy.

I went from a confident, bubbly girl to a withdrawn shadow of my former self,  spending recess eating l in the bathrooms between tears, keeping my head down most of the time. My sanctuary was the school library, the library Teacher Ms W was a soft spoken saint to me when I was in the early years of High School. Reading from a really young age has always been one of the things that calms me down and keeps me grounded, imagining that I was in another place other than school is probably one of the only things that kept me sane.

Shit was bad, but one day I just had enough and snapped. By this point, I'd dropped down to the intermediate levels for all classes because I wanted to fit in, and to this day I regret not just sticking it out and trying to do my best instead of succumbing to peer pressure and the need to fit in. But yeah I snapped, and decided it was time to fucking snap necks -not literally, of course- but,to basically do something about the bullshit that was my life. I started standing up for myself, and for others who were being bullied.

One of my favourite (only good) memories from high school, is when I played a prank on one of the then popular girls from my high school. Everyday my ma would pack me a water bottle with frozen water in it, and throughout the day it would slowly thaw so that by lunch time you had sweet,cool water to drink. Everyday she would fucking drink it, and I would let her because I was afraid (Of what? I couldn't even tell you now). Anyways, one day I'd had enough so I put vinegar in my water bottle, and that day I eagerly anticipated her drinking my water, she drank it and choked and it was hilarious. Needless to say, she never drank from my water bottle again.

Eventually in year 11 &12, I for some twisted reason became friends with the popular girls, the girls who once bullied me to shit, and to this day I dont know why I became friends with them. Obviously now having been friends with them for so long we do have a genuine friendship, and I love them all, but I still wonder why I chose to be friends with the girls that contributed in making my life a living hell, maybe I was being strategic by keeping friends close and enemies closer, or maybe it was sheer desperation/being eager to please. In retrospect, I'd probably say a bit of both.

I could go into waaaay more detail about my high school experiences but Im not going to, I just wish there was a way to change the way some things were. I know that because of my experiences in High School I find it hard to communicate with some people,  I can be a little defensive at times and I can be very insecure, awkward and shy if I feel people are above me, which I know no one is and sometimes when I'm out I may drink a little too much to overcome that. And  as I said before, I know that If it weren't for the way my experiences in High School, I probably wouldn't be the way I am today. But having said that, now I'm a fairly confident, proud person and I embrace being different, I no longer TRY to fit in. And yeah this is a fairly cheesy post, with the generic message BE YOURSELF. But I wholeheartedly believe that you should be yourself, fuck labels and stereotypes and all that bullshit.

Our Beautiful Universe Part 1.

Oh hai,

I'm so sorry I'm so lax with writing. I'm a little forgetful. I'd like to say I'm always out grabbing life by the balls and that's why I have no time to cruise the information highway, but I'm not as 'outdoorsy' and adventurous as I'd like to be, not to say that I'm not outdoorsy or adventurous at all, but not as much as I should be as a young, sprightly girl of 22.

Unbeknownst to a lot of people, I'm a little bit of a dreamer, I try to force myself to be a realist but a lot of the time i secretly romanticise things, and imagine how life could/would be different if things were different. I always have, and probably always will. Two things that have fascinated me since I can remember are the sky(universe) and the sea. Two things that are both so similar in some ways but completely opposite in others. They're both an enigma in a sense, so mysterious, so beautiful -each in their own way- such large expanses of space that it feels like it's almost impossible to find out the absolute truth about either. Yet everyday new discoveries are being made about both. This will probably sound a little ridiculous and lame, but every time I read about new discoveries I get sooooo excited,  as I turn the page I feel like I'm about to spontaneously combust with joy, it's probably a bit worrying how excited I do actually get, but god, i love science. It's the essence of my being in a sense, fun facts keep me going. Science gives you hope yet provides facts, it's like some weird pseudo oxymoron.

So I'm going to get my geek on, and share with you some of my favourite facts/thoughts...

THE UNIVERSE

Who hasn't lay down outside at night and looked at the stars at least once? Looking up at the sky in wonder is one of my favourite past times.The universe, and stars are something that have fascinated us since the beginning of time.  Greek Philosophers have argued over the ideas of parallel universes how the earth began.Songs have been written about the stars, galaxies and the universe ("Twinkle Twinkle Little Star How I wonder what you are"). Movies and Tv shows  such as Star Wars, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica have been made depicting our voyages through space and time...

                                                 " The force is strong with this one"


 ...Men are supposedly from Mars, and women from Venus. Even celebrities are known as stars, shining beings high up in the sky, untouchable by common man, and revered by all..well almost all. A star is something a lot of people aspire to be it's associated with. Miss Universe is a contest where women fight to become crowned the best woman in the universe, yet it kills me that so little is known about the universe, even with apparatus like the Hubble Telescope, why would you want to be Miss Universe when you don't even know what's out there? *Cue X Files theme song.

      "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" : Stars are made up of the elements hydrogen, helium,    carbon    nitrogen, oxygen, neon, magnesium and silicon.

 

Bey Bey: A star made up of different kinds of elements - beauty, talent and ooh chil' dat a$$

Okay, so the Hubble telescope came into use in 1990. And to this day, it's one of the most amazing pieces of equipment ever invented. So many discoveries have been made since the day it was launched into space, and with it as well as other equipment. I hope that one day we can unlock the secrets of all the galaxies and universes out there, and maybe even reach alien lifeforms, if they're not already watching us.


One of my favourite discoveries to date, is the "Hubble Deep Field". Astronomers focused the telescope on the darkest patch of sky, which they thought was empty and they kept the telescope there for 10 days. They found that there were 3000 galaxies in the depths of space. It's such a beautiful thought, that there is so much out there that we don't know, but we all want to know more, a sense of curiosity is a part of the human condition after all.

Another beautiful idea is that:

Imagine another earth over 100 billion lightyears away, not knowing that we exist or imagine having a twin/doppleganger on the other earth. What would we be like? How would everything work? Would it be exactly the same? Would we even look the same? Are they more advanced than we are? Are they aliens? Are they already studying us? Would aliens be as friendly as E.T was? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS!!

But I know that as of now noone can answer them, so as you ponder about the unknown so I'll leave you with this fitting tune...