Antici........pation

So, I have a small notebook where I occasionally vent my feelings and today, reading back, I've recently displayed to myself this intense desire to explore. I've simply realised that all I want is to leave the confined spaces of my home in pursuit of new cultures, different surroundings, unfamiliar territory. I have been overcome by wanderlust and I'm sure it has been provoked by the sheer proximity of a new freedom which is hurtling towards my direction causing my anticipation to rise to an uncomfortable height. In under two months I finish A levels and soon I will never have to go to school or college again. In under sixth months I will, hopefully, be living independently in a new city as a university student and this prospect is taunting every inch of me.

Passing my driving test and getting a car has contributed to my wild longing for I now have this machine that gives me the means to access as far as my fuel will take me. It is an  independence where I can discover the roads beyond, whenever I like without having to rely on my parents. That feeling of liberation when you're blasting music at night, on a motorway and on your own for the first time is utterly incomparable. A sense of adventure in me has sparked to life. Suddenly I'm hit by an urge to spontaneously escape out on midnight drives to wherever the roads take me because I crave the unfamiliar and I'm eager for the thrill of discovery which I haven't experienced in too, too long.

But whilst a short day trip to London may only satisfy my cravings briefly, I am desperate for more. Boredom must be non-existent and any form of procrastination has to be a distant concept that I no longer pursue whether consciously or without meaning to. It has to be somewhere where I don't need the internet to distract me, where my mind cannot wonder aimlessly away from the world within my grasp. I want to be somewhere that begs to be explored or written about and I want new experiences to come out of the wilderness and grab me by the already packed rucksack firmly strapped to my back.

Ultimately, exams are the only force in the way of  this kind of freedom and the closer it gets, the worse it becomes. However, as my craving builds, the anticipation also rises. Often euphoria will occur sporadically. It comes when you least expect; you're at a music festival surrounded by all your friends and all of a sudden you're sprinting to Tesco at 3am and pushing each other in abandoned shopping trolleys and the stars are guiding you and you forget all your responsibilities; you're lying in a park in the sun with your favourite people and you can feel the warmth on your face and the grass on your back and you're listening to beautifully relaxing music. It is the best feeling and you don't expect it and suddenly life is great and it doesn't suck and every little thing brings you joy. But alternatively a life without excitement would not be worth living.

Jake the dog from Adventure Time said "if you get everything you want the minute you want it, what's the point of living?" and that is what it comes down to. The moments you value the most are the moments you have spent craving each second leading up to it and the ones that you have thought about every day.
It is the energy of the crowd at a music concert before the headlining band appear on stage. It is the lurch in your stomach before a long-awaited kiss.It is the unadulterated excitement before you step on the plane to travel to a new destination, the intensity as the plane lifts up into the sky, the butterflies in your gut as your face first touches the warm air of a new country waiting to be explored. And it adds to every experience. When my new life starts, I will value it fully.

Imperfections are better than perfections

Perfection is overrated.
When you meet new people, I urge you to study their imperfections. Do they have an awkward laugh? Do they give a limp handshake? Are they absolutely terrible at taking a compliment? It's worth observing because I guarantee you'll be able to tell more about a person from their imperfections than from their perfections.
Perfect people are boring. A face that wears a few freckles, a scar and a slightly crooked nose bares infinite stories and far more than any perfectly symmetrical and spotless face ever could. Flaws are beautiful in their own way. A person is built by their past and if their past leaves physical scars or just scars of memory, their stories become better than the best works of fiction. They may have a twisted view of the world but this flaw or any flaw is a novel that gradually becomes known to you. You read their body language, their spoken words and the words that escape from their eyes.

The same goes for relationships and friendships. If you both like exactly the same music, agree on all the same political views, have the same opinions about every film and television show then life becomes dull and nothing new will pass your lips. Conversation will become shallow. I'd rather argue my view point and passionately rant about why I don't believe in God to a committed Christian than waste my words trying to persuade someone who never needed persuasion to begin with.

When you find someone new to love, your rhythms will always be out of balance at the start. You may stumble over sentences, bump heads when leaning in to kiss, hold hands the wrong way round - clumsy. But it's the journey of discovery, the exploration of the tiny details that are really the most wonderful. Perhaps you won't be totally different and perhaps you'll share a lot in common but if that person was really so similar to you then you wouldn't even be with them. You might as well become asexual.

Plato wrote in his Symposium.. "According to Greek Mythology humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search for their other halves"

Whilst the notion may be fantasy, it rings true that perhaps those who we are most compatible with are different to ourselves. Perhaps their tendency to view things in a positive light is more prominent than yours but their capacity for mood swings may be larger. There is always something lacking and if you fit like a puzzle piece to smooth out the imperfections, you know something is right.

Forget plastic surgery. Forget trying to like the 'coolest' music. Forget about your habits. Forget about your emotional issues.

I'd rather know someone with a thousand things to figure out. I'd rather have someone I get annoyed with from time to time. I'd rather look at imperfections. I guess imperfections are what makes someone perfect.

Brevity is the soul of wit and so forth...

Impermanence, I have come to realise recently, is a huge part of life.

As my phone relentlessly lost charge and re-started itself over and over, as the electronic screen glared me in the face, as my files and memos disappeared one by one as I reset my phone, I was enlightened to the fact that none of these photos that I had taken in the past few months would be kept forever. The sim card could easily break and even if you back up all your photos and memos on to your laptop, there's nothing physical about them. They live in these electronic realms of existence which could break at any one time.
The same thoughts ran through my mind as I searched frantically around the house for our wifi password which I had written down on a small piece of paper. This tiny piece of paper could be hiding anywhere in the house, it may have journeyed somehow to the bin or escaped out the window in a bid for freedom. I eventually acquired the wifi from my Dad's computer where it was stored. I found it ridiculous how a physical piece of paper could be lost more easily than something stored electronically. My own thoughts contradicted themselves and now I sit here writing this blog post as I wonder whether anything could ever be permanent.

This goes for relationships too as I have discovered. Having fairly recently broken off a long-term relationship I had come to realise that all idealisation of the relationship lasting was always false. I suppose at our peak I considered spending the rest of my life with him. After so long it felt like I could never get away from it, like it should carry on forever - not because I wanted it to but because that's how I felt it ought to be. It was the longest relationship I have ever been in and  that made it quite difficult to come to terms with being single and independent. But, honestly, I know that in my future there may be several break ups that'll prove further, that relationships will not last forever. I know this sounds depressing but every relationship will end in a break up, divorce or death.

The not so depressing part is that impermanence isn't always a bad thing. Often the more enjoyment you have the faster it goes and it is in this fleeting excitement that you experience the best moments in life. Impermanence means you can try new things. You can weave in and out of relationships, work your way round the globe, eat delicious food. You'll savour these experiences solely for their brevity. And of course "Brevity is the soul of wit". Even the most simple experiences are like this: I wouldn't truly appreciate my hot cup of tea if the mug automatically filled up after each sip.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that you should relish life's surprises and life's restlessness because sometimes euphoria can come in short bursts and the shorter the simpler. The simpler, the better you feel.

Because the only people for me are the mad ones...

How do you define weird? Abnormal, different, odd, strange, eccentric. Oh, all the possibilities of weird.
When you think about it, there are an infinite number of oddities. And logic follows that not any one person could be normal. So then how do you define normal? Is it simply your public behaviour, what you choose to display to the world. Is it really the way that everyone usually acts? We are not clones.
There is a very fine line between normal and weird and that, in itself, is an absurd idea which I simply cannot get my head around.
I have often found that those who I attach myself to the most, are the ones whose minds are streaming with ideas and are willing to display those whether in writing or in person. Throughout my whole education I have found myself most at home with the most messed up, insane, wild, catastrophic kids, whether they're emotionally unstable, reckless, mischievous, argumentative or all of the above. It's as though I take a check list along to every new school I attend and become best friends for life with the one with the worst reputation. Bonkers? Check. An outcast? check.
I stick to them like a lost child pining for a guardian.Then I feed off the excitement and trouble they create.
I sit and wonder what these 'weird' people all have in common.
These are lost passionate souls, awake and thriving in the wilderness that is modern society. They are creative, intelligent beings that freely roam and discover the very edges of possibility. Their recklessness widens my own eyes and excites me. And I respect the mad and the lonely and the impossible because they have no cares for the thoughts of others, or perhaps too many cares. They either make themselves 'weird' or simply thrust their personality into the void. People come and go, observe and watch the creatures that lurk. It is like watching animals at a zoo. Pet the tame avoid the unpredictable.
Make friends with them? why would you? They're far too odd. Discuss them? Despise them from afar? It's all too easy to do that.
I introduce myself to the odd ones, to the interesting and the intelligent with fresh fruit in the form of ideas, growing in their brains. I consider why they express themselves in the way they do. Isn't that the most interesting part? But then, maybe I'm weird.

All I know for sure is that I have learnt this:
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars" 
- Jack Kerouac 'On the Road'

Solitude

"There is a certain unique and strange delight about walking down an empty street alone"

I hear you Sylvia Plath.

Two years ago I found myself coming to the end of an era - the end of five years at boarding school where privacy was a rare and valued concept. For five years, the only time I could ever truly be alone was sitting in a toilet cubicle at midnight. Having shared a boarding house with around sixty girls and a dorm with ten girls, I came to appreciate any time I could spend alone where I could sing to myself, think out loud and dance like I'm Beyoncé. I couldn't be alone when showering, brushing my teeth or getting changed and it was as a result of this that I became conscious of every aspect of my daily routine. I was conscious of the way I spat toothpaste into the sink and I perfected the art of putting on underwear without revealing myself.
I value my solitude. I value lying in bed at night and not altering the rhythm of my breath so I don't inhale or exhale in time with my inmates. I value the lack of a uniform. I value not waking up to Katy Perry shouting me down each morning. I don't have to wake up at all. Nothing can interrupt my dreams if I please.
Solitude is vital to me. My thoughts are no longer interrupted by the whine of hair dryers in the morning or bitchy comments in the middle of the night. I can sleep without the sound of snoring mocking my exhaustion. I can choose who I take in to my bedroom. I can listen to silence instead of unintentionally eavesdropping on homesick phone calls to parents. I don't have to feel embarrassed about the posters I pin up on my wall or pyjamas I wear.
It is in the silence and privacy of my bedroom that I am most creative. I can write down my thoughts. I can write poetry. I can express my anger through wild interpretive dance if I please.
It's not just my bedroom where I find solitude. Walking down an empty street, I can appreciate my surroundings. I can sit on a bench and people watch. I can sit on a bus and stare out the window, listen to music and dwell in my solitude. It's a strange kind of enjoyable loneliness when I'm surrounded by others, like feeling entirely alone at a Gatsby-size party.

'And I like large parties, They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy'

-The Great Gatsby

Solitude sometimes creeps up on you in a crowded room but ultimately you don't have to be lonely. Your own company is often just as awesome as someone else's.