"I don't think that being a strong person is about ignoring your emotions and fighting your feelings. Putting on a brave face doesn't mean you're a brave person. That's why everybody in my life knows everything that I'm going through. I can't hide anything from them. People need to realise that being open isn't the same as being weak."

- Taylor Swift

About Me

I've been doing this life thing for sixteen years now and I gotta say, it's been pretty magical. I'm in the process of extracting myself out of high school and that's awesome, and I've spent my whole life falling in love with butterflies and dandelion heads and boys. I love floaty sundresses and Converse sneakers. I love ice cream and steak and anything with butter. I love Taylor Swift and stand up comedy and Dan Savage. And I love you.

The people who don't love life don't remember the things that make life worth living. Like warm mumma cuddles when it's cold and rainy. Puppy eyes staring at you when you're trying to eat lamb for dinner. Curling up with a favourite book and a cup of something hot and sweet. That warm fuzzy feeling you get when you wear your favourite dress or jump around to your favourite song or see the sunlight dapple softly through the trees. The rush of your first kiss on a park bench on a sunny winter day. Memories are for reliving, and stories are for telling. For the past four years I've been sharing my memories and my stories with you. 

I've been trying to be fearless. It's not something anyone really succeeds in, but it's something you should all try, anyway. It's scary. People say horrible things when you don't fit in. But the ones that matter say the most unbearably sweet things that will stay with you forever. I love falling in love, but the first step I had to learn was to love myself. It's a work in progress, but it's already a masterpiece.

I believe in a lot of things. I believe in gender equality and anti-homophobia. I believe in religious freedom, freedom of speech...just freedom, in general. I believe in sex positivity. I believe in love and other animals. I believe in you.

I'm flipping through four years of hard work and late nights here and I'm worried that I'm becoming too hardened and cynical for someone who's only been wandering around for sixteen years. I'm a baby. But then I realized that I'm the kid who veered off the sidewalk to pick a big dandelion head, and watched in baby awe as the tiny airy fairies caught the sun and drifted off into the distance. I caught someone staring at me in amazement. Not many people stop to smell the flowers or to fuck up their reproductive process. I do. Some huge, mind-blowing, phenomenally monumental things have happened to me - not many, admittedly, and you might not consider them to be of much importance - but I live for the little things in life. Like my friends who all tower over me and plates of food bigger than my face. 

Taylor Swift said that she named her new album Red after the crazy emotions of life and love - how nothing is beige about things that are dangerous and irresistible and beautiful that spontaneously combust. If there's anything I can relate to, it's that. There's this fallacy that age equals knowledge when the most important things I've learned in life have been taught to me by teenagers - ever since I was a tiny precocious annoying six year old up until now, a sixteen year old girl learning way too much from seventeen year old boys. There's this fallacy that teenagers know nothing because they make stupid mistakes, when the truth is, I'm a smart kid who knows way too much about things people expect me to be totally green about, but I make those mistakes all the same. Because perfection and living without errors is not only impossible, but beige. And I've always wanted life to be red. Nothing about me is perfect but everything is bold and bright and beautiful. It's the way I like it ,and I hope you do too. 

Stay beautiful,
Lady Solitaire
November 2012 

1 comment:

Adelaide Dupont said...

"There's this fallacy that age equals knowledge when the most important things I've learned in life have been taught to me by teenagers - ever since I was a tiny precocious annoying six year old up until now, a sixteen year old girl learning way too much from seventeen year old boys."

And when I think of the things I have learnt from teenagers over the years - yes, this is true.