take the hint.

Now Playing: Hardest of Hearts by Florence + The Machine (there is love in your body but you can't hold it in, it pours from your eyes and spills from your skin, tenderest touch leaves the darkest of marks and the kindest of kisses break the hardest of hearts)

I know I've been giving people the impression that I can't get hints. Like, sarcasm, innuendo.

Which is a departure to how I was a few months ago, where I was kind of the master of conversation. I'm afraid I've slacked off a bit.

I haven't gone simple. I do get it. Seriously. I just don't always react appropriately. I guess you could call it slow reaction, but not really. It's...hard to explain. Just because I don't jump up doesn't mean I don't realize things, it's just that it's not always obvious that I've acknowledged it. It'll come up later, in conversation or on my blog. Where I have the upper hand, obviously.

Another thing is that I'm really, really tired. If you ever want to win an argument...argue with someone who's exhausted. To give you an idea of just how unbelievably tired I've been recently - today I came home, calmly ate a banana, and then crashed into bed. At four in the afternoon. It's been happening a lot lately.

The final excuse I present to the court is that I actually don't hear a lot of things people say. Sometimes I know people say something, I hear their voice, but I haven't the faintest idea what the crap they just said. I probably miss about 30% of what people say to me. And, ya know, it's hard to get a joke when you don't hear it...

So yeah, my mental capacity is not diminished. I'm just deaf, tired and slow. Happy?

hairpins in your wallet

I'd like to be the hairpins in your wallet
The scraps of lace on your bedroom floor
I'd like to be the lipstick stain on your collar
One day, maybe one day
I'll be the kiss on your cheek
The smile on your face
The text at three in the morning
Because I saw you crying
Asking if you're okay

You are everywhere
Memories buried in the laundry hamper
Imprinted on the drive home
There's suddenly meaning
In the most innocent, pedestrian things

And I am tied by intensity
And tired of vulnerability
I'll just be walking and something will catch my eye
And I'll remember...I'll remember...I'll remember...

I'd like to be the hairpins in your wallet
I'd like to be just part of your heart
Because, you know
You were always all of mine.

Click here for a discussion of hairpins in your wallet

A Thousand Thousand Fearless Things #66

Now Playing: Never Let Me Go (Unplugged) by Florence + The Machine (the arms of the ocean are carrying me, and all this devotion was rushing out of me in the crushes of heaven, for a sinner like me, but the arms of the ocean delivered me)

#585: To be honest, I didn't realize how exhausted I was by the stresses of daily commute until I got home, ate a banana, and then promptly passed out. Afternoon naps at sixteen. How tragic. 

#586: Never Let Me Go. Becoming. An. Obsession.

#587: Actually, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure if it's an ego boost or an ego bash. Either way all I know I'm supposed to like this person even though I feel kind of robbed and even though I've never met them, and the survival of several friendships are clinging to that. 

#588: Does nobody else internally fangirl when a guy rubs his chin and mutters that he needs to shave? It's so obviously a bid for attention but hey...it works...

#589: I should probably stop offering my left hand for a handshake. It pisses people off. I guess as the left hander I'm permanently used to being pissed off. I have to swap cutlery, become virtually ambidextrous, swear at scissors that discriminate against the otherwise-handed...and right handed people just can't take it when we try to shake the wrong hand. 

#590: I may be 5'3" but I reserve the right as a year twelve to bash through hoardes of year eights. There is no reason to clog up corridors in packs of forty. EVER. 

#591: I know my hair looks somewhat cool but it is the result of cramming every single hairpin I own into my hair. Seriously. 

#592: Anyone else have a friend that they really, really, really can't be angry at no matter what?

#593: Dear year elevens. Get out of our common room. We survived junior year without hot water. 

the female eunuch.

Now Playing: That's What You Get by Paramore (no sir, no I don't want to be the blame, not anymore. It's your turn, so take a seat we're settling the final score) 

People have got to stop comparing feminists to Germaine Greer. 

I mean yes, Germaine Greer is a feminist and yes, I'm a feminist but that doesn't mean we're one and the same. It's like saying that Chairman Mao and Li Cunxin are both Chinese and therefore one and the same. If you know anything about history you'll know that's...not really true...

I mean, I love Germaine Greer, but she's a little...radical. I mean, there's no way I'll taste my own menstrual blood. I've tasted my own blood before - anyone who's fainted from two hour nosebleeds has - but there is no sense in doing something so bizarre. I love and respect my body without such stunts, thank you very much. 

But I will raise a valid point that was first (or maybe not first - forgive me if I haven't done my research, but I am trying to study for year twelve finals) raised in Greer's The Female Eunuch. Even in this day and age, with twelve year olds in mini skirts and grandmas in fuck-me boots, women still cannot take charge of their own sexuality. We are still sexual objects, not sexual beings. 

Put it this way, in this day and age, it's a given that teenage boys will masturbate and watch porn. Granted, it's not exactly polite conversation, but realities are realities. It's naturalized into society. It never freaked me out. I only turned sixteen this year. This is the dominant discourse of boys as I've always known. 

But what about girls? True, it's a given that there are lots of girls my age who are sleeping around, but when it comes to sexuality and sexual pleasure we're all rather prudes. Sex is something you do because, because people expect it of you, or because you're daring enough to be a slut and wear the scarlet letter proudly. It's something you do as a favour to boys, almost. To be theirs for the taking. Which is not an idea that I altogether reject, but that's the only way we view women and sex. 

Sexual pleasure for women is seen as a reward - a reward for being desirable, a reward for catching someone's eye, a reward for getting a man and holding him down. If you can't do that, you don't deserve it - that's the message that was beaten into me. It's why for so long only married women were allowed to be sexually active - it's a prize earned by being the obedient housewife. But no. That's not right. Pleasure and happiness in every form is a right, not a reward, regardless of gender. Sex and relationships shouldn't be....bargains. I think we take give and take far too literally here.   

A woman actively seeking sexual pleasure is still an enormous taboo. Doing things because you want to - not because it's expected, or breaking expectations, but because you like it - it's still not acceptable. Prostitutes do it for the money. Sluts do it out of desperation. Why can't we ever accept the idea that some women embrace their sexuality...because they like it? 

The idea of a girl touching herself or watching porn is not naturalized into society but somewhat expected of boys. It still happens, everyone knows that, it's the worst-kept secret but a secret nonetheless - a shame. The proof? I know most of my readers are my classmates, and I'm probably going to get a lot of crap for this post, whereas a lot of boys have openly discussed such topics and nobody gives a shit. I don't care. The rumour mill can go suck it. Somebody has to say it. Besides, I haven't said a thing about what I do in my own time. My private life is just that - private. 

Lipstick feminism subscribes to the theory that women are empowered by making themselves physically attractive and that there is no philosophic contradiction in being a feminist and being a female. We're all human. We all feel things, desire things. 

In the end, I think that's the message that feminists are trying to bring about. Equality before the law is not equality within society. Women are no longer barred by the law, but they're still confined by societal expectations, social taboos, cultural inequalities between men and women. I don't want to live in a society where I cannot be me. Sexual expression is a part of personal expression, and in all ways we must be uninhibited.     

I'm not afraid of people seeing me as...crass, seedy, flirtatious, provocative, whatever. Most of the people I know and like are like that, I don't see anything wrong with it. I'll be honest with you - I first started being like this when I was one of the boys, when whatever I said had absolutely no impact on the hormonal minds of teenage boys - I just wasn't the type, apparently. Now the tables are turning a little, but hey, I am who I am. I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I'm not. No guy is worth biting my tongue and pretending to be a nun. 

pushing buttons.

Now Playing: Lolita by The Veronicas (the addiction, friction, it burns you alive, so illegal, no evil is seen with these eyes. I won't tell if you want it, I will if you want, nothing is sacred, don't care if it's wrong)

I've always been one to push buttons. I've always been very...anti-authority, if you get what I'm saying. When you're someone like me, marginalized by society - a woman, a minor, an immigrant, an ethnic minority - you can't trust the people up top to protect you, look after you. You have to do things yourself. And yes, you have to push some buttons in the process.

I've never been one to accept a system on face value. I don't really know where I get my cynicism from, but I am suspicious of almost anything and anyone. Trust is earned, not a given.

And in the past this has worked rather well. The high school system was easy enough to manipulate if you know what you want and know how to get there. In primary school I wasn't strong enough to get things to go my way, but in high school I just thought 'what the hell'. I still wonder what would have happened if I wasn't brave enough, after English class that day, to walk up to the English department at recess and ask the head of department if I could be moved up a grade. I very nearly chickened out. It's the scariest thing I've ever done - scarier than being wheeled in to the operating theatre, scarier than that moment of anticipation before your first kiss. Suddenly I was caught up in a whirlwind of meetings and discussions with teachers and admin and it was all very scary, but I held my ground. Even scarier was walking timidly into my first year nine English class and realizing that I hadn't the faintest idea what I was doing. But it's the best thing I've ever done in my life. I'm a shameless teacher's pet, and look where it's got me. There is no benefit in having friends amongst your peers, I've learned that the hard way. The only relationships worth having are those that give you what you want.

But now it's getting harder and harder to challenge a system that is becoming ever more claustrophobic and hypocritical and suffocating. There are so many things wrong with the system, so much that needs changing, so many things that disadvantage me without rhyme or reason. I feel like I'm being punished for being different, being special, being me. I'm a non-conformist, but so what? It's a free country. But there's nothing I can do, and the feeling of powerlessness is...disorienting. In the past I've always had my way - I've always challenged the system, and won. Now I keep getting told to not waste my time, to not challenge a system - but nobody's challenging it, so nothing's getting changed. Things have to change, grow, evolve. When we're whacked over the head and told to shut up and toe the line...things don't remain static in a changing world. They go forwards, or they go backwards. Our education system is going backwards because it refuses to change with the times.

So yeah, I'm angry. I'm angry that even now I am not valued for who I am. They keep feeding all this bullshit that we're all equal, all different, that we should all follow our own paths - but unless you take the path most traveled they don't give a shit about you, think you're second class. Nobody else has to put up with snide remarks about how I'll never get a job and never make it big. Nobody else is treated like a drug-addled dreamer. Do you know how many unemployed scientists there are? Do you know how many options I have in my life? I've never for a second thought that I'm walking into a dead end, but I am not recognised as being of equal value to people who have more socially-acceptable talents, are good at things that are perceived as being 'better' and 'more worthwhile' than the things that I like. I'm angry that nobody cares about my concerns, even though the system is meant to be a service to students and not a fucking hierarchy for bureaucrats to claw their way to the top. I'm not going to shut up and bow over books when it gets me nowhere, in a system where it doesn't matter how good or bad I am, but how lucky I get with numbers.

I'd always been taught to fight for what you want. My parents are white collar workers, but I've always been treated as a working-class immigrant - and I'm damned proud of the fact that I'm a working-class girl. Nothing has fallen into my lap, I've worked for everything I've got. But suddenly nobody's practicing what they preach; they've given up in the name of giving in, and it's not right. It's not fair that the system takes advantage of the fact that nobody's brave enough to stand up - and when they are, they're on their own.

A Thousand Thousand Fearless #65

Now Playing: Never Let Me Go (Clams Casino Remix) by Florence + The Machine (and it's over, I'm going under, but I'm not giving up, I'm just giving in...you're so cold and so sweet)

#577: A rollercoaster friendship

#578: Yes, I'm jealous of you, Baby E. Because you've got a decent guy and all I've got are heartbreakers. 

#579: I know you're scared for me, but what else can I do? I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't

#580: Bus time

#581: Slightly counterproductive, but I'd rather take the train to the next station and then double back than wait in the rain for a bus that never comes

#582: Five versions of Breaking Down. Four versions of Drumming Song. Four versions of Never Let Me Go. Three Versions of No Light, No Light. Four versions of Shake It Out. Four versions of What the Water Gave Me. I think it's safe to say that I'm officially obsessed with Florence + The Machine

#583: I'm a pathological liar and a fundamentally honest person, so all these lies are naturally killing me, and naturally I thought I could handle it.

#584: Maybe you don't know me at all. I know I don't know you. 

XVI

Now Playing: Drumming Song by Florence + The Machine (there's a drumming noise inside my head that starts when you're around, I swear that you could hear it, it makes such an almighty sound)

I think I might have mentioned earlier that when I was little my goal in life was to turn sixteen.

...which does sound rather morbid, but I don't mean it that way. I always knew I would be sixteen, if that makes sense. Most of my medical scares and operations happened in a time and place where I didn't link hospitals and pain with death and mortality. It was only when I got older that I realized how fragile life is, and how my life is more fragile than most.

I don't know. I knew something big would happen at sixteen. I could just feel it. Sixteen seemed so wonderfully grown up, when I was little. I thought all my dreams would come true at sixteen. Sixteen...I used to count down the birthdays until I turned sixteen.

Sixteen has not been a dream. I spent my birthday alone, utterly abandoned by my friends. I don't think I've cried so much in my life before this year. This year...has been crazy and confusing and disorienting.

But this year has been the tipping point. I'm not a child anymore, and people have stopped treating me like one. I'm not entirely sure if that's a good or bad thing. I'd always been the baby, always been treated like a baby...but then there have been moments where I was definitely not a baby and it's been quite scary.

I've only ever been judged by my brain, by how I can put pen to paper. I've only been judged in the sexless void of academia and education and hierarchy. This year is the first year people have started to see me as a woman, as a person with feelings and emotions and intensity, someone in need of initiation. And it's been like a dream; vivid, intense, surreal. Beauty of the mind is all very well, but I'm still a physical, aesthetic person. I like the effect I have on people, sometimes - I like how newly minted everything is, and how in all my awkwardness and shyness and naivete and inexperience I can sometimes provoke a reaction that I never dreamed possible. Everything is heightened when you're young, and I love every moment of it - the pleasure, the pain, of being alive. Being sixteen has robbed me of my insecurities with cruelty and kindness.

I guess I always knew it would come to this. I don't know why, at such a young age, gut feeling, intuition...I just knew something new and exciting would happen at sixteen. I don't know what made me think of sixteen. But innocence to experience comes, sooner or later. And nothing's gone to plan, but I guess I should have figured out by now that I'm not the kind of person who should expect any degree of normality in my life.

bus time

Now Playing: Falling by Florence + The Machine (I've danced myself up, drunk myself down, found people to love, left people to drown. I'm not scared to jump, I'm not scared to fall, if there was nowhere to land I wouldn't be scared at all) 

I'd forgotten how much time I need alone. When there's no-one to talk to, then you don't want to be with anyone from time to time. Chatting banally to people about the weather when I all I want is to pour my heart out and have one person, just one person understand...it's a poor substitute for what I need. If I'm not talking I'm thinking, and to think I have to be alone.

I've never really had great opportunities to be alone. When I go to Asia to visit family the sense of relief that comes when I get back home is the fact that I finally have more moments to myself. When I was little one of my bedroom walls was just one really big window, and I would press my face to the mesh and watch the cars fly by in the middle of the night, just thinking and breathing in the cold night air. I would sit up on my bed and wrap my quilt around me like a safety blanket, until eventually I'd collapse with exhaustion and keel over in all sorts of awkward positions. I used to sit in the bath and just think, watching my skin flush crab red and then icy pale as the boiling water cooled.

Now I have my alone time - bus time. I probably look very scary on the bus, because I know I stare blankly at things and my dark eyes often look like they're burning when I'm thinking intently. It's weird being surrounded by so many people, and yet to have so much time alone. It's strangely soothing, to watch the suburbs float by, comforting in its pedestrian monotony, and just think, just mull things over.

What do I think about? Memories...memories are for reliving. I'm afraid I haven't got very good muscle memory but words, thoughts, emotions, sensations...I remember them all. I think about people, places, how things are, how things will be. Everything I want to say to someone, everything I don't understand that I want somebody to help me to understand...when there is no-one to talk to, I tell it to myself.

It surprises people that I am such a solitary person. Much of my solitude is imposed, forced upon me - but no matter how lonely I get I've always had to push people away and get some breathing space. I don't understand why people are so shocked when I get annoyed when people get into my bubble. I let people into my bubble, but I like to think of that as a conscious decision instead of some right people think they have. I'm actually very much of a recluse, very quiet - if you only see me as someone loud and bubbly then you don't know me very well at all - if I've sat next to you, totally avoided eye contact and not said a word, then you see me for who I am - I've let my guard down and I'm feeling very, very vulnerable. Not many people have seen me like that.

I like my own company, but I don't like being alone. I feel so alone right now, and it absolutely kills me. Why do we pretend not to care, why do we make everyone else go through this alone? I'm growing up, changing colour, and nobody cares. That's what it feels like.

I am torn between loving attention and being afraid of it. In this day and age its not socially acceptable to admit that you are attention-seeking, but I am - and I'm not altogether ashamed of that, even if everyone else is. But in other ways I am scared of attention, because it has such a profound effect on me - I'm not used to attention that when I get it I'm not sure how to say no, to not have too much of a good thing. I never really know how to react, and attention is all about reaction - cause and effect and consequence. I love it, but I'm starved of it, and as much as a man locked in a cave dreams of the sun, he'll cower when he first sees daylight.

I like my own company. Loneliness...it's an unfair consequence of solitude, but I can't live without my alone time, my bus time. I am the only person I trust to not judge me, to not let me down. It's not hypocritical to like my own company and sometimes die of loneliness. If I can't find someone to keep me company, to make me feel less alone, to look me in the eye and say 'I understand' - then I'll do it on my own.

Chasing Shadows

I can feel your heart beat, sometimes
I can still feel the warmth of the winter sun

Sometimes, when I am tired and lonely
I think of that.

They ask me whether its scary
To wander when shadows are long

Why I never look back
Never peer behind trees

I just watch the shadows
There is only ever mine

Floating past on the cracked black road
I feel like I spend my life chasing shadows

They say you don't know how real I am
How real the scars are

Of course you don't
How could you?

You are just a shadow
Like the rest of them

It was only that day
That you were flesh and blood and heart

I can feel your heart beat, sometimes
I can still feel the rush

Sometimes, when I am tired and lonely
I think of that.

Click here for a discussion of Chasing Shadows

On Legs Part Deux

Now Playing: Falling by Florence + The Machine (sometimes I wish for falling, I wish for the release, I wish for falling through the air to give me some relief)

If you've ever sat next to me in class, or in a theatre or a cinema, you'll know that I absolutely cannot sit still. I fidget, shift in my seat, doodle on my arms and legs, attempt to start a whispered conversation.

Stockings - stockings are annoying. They're like really, really, really tight, thin pants. Your legs still feel cold, and they dig in uncomfortably when you sit, or roll into your hipbones just to annoy you. I personally prefer stay ups - you know, the ones that are like really long socks that stick to your thighs with elastic and lace and that weird gooey stuff on strapless bras - but they're the wrong colour for school, not to mention they're so thin and delicate they'd probably melt in the sheer energy of rush hour.

The problem with stockings is holes. Even if you never slip on a gumnut and dig a hole in them when you fall over (which I have done), even if you never pull a thread and end up with a hole the size of your fist (which I have done), even if you always bring nail polish and dutifully paint over every run and ladder (which I...never do), you're guaranteed holes in the toes and heels within the month. But the problem with stockings is that once there's a hole, the hole gets bigger and bigger and bigger...especially when you fidget.

Which is why it's not entirely unusual to see me walk out of class with one stockinged leg and one unstockinged leg, because I've ripped off one leg of my stockings in class. As you do. It's really not that hard. It's just a hole that gets bigger...and bigger...and bigger.

Yes, it's really cold and yes, it feels weird and yes, I always sort of regret it afterwards. But if I get one more weird look from one more year eight I'm going to scream. Why do little kids stare so much? The school rush hour should follow the same unspoken rules as the London Tube - avoid eye contact, and don't you dare try to start a conversation with me. The world would just be a nicer place without stupid, nosy people.

I swear, teachers pick on Asians more, especially about uniform. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't deliberately come to school in bright pink hot-pants and no shirt, but sometimes convenience and necessity forces me to stretch the rules a little, and they just lose their shit. Completely.

In my old school they made the stupid move to not actually say anything about shoes in the uniform code, and so naturally I wore knee high socks with purple hearts all over them, and loafers with a skull motif - I was kind of into punk when I was twelve. But I don't do anything so wacko at my extremely conservative pseudo-private school - all I did was run out of stockings, and so I wore knee high black socks. The difference between stockings and knee high socks? Negligible, when you're 5'3". The space between the hem of my (admittedly, very altered) school shorts and the tops of my socks is all of three inches. Get a life, seriously. Start worrying about the fact that our school has become a fucking dictatorship bureaucracy instead of whether I'm wearing gender-specific socks. And all that shit about not wearing stockings and shorts? Bullshit! Get a life, seriously! Other teachers don't care - maybe because they're more worried about, I don't know, actually teaching their students something. I swear, we've got to give admin more work. They don't do anything. We could lock them all in a classroom for a few hours and life would function...pretty normally.

Also, if you want me to wear school skirts, find uniform ladies who don't sell absurdly huge skirts to puny year eights in the name of modesty. I have never in my life been a size twelve, not for skirts, anyway - even when I was nearly ten kilos heavier than I am now I wore everything on the tightest buttons, and even then they were too big. I don't want to wear skirts that go to mid-calf, nobody does, and there's nothing 'modest' about a skirt that's fallen straight to your ankles, which is actually what my skirts would do now. My shorts...I swear, I remember when I couldn't button them up. Now they just balance on my hipbones, waiting to slide down. It's very annoying. So don't tell me off for wearing stockings and shorts. I've lost weight, and I'm cold.

If you think this is all petty and pedantic, well, tell the school admin that. I don't break rules for the hell of it; actually, when I know I'm not wearing regulation stuff I spend a lot of time dodging admin (which is actually really easy, just go upstairs - bureaucrats aren't fit enough to climb up two flights of stairs) because I don't like trouble. I don't like being patronized over sock colour, or that it's 'unfashionable' (seriously, what would the principal know about that?) to wear stockings and shorts. Let me do my job. Let me study. And why don't you try doing your job. Why don't you, I don't know, do something other than force feeding us croissants and trying to make us tell you how lovely you are?