An Allegory to Express Thoughts/Feelings, and Some Stuff About How I Feel Right Now

For a while now, I have been meaning to write another blog about school. I wanted to write about how much I love sixth form, how great the lessons are, how much I adore my teachers. That’s what I want to write about, but right now I can’t, because there is something else on my mind, something that brings out the passion within me, the passion for justice. It may seem like a small problem, and compared to almost every inequality in the world, it is a small problem, but to me, it isn’t small. To me, it is the undercurrent to everything I do, it is the public-opinion poll to my life, and every time I do a single thing, it is there, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting to strike out, and even when it doesn’t, I am haunted.

This thing I am referring to is the way certain individuals react to me. I would like to state that I am not making a generalization, and I am not saying lots of people are like this, and I am not insulting the school (because I really do love being at school), I am just talking about a few people – maybe even just one or two people, I am not sure.

There are a few individuals who dislike me for a reason that I do not know, and they seem to find it amusing to comment mean things on my blog, an example being: “Hello there. id like to order 10,000 copys of your book in preparation for bonfire night. thankyou.” This is one of the less mean ones.

I know that it is not very mature of me to write a blog about this, but I want to express how I feel, and right now I feel that this is the only way I can do so, so here goes.

I used to assume that people from school didn’t read my blog, because why would they? It’s not like people have a lot of spare time, so why would they spend it reading what tends to be about 1,500 words of my thought process?

Then when people did start commenting nasty things on my blogs – and they made the mistake of using their real name – I presumed that they would stop after I confronted them, because I knew who they were so I could just report them. No, they just switched to using anonymous.

I’m a massive fan of allegory and metaphor, so I’m going to tell a little story.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who could weave entire worlds with her hands. The worlds were – to her – the most beautiful tapestries that anyone had ever laid eyes on, because within the silken threads she could see her entire soul, every thought she had ever had, every person that had ever influenced her, every decision she had ever made. They were her, made into a material object. They made her more than a person. They were arrows through her bow. They weren’t her, but she sent them on their way, into the world, helped them live in their own right.

In some ways, the girl was proud of the tapestry-worlds that she had woven, but mostly she was humble, because they were just her entire being, that was all. She didn’t realise how much she needed them until the boys began pulling out the threads. At first it was only one single thread at a time, and it didn’t hurt too badly, because the image was still complete, she could still see the world within the tapestry. Then the boys began to tear out multiple threads at once, and – although she could still see the world – she could no longer see herself.

By tearing threads out of the tapestry, they were tearing threads out of the girl. She had put so much of herself into the worlds she created, but all that the boys saw was a piece of fabric, and they didn’t like fabric, and they didn’t like her. They had taken away parts of her, and they didn’t realise or care. They had stolen the worlds she created, taken them for themselves.

There were many kind people in the girl’s life. Some of them looked upon the tapestries and saw the girl’s true face, and others didn’t look at the tapestries, but they helped her when the threads got tangled, and – to her – that was sometimes even more important, because we can’t do everything on our own.

But as the boys stole more and more of the threads, the girl felt more and more alone. She had lost some of the people – maybe because they misinterpreted the tapestries, misinterpreted her, or even because when they looked at the girl they didn’t like what they saw.

The girl was frightened to lose more people, frightened to be alone. She considered compromising, considered discontinuing the creation of the tapestry-worlds, because maybe then friendship would be easier to come by. But she was too far gone, because she already had quite a reputation. Even if this was not the case, the girl could not give up the tapestries, because they were a part of her very being. They were her soul, woven into silk and velvet.

There were still kind people, and she treasured them all the more because of those she had lost. But she was wary of them now, wary they would abandon her. She was terrified of being completely alone. So she became more and more solitary. She would spend her free time by herself, creating another tapestry-world, and she would eat on her own, because she didn’t want to plague anyone with her company. But the girl grew lonelier and lonelier, and when her sister moved away she created a small tapestry to express her feelings. When these boys saw this tapestry they made cruel jokes about burning many of the girl’s favourite tapestries, for no reason other than pure spite and disrespect for the girl’s feelings.

The girl didn’t know how to respond to this. She wanted to talk to a friend about it, but she didn’t want to bother the few that she had left, so she kept it to herself. She wanted to tell someone in a position of authority about it, but she wondered if perhaps that was pointless, because she had no real evidence of who was behind the cruelty, even though she knew exactly who the perpetrator was. The girl contemplated quitting weaving tapestries. She could try hard to be ordinary, try to be accepted, but she wouldn’t be true to herself. So the girl chose instead to weave another tapestry-world, and hope that rather than pulling out the threads of this one, the boys would see themselves within it, and maybe see the harm they had caused to her. She hoped, and hoped, and hoped, that maybe one day they could learn to be kind, learn that there is no reason to be cruel. But deep down, she knew that there is no point in trying to change people. Yet she kept weaving, a single thread at a time, and hoped that the picture she created might one day make a difference.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is this: there is no need to mock my books. You don’t need to read them; you don’t need to even think about them. If they bother you, pretend they don’t exist, it’s that simple. But don’t make me feel bad for them, because they are a part of me as a person, they are a part of who I am, and I do not go and tear you down to make myself feel better, because that is just plain mean. There is no reason for people to be cruel, no reason at all. Imagine how much nicer a place the world would be if we could all be kind to each other.

There have been so many times when I have felt that if I could just be normal, then maybe people would like me. But I came to realise that that is complete bullshit. If I were “normal” I wouldn’t be myself, therefore people wouldn’t like me, they would only like a mask.

I refuse to become a mask.

There are people in this world who like me for who I am, and even if they are few and far between, they exist. I am not going to tear myself down because a couple of teenage boys can’t seem to accept that I have different interests to some people. There are kind people in the world, and those are the people I intend to focus on, not the nasty ones. In the end we can only be ourselves: nothing more, and nothing less.

All I strive to be is someone bright, someone shining, like one of the many stars in the sky. I don’t want to be the centre of attention; I just want a light, want to be part of a group that shine as bright as each other. But these people are like black holes to me, and they steal all my light. (I have used the black hole simile in AMEND, but I can reuse my own ideas, right?) But now I feel that I will become the black hole, and that is the last thing I want.

I would also like to say that, other than these few individuals, I really do love sixth form. Every day when I go into school, I feel happy and positive, and I usually leave at the end of the day still feeling happy and positive. My teachers are amazing. I may not have a lot of friends at the moment, but I am content. I like school, I really do. There are so many good things about it, and it is sad that bad feelings always seem to outweigh the good. But I am trying my hardest to think only of the good, because there is so much good in the world, so much good in my world.

I want to dedicate this blog to the people who have been kind to me, whether it be recently or in times long past. Whether you be people from school, or people from work, whether you’re someone I see every day and talk to all the time, or someone I bumped into for the first time in ages and only talked to for a short while, you all mean so much to me. To the people who’ve listened when I needed someone to listen, or hugged me when I needed someone to hug, thank you. Something may seem little, may seem insignificant, but things build up, and a build-up of good things is so much better than one of bad.

Kindness is currency; kindness is what pays our way in the world. Kindness, not cruelty, gets us by, and that is what we need to remember.

Two Steps Behind (thoughts on my sister's departure for university)

Eighteen and a half years ago, the world’s biggest drama queen was born, and her name was Bethany. 22 months later, she gained a younger sister, who also had melodramatic tendencies, but not enough to steal the crown of the world’s biggest drama queen. This sister was called Eliza, and she was me.

This morning, Bethany left to go to university in Wales, four hours away. Where there were two, there is now one. Bethany and I haven’t always gotten on very well. When I was about five, she used all my blue water-colour paint to write out the word “Cinderella” and I still haven’t quite forgiven her. On the rare occasions that I actually convinced her to play dolls with me, she would spend the entire time doing their hair, dressing them up, when all I wanted to focus on was the story. We disagreed on most things. But, in spite of her always stealing my make-up, and using my laptop without asking, she’s my sister, and even though she’s only been gone ten hours, I miss her.

Being homeschooled for most of my life, my sister was my best and only friend. She drove me completely mental, all the time, because we were so different, but she’s still the one who’s been there for my entire life, and now she’s gone.

Like it or not, Bethany was one of my greatest influences. She was the oldest: the first to walk, the first to read, the first to leave. I was always two steps behind, and now I’m walking alone.

Who am I without her? Who am I when I don’t have anyone’s mistakes to learn from? I’m me, and I know who I am, but I don’t know who I am when I’m the only child left. She’s 22 months older than me, and she’s an adult, so where does that put me?

Where do I fit into her life now? She’s going to make so many friends that I’m never going to meet, and she’s going to have so many boyfriends that I’m never going to scare… She’s going to have an entire life that I'm not part of. But my life will be pretty much the same as the one she knew me to have: I’ll go to the same school, I’ll have the same friends, I’ll have the same teachers, the same problems, the same house, the same family, the same self. She’s leaving me behind, she’s moving forward. I’m staying right here. And maybe that’s okay.

Life changes for different people at different times. Everything’s sped up for her right now, but maybe it will be my turn soon, and maybe it won’t. That’s the thing about life: we never know what’s around the corner, we never know where we’re going to go next, or who we’re going to see, and we never know who we’re going to become.

I've lost my sister for a while, but maybe by stepping out of her shadow, I will be able to fully become my true self.