ephemeral

it just occurred to me the year is almost over and i don’t want it to. i want to stay in 2018 forever. 

i'm done being politically correct when politics are everything but correct 
get ready the intj is coming out to play

sometimes all you need is to play some tom odell and think about life 

i used to wonder about when would i start referring to going to london as 'going home'. i found out that's totally beside the point. if there's one thing i can tell you after living abroad for 7 months is that home isn't a place. it's a feeling. it's like having all the pieces to the puzzle within yourself, regardless of where you are. like how i always say that home is where the horses are. and now more than ever that doesn't have to mean going to the barn and being with my horse. horses are such a huge part of who i am, that wherever i find them, i'm bound to feel at home. complete, if you will. i was thinking about this at the beach this week. after so long away from all things even just resembling of summer, i wondered if it would feel weird or foreign. and of course it didn't. the tides will always rip, the sand feels the same on your toes, the water curls around your ankles no matter which continent you're in. the beach is home, even if i didn't grow up by the shore.

so when i think of london now, i think of it as home. and i'm not sure if that's the city itself, or rather the life i have there now. my tiny bedroom overflooding with little bits of me. my friends and our plans. going to school and grocery shopping. those were things that i didn't have here, but that now... feel like home. and the funny thing is—this town that i hate so dearly, sometimes i wonder if it was ever home. sure, it's where i was made, as in, grew up and became me. these are the solid foundations, and i can't change that. (seems i'm never letting go of suburbia.) but that has nothing to do with this place, so much as the things i've lived and experienced throughout the years living here. i've realised that at somepoint this has stopped being home and started being back home. back, as in, in the past somehow. as in, the things that i used to do and have here. and now i'm doing things elsewhere, so i guess that's bound to become home. 

and it's like not even sad at all. it's kinda cool, if i'm honest. having this ability to be at home no matter where. anywhere, maybe. give me a big city, the sea, horses or just a place where i can go to write on late nights—i'll be home.

feels like literally all i do all day is clean tidy wash..........this better pay off i'm not spending 9k a year to be folding my laundry for the rest of my life

Last night I went to bed hours later than planned. I stayed up going through the updates, refreshing all pages hoping really hard it had only been an accident. A speaker blew up, I thought. Some sort of technical failure. Then, around 1:30am the police said it had been a suicide bombing and they were treating it as a terrorist attack until further evidence. The truth is from the moment the police took charge, evacuating the Victoria Station and all, deep down I knew. Deep down we all knew, because we have grown accustomed, familiar even. 

When I finally put my phone down I found myself wondering, for what seems like the millionth time in the last couple of years, how do we go on. How do I get up tomorrow knowing it could've been me or one of my friends? How do those families move on when they won't see their kids ever again? How do we live our lives wondering where next?, who next? It's like we live as though life were a minefield.

But life does carry on somehow. For us, at least; the survivors. I had nightmares about it and when the alarm went off I didn't even hit snooze, for once. I picked up my phone and went through the updates, which were only agravated numbers of what I'd read prior. To be honest I didn't even know what I was looking for... It feels profoundly useless and hopeless to stand here watching as the world as we know it worsens before our eyes. I wore all black today and not for a moment did this leave the back of my mind. As I waited for my instructor at the driving school, I didn't open whatsapp to send Lara and Q a complaining selfie. At uni I thought my friends didn't know because everything was the same. I didn't scroll through instagram in class but rather through the Guardian. But once again, aimlessly.

It felt as though the only thing I could do for those people and their families and friends was keeping them on my mind and heart the whole day, mourning. Knowing every second that my day went on, it could've not. Because it could've been me, over and over again. Or my friends or pretty much anyone I know.

I think for some reason this things hit me harder than most people. Maybe it's because I'm not sheltered by the safety of that stupid small town anymore, or maybe because I'm leaving to one of the most targeted cities in the near future. I know people who live in Manchester, and people who's friends were at the concert. And so far it seems everyone is safe, thankfully, but it was mere luck.

I can't keep myself from wondering when will my luck run out.

what is this world we live in in which i like harry style's album better than ed sheeran's

i can't believe it's been a month since i last posted, especially after vowing to try and write every single day. to be fair i have been writing oftenish in other places scattered through life, but it never ends up being here for some reason.

i think mostly because all that i feel like writing about is london because it's been on my mind 24/7, but i still haven't managed to collect my thoughts and put them into words. which is funny because generally i collect my thoughts by putting them into words, you see and this time around it's such a whirlwind of thoughts, feelings, worries, emotions that i can't quite grasp them myself let alone express them.

i am trying, trust me. i've tried sitting down with the sole purpose of spilling it all out but i don't even know where to begin; i think because in a way it traces so far back that it's nearly impossible to pinpoint. maybe i'll end up writing 10k words about how every minute has led to this although that would probably turn into a whole dissertation about coincidence and energy and the universe and god. to be fair i don't really know if it's even possible to pull them apart - chance and me moving to london.

this reminds me of that one time alice and i wrote a song in class back in 9th grade. maybe i'll write about that one.

sometimes it feels like words are not enough. not in terms of quantity or weight.. they're not tridimensional enough to fulfill my creative needs. but i can't draw, there's nothing here to photograph properly and my life isn't cool enough to be filmmed so i don't know what to do.

today is one of those days.

Admitedly, the tag #ramble has been overused as of lately. As this shitty week is finally coming to an end (weekend doesn't really count. hopefully) and because I've managed to post quite a lot but just as shittly I wanted to end it on a different note. 

Being at home for over a month doing nothing has given me some headspace and reflection time which I didn't even realize I needed so much. It's been therapeutic and a lil scary (but mostly therapeutic). When silly things like cancelled plans or mistaken schedules go wrong I do get really frustrated. But at the same time I take the opportunity to realize how lucky I am. How lucky that my parents have never stopped me from doing things because I had to study, let alone when I'm 18 and at uni. How lucky that I get to travel to and fro Lisbon as much as I please and somewhat pointlessly. How lucky I am to have a house and my little bedroom in a city like that. How lucky I am that I get to come home to my attic and central heating. How lucky that I get to whine about how shitty a meeting about moviNG TO EFFING LondON was or the fact that I have to pay 11€ to go to a museum in Paris next week.

How lucky that truly I have known no real struggle in my whole entire life.

And while I have somewhat been accused of being a spoiled whining brat in the past, please make no mistake. Because even on my worst days--actually, mostly on those days I am fully and each time more and more aware that I'm in a position of absolute privilege and that the odds are all on my side and perhaps even the stars have aligned for me. And I pray, quite literally, I pray that it stays that way and not for a second do I take it for granted. I do my best not to anyway. That being said I am not sorry for my position. I don't wish it upon myself that I had been born in lesser conditions and I am not ashamed of it. I'm not sorry for embracing this privileged white girl life that has been offered to me with a cherry on top and I will play it to my full advantage for as long as can. And I will try my best to put into others' advantage as well because those two aren't mutually exclusive. The fact that some people are living absolute hell while I get to live like this overwhelms me to the point I have to force myself not to overanalyze it.

This is not a bragging post. This is explicitly a post about gratitude. I am in love with this life of mine that I'm only now starting to grasp. But that doesn't take away my right to be sad or mad or frustrated or worried or scared or anxious or anything else really. I am entitled to my own feelings and my own opinions and my own place in this world and this society no matter how biased that may be.