year in review | 2012

Jillian told us to write a year in review. I don't really know where to start. Looking back at the last twelve months, it feels as if almost nothing has changed -- but I know so much has.

And what am I supposed to write about anyway? Should I write about the beautiful things that happened, the picture-perfect trips and the amusing anecdotes and the valiant struggles I so gracefully overcame? Or do I write about the slammed doors and the ugly fights and everything that I still have not achieved and all that I still cannot handle?

I feel like I should tell you about how I have cried so much this year that I sometimes wondered how there was anything left of me. How I cried in public, on buses and in classrooms and just walking down the road. How I cried in almost-empty cinemas and on my friend's sofa and curled up alone on my bed. I cried a lot.

Or maybe it would be better to write about the independence that I am beginning to find. I take the bus alone to work, and order coffee for one, and I took the train by myself (that was last year, but it mattered enough then to still matter now.)

Perhaps I'll just tell you what happened, month by month.

gratitude v.1

This January began with good intentions. I ran on the first day of the year, out in my shorts and t shirt and old school jumper, my heart beating in time with my feet running. Maybe it came along with using manual focus, and the way that I could bring what I wanted to the forefront of my life.  Maybe it was the flush of inspiration that came from the beginning of Fernweh. I fell into the inevitable winter slump though, and it didn't end half so well as it began.

souvenir foto school

By February, it was better. I made more. I went to a printing workshop in a cold art studio, and grew so much in my photography course, and wrote a lot of late-night poetry. I made collages that people said were a waste of time, but they weren't to me, and even if they didn't realise that, I did.

spring light

In March, I got lost at midnight in a shopping centre and ran through dark streets and jumped over bollards. I walked across town in new shoes that I took off to walk across the bridge, and we ate pizza in a shady corner, and I think I ran but I didn't keep it up for long.

the m

April was teen angst in a spring haze. I watched Freaks & Geeks for the first time, and made new friends at my art group, and bought a denim shirt that made me look like Jordan Catalano. Remember when we climbed through the hole in your garden and walked through the fields in our long lacy skirts which were ripped by brambles? There is the slightest chip on my camera, still, from that adventure. And you sat there with your guitar and sang Joni Mitchell and I plaited grass and it was beautiful.

light leaks and sunshine

I remember May in a hazy early summer heat wave, and dinner eaten on the patio, and writing stories with happy endings. I began to understand the light more, and I found ways to capture it falling, softly, diffused. The new door had kaleidoscope glass and it cast rainbows throughout the hallway in the mornings as I left for school.

swanage

In June, I went to the beach with all my extended family gathered around, huddled in a beach hut when it rained and playing on the beach with the babies and drinking pimms on camping chairs. We passed round photos, and told stories, and polished the memorial plaque to my great-aunt. When we came home, we filled a jug with peonies.

whenever i come back from a holiday...

I spent a week of July in New York, in weather so hot and a city so hectic that it felt like a dream. I was hungry all the time there, hungry for my future and for a place at NYU and for a year or two in a city I loved. At home, I spent hours sat on the till at work, writing poems on discarded receipts and wondering if all jobs were this boring. (this is still continuing.) 

cambridge // harriet's tea rooms

The heat followed us home in August. We spent that month watching the Olympics  and lying on the sun-hot garden grass, and enjoying the end of summer. I went swimming in a lake in my underwear, and my best friend tried to teach me how to cartwheel, and when it did rain, my grandma took me out for tea and cake.

what i learnt today

In September, I was worried. School began and fears piled up. Would I ever be good enough? I journalled and fretted and tried to decipher a future I didn't quite understand. It wasn't all gloom though; I celebrated and ate cake and laughed.

an autumn walk

When I met up with friends in October, they sang Fifteen to me and gave me cake and lent me their umbrellas on my rainy birthday. My friends were incredible that month. Sometimes I forget how amazing they are, but October reminded me.

stolen splinters

November was falling for a boy who couldn't remember my name, and always wishing I could be sleeping, and wondering if I could ever be anything more. And then, in the last five days, I got myself together and wrote twenty two thousand words of a novel.

oh, christmas tree

December was, on a grand scale, horrific. I wrote so much about how I didn't understand how the world could be so terrible. On a personal scale, it was so full of goodness and opportunity and joy. I felt guilty in December, but happy too, and I was terrified and excited, and all those conflicting emotions left me battling big questions over cups of coffee with friends.

In terms of memories, and the actual things that happened, it was a good year. In terms of emotions, and growing up, and figuring out the world? It was a hard year. And in 2013, I hope to learn how to balance those. To understand the wider world, and myself too.

 In the style of Hannah, Ellie & Jocee, I have started a 2013 pin board, something visual to get me going and refocus my thoughts when I loose track. It won't work miracles, but it looks good.

Happy new year