#tweetyour16yearoldself

Dear 16-year-old Alice,

Aw, look at you, little emo kid! Cheer up, fool!

Thanks for not deleting your emo blogs. They're incredibly embarrassing to look back on now, but also really amusing. Thanks also for not trying to promote yourself much on Myspace or anything. Dodged a bullet there.

I don't really want to talk you out of much in your future, because all the worst things that happen will teach you huge lessons. I'd maybe tell you to dump and get over that boyfriend of yours quickly the first time stuff goes wrong... but then you wouldn't be harsh with your next boyfriend. And trust me, you need to be- you're in for quite a lot of drama.

The pain you are in from AS does take it's toll for a few years yet. But a "miracle" drug will change your life. And there's no point trying to find it sooner, because then you'd miss out on making an amazing friend because of your illness!

You shouldn't be such a bitch to your sister. Believe it or not she'll be the best friend you have. Those people you're texting? By 21 you'll hardly ever hear from them, apart from their status updates on Facebook (you know, that Myspace rival people are talking about? You will definitely convert.) But Emily is there for you all the time these days.

Shit's going to go down, way down, over the next five years. But by the time you get to 2010, everything is going to be amazing, and the even the worst times will have been worth it.

Don't wait for the bus on Willis Street in November 2007. Ever. Walk home to your flat you lazy cow. It will save you from a lot of psychological trauma.

I wish I could save you from all the shitty stuff that happens in the future. It was all so avoidable. But then you wouldn't get to be me, with the realisation of how much control you have.

You're an embarrassing and embarrassed teenager, but I'm still proud of you.

Love, 21-year-old Alice

Idea source

A Slice of... Wellington

Click your way over to Sometimes Sweet to check out a guest post I've done for Danielle's A Slice of... series. It's all about Wellington, and features a bunch of my own photos.

Brainspew

I just read this post by Danielle and decided to blog my thoughts on and related to it, in a very unstructured, chain-of-thought, rambley kind of way.

Danielle writes about thinking a lot. Me too. All the freaking time. In my interview for my job, I remember being asked questions about my personality, and launching into a nervous mini-ramble about how I’m always thinking. I guess it’s human to think and over think, though my difference is that I don’t speak aloud 99% of my thoughts. If you know me you’ll understand that, and if you don’t then yeah, I probably am as weird as that makes me sound!

I really love this lyric she quoted by Death Cab for Cutie: “And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time.” I’m not familiar with the song to be honest but wow, brilliant. Engrave it on my headstone please.

I have thoughts like she describes a lot too, but about the stupidest things. Like after the Dexter season finale last year, I had the most horrible thought- what if I die and don’t get to see season five?! Totally the end of the world.

Seriously though, as a child I had so much fear of something happening to my parents. My Dad used to drive a truck over the Rimutaka Hill every day, both ways (best video I could find here, 23 seconds long) and I was absolutely terrified that he was going to be in an accident, and roll the truck off the road. I know some people think that if they say some horrible fear aloud then it will happen, but as a kid I thought that if I said something aloud then it wouldn’t happen, because that would be too much of a coincidence. When I worried so much that I cried, I would go and talk to my parents, but say I’d dreamed it. With retrospect I was embarrassed and I think that I believed having these bad thoughts consciously made me a bad person.

I deliberately force myself not to think about stuff like that anymore, it’s too upsetting. Sometimes a storyline in a TV show will make me think about what would happen and how I’d react if it happened to my equivalent loved one, but in all honesty that’s usually in order to critique an actor’s performance!

Last year one of my closest friends lost her little brother in a totally random, ridiculous accident. I’d only met him a handful of times, but I went to his tragic, beautiful funeral for her, and I think it was the first time in my life that I’d actually realised how short and fragile life is. I’d already used up 20 years of my life before I understood that it really could be over, any day. I’d known people to die before, even known people who were murdered, and I’ve heard “life’s short” all the time. But I’d never truly realised until he died, that sometimes there are no warnings and it’s just over.

Since then, have I changed the way I live my life everyday, stopping to smell the flowers and dancing in the rain? No. I’m human, I’m fickle, I bitch and argue about stupid things, am too embarrassed to say “I love you” 24/7 and my hair frizzes up like an afro in the rain. But it has changed me in subtle ways; I’ll write things I can’t say out loud to my loved ones in birthday cards and emails, so they’re at least communicated. I spend more time doing things I enjoy. Funnily enough it’s made me worry less than ever about random tragic things happening, because I’ve realised there’s absolutely nothing we can do to stop them. I’m fortunate to be here, I’m fortunate that everything’s going so well for me, and I’m aware that this won’t always be the case. Life is so unpredictable, we can’t possibly prepare ourselves for everything, so why worry? Let’s just enjoy.