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I love you.
And there is so much I'd like to say to you, yet I never get the chance, so here it all is.
You're the only grandparent I have left, and I don't know what i'd do if you were to ever leave me. I know you miss Grandad, and I know that sometimes, you see nothing to live for. Which is when I want to scream at you, that you have everything to live for.
Our family is mad, I know. There's always some incident, or drama that we're all talking about. And sometimes we all want to just scream. But that's our family. Our blood, and DNA, and we just need to ride that wave, and accept that our family is always going to make a lot of noise when we get together. There is always going to be at least one row at Christmas, usually over something trivial like gravy. And playing a board game is never a good idea, it will end in tears.
But there's also the fact you have 7 grandchildren who love you.
Three children who love you.
And Grandad is always with you, I just know that. He wouldn't be anywhere else, and know that he too, loves you, Nan.
If I could grant you just one wish, it would be for you to somehow see him again. To feel his arms wrap around you, to see him kissing you. And to hear him telling you that everything is okay, and that it's okay to live in this world without him.
Because he would. He'd want you to live, Nan. Without sufferance. Without this anger that I know you feel because he's left you. He'd want you to laugh more, and smile. And have one too many glasses of wine and trip over. Because it's those silly moments that make you realise you're human, and you're alive.
And above all, Nan, i'd tell you a thousand times in a row that I need you. I need you to ply me with your fridge full of magnum ice creams. I need you to offer me the biscuit tin when you make me a coffee. And I need you to always be seven doors down from my house, always happy for me to just sit with you. And more than all of that, I need for you to talk about your history, your life growing up, and how you almost married a farmer, and how you have brothers and sisters you've never even met. Because once you're gone, who else can be there to tell me that?
So one final message . . . I love you, Nan.
Always and Forever.
And nothing you ever do will change that.
Forty, or fifty years ago when our parents were in their prime, it was nothing other than normal for them to meet a husband, get married, and then start a family. Women were content at being stay at home mums, raising their children while their spouses went to work.
But times begun to evolve, and like Cave Men suddenly discovering a hairbrush and a shaver, he following generations of females begun to discover life. The idea that they could be more than just a housewife. Contribute to the working world, and juggle both a career and motherhood. Women were hitting their extremely late twenties, if not thirties and forties before they baked that particular bun in the over.
And I can't help but stop and realise that times are seeming to revert backwards. That the generations i'm growing up with aren't taking inspiration from the fact woman are deserving of a career, and instead, the ages to which they're having children is lowering. Perhaps even to ages lower than our parents concieved.
No longer do they seem to want to go out into the world, and put their mark out there. To be seen as a powerful, and successful. To earn a good salary, and to be a somebody.
They want to find the one until they're pregnant, and then they want to abandon a career, and settle down. The ages to which I see the girls that push those prams that surround me and getting scarily lower each time. And I can't understand how they aspire to live motherhood when they've only hit puberty five or six years prior.
If you're even remotely interested in my opinion, then the idea of having a baby whilst at an age that is under thirty, is horrific to me. The thought that, at a time like now, when I live at home, and my life is divided between University, and retail, striving for my degree so I can start getting a decent wage packet that allows me the luxury or shopping in TopShop without maxing out my faithful yet abused credit card, and adding a baby to all of that, it makes me shudder.
Don't get me wrong, I know that i've not exactly expanded my maternal gene beyond recoiling at the sight of a crusty noses baby, gurgling though hiccups of white vomit, but I do want children. I want three, if not four, and one day, they will be all that i'll want from life. Everything I work towards will benefit them. But I don't want that now. I've still got two months before I graduate University. I want to work, and to save. I want to clear my twenty year old self from debt, then take off and see the beauty that is the world. I want to meet new people, and build on the memories of old friends. I want to live.
I don't want to jump straight from University, into being a mum. I want a career. I want to earn extremely good money, and I want to buy those beautiful LouBoutins that I salivate over just picturing them on my foot.
I just hope that all of these girls realise that there is so much to the world that they've yet to see before they have the commitment that is a child for the rest of their lives. It seemd like just yesterday we were sucking baby pops, like carefree teenagers, and now the majority of them are responsible for another life.
1. I learnt that Mother Nature isn't fair. Underneath the prettiness of flowers, and the delicious rays of early Spring that we were teased with Saturday morning, she's cruel. The tsunami in Japan was devestating, and to think that's just the beginning. That flood wiped out homes, lives, and history in the matter of seconds. And those fortunate to survive that ordeal now have to live with the fact their homes, their families, everything is gone. We know nothing about the types of people this tsunami affected. They could be good people, some may have done the odd bad thing, and some may just be downright evil. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter, because regardless of who they were, Mother Nature took their lives, and ruined them in under an hour. Everything they worked for is gone, and it's not fair. To all those affected, or killed during that tsunami, my heart and hope go out to you.
2. That spending your weekend in retail, dressed head to toe in cheap, nylon uniforms, and serving Britain's Most Obnoxous, will never reach the 'Best Weekends' top ten list.
3. That we women on a whole suffer due to periods. My moods have been up and down like i'm slumped on some kind of disfunctional see-saw. And no amounts of chocolate has helped my mood, nor my diet.
4. That Adele's album, 21, should be a must-have on every living iPod. Her talent and voice are astounding, i'm well and truly aboard the Adele fan club express!
5. Buying Tampons will always live up to that humiliating moment you fear, when the checkout guy scans them, an awkward silence falls, and you go redder than your brightly dyed hair. Not a fun moment.
6. Spending almost £26 on over-priced sweets at Sweet Heaven won't help our bank-balance, but they will make you feel good whilst watching films :)
7. I think, maybe, I put you on a pedistool, and realising that crushes me slightly.
8. The Reader is another notch on the favourite films list.
9. That as much as I tell myself i'm over you, I got over you ages ago, somewhere inside, a small fraction of my heart is holding a rebellion of its own. Every now and then we share a moment when neither of us is sarcastic, or rude, and in that moment, I want you again.
10. That tacos are always a winner.
"Smile.
Its the second best thing you can do with your lips."
After racism, the thing I hate most is discrimination against sexuality . . . homophobia.
Who is one person to say what is right in life, and what isn't?
No one in this world holds that right in my opinion. That power to preach to the rest of us what we should be for, and against. What we should encourage, and what we should hate.
Telling someone who they can love is restricting their existance.
So they don't follow the stereotypical lifestyle. Boy meets girl, boy and said girl fall ever so happily in love, boy and girl then marry, boy and girl then start a family . . .
Just because thats what we see in films, and read in books, the iconic happily ever after story, it doesn't mean that its the structure for life, and we have to fall in line and conform.
People should be free to love who they love, without judgement and discrimination.
I can honestly say that when I have children one day in the future, I will encourage them to be the person they were born to be. Whether thats straight, bisexual, or gay - I don't care.
Why do us females do it to ourselves? We're obsessed with our daily, if not continual, self-weigh ins, practically praying to be a few pounds lighter. And as our bare feet grace those scales, we're left with this plummeting feeling of regret as we see that that little dial hand that we rely on so much hasn't shifted. If anything, it's gone up.
And then we proceed to mentally list everything we ate that day, wondering which of the offences was the one to make us gain those horrific, life changing, universe alligning, pounds.
And I can't help but wonder, why? Why do we do it?
I'm obsessed with weighing myself. I lost almost a stone, but after a lapse in willpower, and dedication to finally 'getting fit' - I slipped, and my life tipple at the moment is a four bar kit-kat, dunked neatly into my mug of coffee, melting the chocolate, and filling my mouth with the delicious, pleasure that only chocolate can give.
But then I spend the hours that follow practically torturing myself about what I just ate. Will I wake up tomorrow heavier? Will I put that stone back on?
Yes, it's likely that I will jump back on that scale and have shot back up to the weight I was a few weeks ago.
But I also know that at any point, I can put on my exercise DVD, and fight through the eighty minute fitness DVD until the sweat soaks me, and I hit the shower feeling much better.
But I won't, because i'm counting down the hours until my dad goes to work, which currently stands at a two hour countdown, and then I'll practically launch at one of the two kit-kat bars that I spotted in the fridge earlier, calcuating that if he takes one to work, that leaves one for me, and my coffee.
See, us women will always be the same.
Weight will always define us in some way. We could be the skinniest we've ever been, and fear food completely. Or we can stay the same weight we've been for years, moaning but too lazy to actually get up and do something about it.
We just need to find a balance.
And a hammer to smash up those scales, because to be quite frank, i'm sick of jumping on and off them to see if the slight exercise motion has shifted any weight.
Lol :)
