Trigger Warning: discussion of eating disorders. If you are struggling, please contact Beat Eating disorders’ helpline.

I lost weight and none of my friends said anything. Not one word. I trim my hair an inch and I’m hounded with “okay, bob” on the group chat. Yet, when I dropped nearly twenty percent of my body weight over the course of nine months, those closest to me didn’t even notice. Or so I thought.

Recently, I’ve found it difficult to navigate conversations around women’s bodies. With celebrities getting smaller and smaller, it feels impossible not to inquire about their appearances. Yet, ingrained deep within me is a scepticism that maybe we are focusing on the wrong thing. The current discourse is surprisingly refreshing - many nuanced comments coming from a place of love or valid concern, pointing to societal factors, gendered inequalities or the reality of eating disorders. As someone who is currently recovering from an eating disorder, I know just how important it is to bring these issues into the mainstream and actively break down the stigmas around them. Maybe this is only made possible through highlighting the poster children of our skinniness epidemic. But I still wonder, no matter how well-intentioned our public discourse is, how helpful is it to those individuals at the centre of the conversation?

Ann Moore of Tutbury (1761 ~ 1825), listed on Wikipedia as Ann Moore (imposter), was born in Rosliston, Derbyshire. She had a promiscuous youth by 18th century standards - she had lived unmarried with a lover and had multiple children fathered by different men (legend). When she fell into poverty, she was forced to move to Tutbury with her children in pursuit of stable employment. There, something seemingly odd happened. At the age of forty-five, she lost all her desire for food and drink.

Ann Moore was not the first woman in history to publicly lose her appetite and she is certainly not the last. Fasting saints, mostly young impoverished girls, had existed since the middle ages. What makes her case distinct was the public scrutiny she faced. Ann was already deemed to be of ‘notorious immoral character’; she was middle-aged, had children out of wedlock and she requested that visitors who came to witness her spectacle should pay. This was more than enough to arouse suspicion in the period. Advances in printing methods also meant that gossip could spread around the country at an unprecedented rate (think Substack but in print). So, news spread of the woman who claimed to live without eating and with her newfound fame came morbid fascination and aggressive distrust.

Ann lived at a time when science was overtaking religion as an explanation for the absurd. This meant that it was of utmost scientific and moral importance that her food abstinence be verified by medical professionals and relayed back to the concerned public. So, she was subjected to numerous public tests to prove that she could live without eating or drinking. These watches were initially conducted by local women, who gathered to examine her long fasts and disprove that she could survive extended periods without sustenance. Yet, the more she proved herself, the more doubtful the public grew. So, instead more ‘credible’ medical men and clerics stepped in as her new watchers. They proceeded to conduct longer, more invasive fasts. Groups of male strangers huddled around her bed for periods as long as 16-days to poke and prod at her.

Ann was uncomfortable in the presence of men. Which was seen as merely more evidence of her deception. In Ann’s defence, who wouldn’t be uneasy in the presence of strangers who had effectively imprisoned her in her home, isolated her from her family and monitored her ‘excretions’ - urine, excrement and sweat - to determine if she was secretly ingesting food or water?

In 1813, during her last fast, Ann’s health deteriorated dramatically. The watchers generously allowed for her daughter to come visit her dying mother and waited eagerly for her confession. When Ann’s health improved suddenly, they became convinced that her daughter was smuggling in food through her kisses and insisted on searching her garments. There, they found a singular red stain: damnable evidence that she had been swallowing liquids and thus, deceiving everyone. She was marked a fraud and with her limp malnourished hand, she was forced to sign a confession written in someone else’s voice:

Accounts of what happened to her afterwards differ. Some say she died shortly after the confession, whilst others claim she and her daughter fled and became thieves in the countryside. Yet accounts of her character remain consistent, even now. She was an “imposter”, “morally depraved”, and “money hungry”. She was not a woman with an illness, she was making a calculated choice to deceive. The watchers did not care about her wellbeing, and would have happily let her die to prove their hypothesis. After all, who cares what happens to a fraud.

Jessica Hamel-Akré believes Ann to be “one of the last female fasters and the first anorexics”1. This distinction is important because it underpins our attitudes to eating disorders now. In 1977, H Gethin Morgan argued that our approach towards those with anorexia nervosa is still influenced by the distrust surrounding the fasting girls of history. He writes that we struggle “disengaging ourselves from an attitude which implies that her resistance to eating could be controlled with adequate exercise of will on her part”. He suggests that many can’t help but feel hostile around “what seems to be an unnecessary, self-imposed disease”2.

I recently ran into a girl I hadn’t seen for about two years. The first thing she said to me was, “Omg, you look so skinny!” Her tone implied that this was most definitely a compliment. I didn’t know what to say: yes, well sure I’m thinner now but only because I was battling Binge Eating Disorder for a baker’s dozen years and I’ve been recovering over the last 24 months but every day is a challenge when it comes to food and my body image which is ultimately and unfortunately, a large part of my self worth.

I’d been craving for someone to mention it, to notice my weight loss, to validate my new societally ‘valid’ appearance. When it happened, I felt awful. It shook the already delicate foundations of my hard-fought progress. It felt just as terrible as when someone would comment on my weight gain as a teenager. I wanted to run back to my lovely friends who, as a matter of principle, refuse to comment on my body at all.

Ultimately, I am so glad that society is now openly and proactively addressing the topic of eating disorders. If celebrities’ bodies have to be singled out for this outcome, then so be it. Hopefully one day, talking about bodies will no longer implicitly come with a value judgement. But I still think that our public concern does not always help the individuals we are supposedly concerned about. At the very least, it never helped me and it certainly didn’t help Ann.

I agree that we should comment on harmful practices when we see them but I worry that our hyper-fixation on singular people and their bodies may distract us from the greater, structural forces at work. We should continue to use this moment to highlight the terrifying body trends at play, and look to history to stop us from repeating harmful cycles of behaviour.

My feed has suddenly become flooded with people documenting their journeys to success. Artists are sharing their failed attempts, musicians are dropping their behind-the-scenes, even ‘thought daughters’ are revealing their morning research routines. Personally, this makes me squirm. When did trying suddenly become cool? Why did people stop hiding their effort and start performing it instead?

As a teenage girl in the mid-2010s, the lamest thing you could possibly be was a try-hard. The ultimate goal was to be effortless: naturally skinny, inexplicably stylish and innately intelligent. Any evidence of exertion (physical or mental) was inherently cringe.

I remember seeing a girl from my school at the gym and being disappointed that she was even there. I had secretly hoped that she’d been born with that muscle line on her perfectly flat stomach. One day after class, I cried for hours to my mum because I’d overheard a girl in my history lesson say that I’d only got that grade because I’d worked really hard for it, so it doesn’t count. It was the most damning insult she could think of at the time. Of course, we all revised for exams and did our homework. But this was done covertly, for fear of anyone seeing you try or worse, fail.

No wonder we were terrified of trying when all of our idols dropped into our laps as fully formed celebrities. The ‘it girl’ of the era, Cara Delevingne, emerged from some cryogenic chamber circa 2012, already famous. A striking, palatably quirky model-turn-actress who was mysteriously discovered and got her big break when she became the face of Burberry. There was no “comment SUCCESS for my 17-point-plan to becoming an international supermodel”. If that’s the career you wanted, all you could do was put on your best pair of acid-wash jeggings, cake on your Maybelline mascara and hang around outside of Joe & The Juice. If you were lucky, an IMG model scout buying their morning Prince of Green juice would be blown away by your effortless charm.

Success was not a process, it was pass/fail. You were either famous, or you weren’t. Occasionally, we’d catch glimpses of the journey to famedom i.e. go on X-Factor, join a boyband, place third and then drop the hit of all time: What Makes You Beautiful. But otherwise, your choices were to be either content with normalcy or magically hit the big time through some secret undercover method.

Yet, nowadays, the number one thing we reward is transparency. Performed effort is admired in the ‘productivitymaxxing’ and ‘looksmaxxing’ culture of today. This seems to be a backlash to the shrouded fame of the 2000s. Social media demands that our idols are fully accessible to us and punishes those who gatekeep. Kylie Jenner literally commented instructions on TikTok for others to replicate her boob job: “445 cc, moderate profile, half under the muscle!!!!! silicone!!! garth fisher!!! hope this helps lol”. I used to look at glamorous women and feel inferior because I didn’t look like them. Now, I look at glamorous women and feel inferior because I could look like them, but I still don’t. Influencers constantly give me the exact blueprint to their public success and yet, I still haven’t achieved it. Worse, I haven’t even tried. Probably because I’m still scared of anyone seeing me try or I can’t even afford to.

It is a good thing that transparency is the norm now. Growing up, it was heartbreaking to find out that the person I had based my life aspirations on really just had a big TV exec for a father. When I found out that my favourite photographer and artist was a nepo baby, I could not look at Brooklyn Beckham’s work again. Success used to be gate-kept, reserved for the already rich and famous. Now, it feels slightly more attainable, as long as you are willing to publicly expose your efforts and failures along the way.

Ultimately, I am still nostalgic for the aloof stars of the 2010s. I find it harder to romanticise these new artists who document each step along their journey. But, maybe that’s a good thing. No one should be pedestalled. Hopefully, as more people are rewarded for their hard-work rather than their outcomes, society will become less success-oriented. Passion will be praised more than apathy and so, more people will become comfortable trying. Me, included.

To push myself, here is me trying. Writing every week (mostly), sharing my efforts and honestly, working really hard. I’m shaking off the cringe of my youth and trying to embrace how much I do care about things. So, in the spirit of documenting my process and celebrating the small wins on my journey to becoming a full-time writer, here I am with my 158-follower cake.

I hate football.

I hate watching strangers in teeny tiny shorts sprint across the screen, I hate smug commentators, peppering their narration with technical terms I don’t understand, I hate how scared I feel walking home when the streets are packed with rowdy men in garish matching t-shirts, I hate the off-side rule, whatever that is, I hate feeling stupid when I don’t know who any of these famous players are, I hate the obligation I feel to know who they are and I hate how young most of them are when they become more successful than me. Oh and I hate that the World Cup took over my perfect summer housewarming party.

It’s not like I haven’t tried to love the beautiful game. As a child, I begged my mum to let me join my older brother’s Saturday morning training sessions. She kitted me out with a pair of size 2 football boots from Sports Direct, a hand-me-down Arsenal shirt and gave me my first ponytail. After a few months of being the only girl on the mixed team, I quit, citing my sudden interest in street dance instead.

In my first year of university, I accrued countless hours watching the 19-year-old boarding school boys from my hallway play FIFA on their Xbox at me. Occasionally, they would hand me the controller out of pity, rattle off the instructions: attackingcontrolsgroundpassthroughballlobpassshootfinesseshottriggerrun and watch as I immediately floundered. They relished in saying, “Aww that’s so adorable… it’ll be easier if I just do it”, before grabbing the controller from my limp grasp. I wanted to impress them, show them that I was not like the other girls. Instead, I spent an excruciating amount of time sitting on unwashed grey sheets, breathing air infused with sweat and Wotsit dust. Once again, it was reasserted that this game wasn’t for me.

My attempts didn’t stop there. To show my devotion to my first boyfriend, I memorised all the names of Liverpool FC players by matching each one of them with their relevant haircut. Yet, it felt too late for me. No matter how many revision cards I made, Darwin Núñez would suddenly get a buzz cut and I’d be back to square one. I would never be able to catch up on the years worth of accumulated knowledge that I had missed out on.

I even inadvertently hosted a World Cup watch party last weekend. It was not my first choice for a group bonding activity. My roommate and I had organised a lovely little housewarming party for our new flat. We’d carefully curated an intimate guest list and looked up the recipe for Hugo Spritz on Bon Appétit. Then, the Quarter Finals: England vs. Norway game was announced on the same day as our big blow out. We knew that the only way to keep the crowd was to host our very own football watch party. Thus, my safe haven became a vessel for the very thing I hated.

I can acknowledge the virtues of the sport. I see how it brings people, even whole countries, together. I’ve googled photographs of the German and British soldiers playing impromptu games of footie during the Christmas Truce of 1914, before they proceeded to kill each other. I’ve witnessed the happiness and purpose that it brings close friends of mine, one of whom uses football training as a way to rehabilitate troubled kids. I understand the political significance of international relations playing out on the pitch. I even gazed on tenderly as my lovely friends sang Wonderwall, gathered around my TV screen, after England won the Quarters.

Yet, I still don’t get it and I increasingly feel like I’m the only one left. I used to have allies in many of my non-male friends, but now they are transfixed by it too. As my comrades have fallen one by one to the pitch side, I have become convinced that I am missing out on something. How am I still so completely bored by these buff strangers dancing around a field? More importantly, why do I feel the need to care about them?

It might help if the commentators provided little backstories of the players like, “he just passed to Rogers, who has a complicated relationship with his mum” or, “Gary is now dribbling the ball and he’s also very sensitive about his hairline”. It would definitely appeal to me more if there were talking heads like America’s Next Top Model, “I swear when he lobbed that ball, he gave me the eye”. Hey, even throw in a love triangle or two! Without those things it feels like wandering around aimlessly in an abstract art exhibition without any wall captions, or watching a foreign movie without English subtitles (two things I’d much rather be doing).

Thus, I am stuck in a pathetic cycle. I can’t engage with the game because I don’t have the fundamental knowledge to do so. I then refuse to learn about the sport or the players as I resent devoting any time to something I have felt excluded from my whole life. Therefore, I end up avoiding football altogether and once again feeling excluded.

Hating football as a woman now feels backwards. It’s as if I am inadvertently supporting the idea that sports are for boys and makeup is for girls. Or that I think I’m in some way above it, as some card-carrying member of the intelligentsia. Or that I’m endorsing the belief that any interest women show in the game is purely performative. Whenever I declare my dislike for it, I feel like I’m further perpetuating the very stereotypes that excluded me from the game in the first place, cementing the barriers to entry for girls to come.

However, caring about it just because everyone else does doesn’t feel right for me either. It’s like how when I tell people I don’t like falafel they almost always say, “you just haven’t had good falafel”. Little do they know how many supposedly stunning falafel wraps I have endured in my lifetime. Even if I did understand who the heck Jude Bellingham was or why Peter Crouch is constantly advertising laundry detergent to me, I could still hate the game. It might actually not be for me.

My hatred of football isn’t totally unrelated to my womanhood either. It is hard to happily sit back, sip a pint of Thatchers Haze and watch the match when I am aware of the undeniable link between domestic violence against women and football. Knowing that every time England plays, whether they win, lose or draw, incidents of domestic abuse increase1. It makes me squirm to watch known sex-offenders being portrayed as national heroes on the World Cup stage. Yet, this doesn’t explain my equal aversion to women’s football. The truth is, I just find it plain boring.

I admire my friends who have managed to overcome this dilemma and now get to enjoy something that brings joy to so many people. Personally, I don’t possess the mental fortitude, nor the time to research ‘Harry Kane Lost Voice?’. So, I disengage completely. Maybe it’s because I just can’t shake off the resentment of my youth and my bitterness surpasses my capacity for FOMO. Or potentially my attention span is so rotted away that the prospect of 90+ minutes of anything fills me with dread.

All this to say that I hope England loses the semis tonight.2

There’s only one week to go until my sixteenth birthday party and I’m in a wild panic. My mum has pulled out all the stops: a fridge stocked with J2Os, a rented £150 inflatable hot tub and six bottles of strawberry lime flavoured ciders to split between twenty teenage girls. I am the talk of the town - the town being Year 11 of my all-girls school. Lottie, daughter of a disgraced local politician, even threatened to gatecrash, which doesn’t mean much but it does mean something. I have never felt so popular and so utterly insecure.

My new bikini top arrived from H&M this morning and I am bulging out of it. This is a total shock to me despite the fact that I knowingly ordered it two sizes too small. Every school night for the last three weeks, I have downloaded two episodes of Teen Wolf, skulked to the room at the end of my garden, hopped on my dad’s rusty exercise bike and absolutely floored it for 90 minutes. Yet, no amount of exercise or oven-baked salmon could possibly force my growing breasts to go down two cup sizes. I am defeated.

In the near decade since then, my tired body has been subjected to multiple harsh exercise regimes on my mission to become smaller. I learnt early on that I require external pressure and the threat of public humiliation to exercise, whether that be a hot-tub party, an event where I need to fit into that one specific dress or a 5’3 American lady in lycra telling me to “squat lower, honey”. There is truly nothing that motivates me more than insecurity, especially when I am the only Sports Direct girl in a class full of Lululemon women.

My pursuit of the ‘pilates body’ - incredibly lean, toned but not too visibly muscly - has implicated me in a myriad of fitness fads. These clinical-sounding health interventions include but are definitely not limited to: Orange Theory Fitness, F45, HIIT, and of course Chloe Ting’s 2020 Two-Week Shred Challenge. I have strapped a heart rate monitor to my chest to determine my most accurate fat loss figures, endured countless burpees and even got to orange belt in kickboxing.

They all consist of the same thing - a mixture of calorie restriction, high intensity cardio workout classes and notably, no enjoyment. So, I was immensely surprised to find that the one exercise that actually healed my relationship to fitness and halted my pursuit of the Pilates body was, in fact: Pilates.

Pilates is a low-impact exercise invented by Joseph Pilates in World War I to help rehabilitate injured soldiers. Its original intention was purely functional. The key tenets of the discipline were to increase strength, flexibility, bodily awareness and prevent injuries. Yet, it now caters to a different kind of combatant: Pilates Princesses.

This slightly degrading term refers to the group of urbanite women who, en masse, slicked back their hair into tight ponies, donned Sweaty Betty pastel matching sets, and flocked to £40 a pop Reformer classes. No wonder, when this miracle exercise promised the cult of thinness ideal: a toned body without any of those pesky masculine muscles. Visible strength of course being the ultimate weakness.1

However, this is a world away from the Pilates that I know and love. Tucked away in the basement of my local gym, is an incredibly strong yet curvy middle-aged woman named Heather, calmly improving the mobility of eleven other middle-aged women…and me. Playing Ed Sheeran’s ‘Love Yourself’ off her tinny iPhone speaker, we participate in 45 minutes of controlled exercises and stretches to improve our mind-body connection. At the end of it, I haven’t sweat once but I am sore in places I didn’t know existed and filled with a deep inner calm.

When I rocked up for my first class, I was ready for the standard public-humiliation-ritual-turn-fat-loss-bootcamp but I found something far better. It was the first time in years that I’d exercised without the explicit intention of losing weight or burning calories. I finally found myself wanting to get stronger, rather than skinnier. In fact, in the year that I’ve been attending, my body has not changed in appearance at all, and I don’t even care.

The day of my sweet-sixteen hot tub party finally arrived. I wish I could say that I walked the 10 minutes down to my local high street H&M and exchanged the bikini for a size that actually fit me. Or that I chose to wear one of my old one-piece swimsuits which I had previously deemed too ‘childish’ for a proper adult teenager. Alas, I spent another week cycling to nowhere on that old exercise bike. I squeezed myself into the too tight costume, spent half the night sucking in my stomach and the other half hiding my humiliating body in my brother’s baggy white t-shirt. Once all the guests left, I sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor and silently scoffed down the remains of my birthday cake.

Ironically, that was probably the skinniest I’ve been, or ever will be. I wasted years idealising these Pilates princesses whilst simultaneously being terrified of them. The princessification of the exercise had subverted a rehabilitative technique into a weight-loss solution. So, I was worried that joining them would mean opting in to an strand of diet culture that felt explicitly harmful. Instead, I partook in more insidious methods of intense high-impact exercise to chase smallness.

Yet, due to Pilates, I’m proud to say that I no longer aspire to have the body of a starved teenage girl. I also now have the ability to acknowledge that movement is a freedom and a privilege, not a burden or punishment. I am not completely ‘cured’, if one ever can be. I still occasionally check my step-count on the Apple health app or the calorie-counter on the treadmill. And, for some silly reason, I can’t let myself get rid of that H&M bikini top, ‘just in case’. Who knows, maybe one day I will desperately need two tiny triangular coasters or a pocket square for a garden gnome.

It is 3am and, as usual, I am fully alert and seething with rage. He slumbers besides me, arrogantly breathing - dreaming in the cinematic style of Paul Thomas Anderson. Meanwhile, I have spent three hours berating myself for being awake, 90 minutes glaring at his man bangs and half an hour pondering the profitability to effort ratio of starting a narrative podcast.

Thus far in my incredibly short life, I have exclusively dated sleepy boys (SBs). I’ve been told that it is actually reassuring when partners become instantly, irreversibly, performatively sleepy in your presence. This originates from the Stone Age, when cavemen could only rest once they were cuddled up besides a certifiable 10. Yet, how come as my safe and sound little boy is snoozing up in the crook of my arm, am I still wide awake?

It so happens that I am the victim of a most insidious beast: moderate insomnia. In fact, I am one of a worrying trend1 of young people, particularly women, experiencing sleep deprivation. The most unrealistic part of Snow White is no longer her itsy bitsy waist, Prince Charming existing or the prospect of a houseshare with 7 random dudes. The fairy tale is that she was able to get a good night’s sleep.

Regularly struggling to perform the basic human function of sleep is unironically exhausting. It leads to increased irritability, poor concentration and forgetfulness - just a few core tenets of my lovely personality - as well as a plethora of delightful physical consequences. Every morning, I wake up late and tired, then begin my daily ritual of beating myself up for waking up late and being tired. Three minutes into consciousness and I’m already a failure. Naturally, this is not the recipe for a morning person with a zest for life and a song to sing.

Us sleepy girls reside within a culture where women are increasingly pressured to invest in expensive ‘self-care’ - FACEGYM now promises a ‘unique facial fitness experience’ to reinvigorate your emotive capabilities from only £110+. We are taught the virtues of nightly retinol, gua sha and face taping (applying medical tape to our foreheads to prevent the sin that is natural aging). Yet, the most restorative and free form of caring for oneself is consistently overlooked: rest.

From the extensive research I have conducted during various bouts of energy at 2am, I have determined why Gen Zs are getting fewer Zs and why this issue predominantly affects young women:

Anxiety

Whether it is social, eco or just plain generalised, anxiety is a badge of honour for a generation where optimism has now traded places with naivety. And we are increasingly wearing these garish badges, as the group with the highest prevalence of anxiety and associated mental health disorders2.

Within the abundance of causes for this, sits our overexposure to social media. I have social anxiety now because in Year 7, no one featured me as one of their 💞 top 5 Best Friends Forever 💝 in their BBM bio. I have an aversion to making mistakes because one of my first stand-up sets is still preserved on YouTube for all to sneer at my satirical commentary on GCSEs. My hatred of my shoulders has been thrust upon me by men on Instagram commenting on how enviably wide my traps are.

This means that every night, my sleeplessness is narrated by my nervous to-do list featuring tasks such as: do more, be better, and learn how to lose muscle mass in my upper body. If the grind never stops, then where does slumber come in?

Blue light

Shockingly, phones = … bad? Studies3 have found exposure to blue light right before going to bed is the worst possible thing you could do for your sleep. That means silly billys (me) who search Vinted for aspirational fake fur jackets at midnight will inevitably struggle to switch off. Wait, so the reason I was exhausted, burnt-out and delirious for ten whole years was because of… my phone? How totally lame of me.

I very much resent being told I’m an insomniac with poor ‘sleep hygiene’. What a disgusting sequence of words. I change my sheets every 2 weeks and brush my teeth thoroughly thank you very much. Yet, personal hygiene seemingly has nothing to do with it. As proven by my ex, who dozed admirably soundly on sheets that were washed once a quarter (optimistically). Although, I did finally get my Disney Princess moment when I found a smushed pea on his mattress. Good sleep hygiene means being boring and doing dull things such as having fixed sleep times and switching off screens 30-60 minutes before bed. Lol.

The annoyingly simple cure

Thus, I overcame my insomnia in the most annoying way possible. Every night, I partake in an enviable nightly ritual of not going on my phone for 45 minutes before I go to sleep, doing an overly-complicated skincare routine (I am unfortunately not immune to the propaganda that natural aging is a crime) and reading a physical book (how retro) until I drift off. My sleep hygiene has thus dramatically improved, only partly attributed to breaking up with the aforementioned boyfriend.

This simple no-screen hack, completely cured me of my decade long bout of insomnia. In fact, I have taken this no contact approach (phone and ex) to an extreme, whereby if I even glance at a screen, I’m talking even the time on the oven, the 45 minutes reset and the ritual begins once more. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a placebo. I can now sleep the whole night through, as long as I don’t accidentally glance at Facebook Marketplace within my no-phone window. How pathetic. And before you ask, no the Night Shift no blue light filter does not work for me.

For a goodie two-shoes who is terrified of authority, I really resent being told what to do. But, turns out they (the adults) were right when they said phones are bad for you. Next thing we know, it’ll turn out that exercise actually makes you ‘feel better’ or that alcohol isn’t fun juice.

Feather Duvet

Last night,
I slept like a baby,
Tossing and turning,
Crying for my mum,
Recalling how you told me,
That you loved falling asleep,
To the sound of my voice, 
You must not find what I have to say,
Very interesting

I turned 25 and I still know very little about most things.

Confronted with intimidating age milestones, some introspective individuals look back on how far they’ve come. By 25, Mozart had written over 35 symphonies, Zadie Smith had published White Teeth and Joan of Arc had already died. That’s a lot to live up to. Other self-analysis junkies consider the lessons they have learnt along the ol’ winding road of life so far: never quadruple text, drink more water than you think you should, start applying retinol to the backs of your knees and so on and so forth.

I, on the other hand, feel a strong disconnect with past versions of myself, paired with an endearingly unreliable memory. Whilst I have acquired knowledge of certain things - reading = good, phone = bad - I don’t know if these are lessons I could reliably preach. With a lack of self-persistence of identity, I tend to look towards my future, rather than back at my miscellaneous past. I see myself as a sort of London motorcyclist - perpetually a Learner. There I am in my metaphorical leather jacket, never removing that L sticker from my rear end, eternally riding through the road that is life.

So, in a subversive twist on the genre, here are 25 things I have not learnt in 25 years:

1. What my bra size is

I have had upwards of three middle-aged ladies in the changing rooms at M&S feel me up (consensually) and inform me that my breasts could be anywhere from a size 36C to a 26FF. They each strapped me into a differently sized chest chastity belt and told me that, if it feels like I’m being imprisoned for crimes I did not commit, then it must be the perfect fit. You do not choose the bra, the bra chooses you, they whispered into my ear whilst gently caressing my nipples. I would love to tell people that I am a naturally bountiful pornstar double F with a teeny tiny matchstick back. Yet, all I can reasonably attest to is that I’ve got a solid, proportional, some may say ‘sufficient’ handful.

2. How to do everything

My friend recently told me something truly profound: ‘you can’t be both a washer and a dryer’. As a person who constantly tries to do everything, all of the time, this struck a nerve. I am overwhelmed by a Sisyphean to-do list that contains everything from brush your teeth to learn to drive.

This year, I want to focus on projects that I actually want to do, and figure out what I should give up or let others help me with. Yes, you can label yourself as a washer dryer, and have dozens of buttons that all supposedly do wildly different things. But ultimately, the dryer setting is mostly a waste of energy, and you will forget to reward yourself for successfully cleaning the clothes just because they’re still sopping wet.

3. How to reconcile my guilt for the impending climate crisis with my love of owning things

At the stern age of 15, I decided that I was never going to buy anything first hand ever again. To my own frustration, I have stuck to this quite consistently other than the aforementioned M&S underwear, a stunning green velvet sofa and naturally, food.

I try not to project my teenage binary mindset onto anyone else, especially because it raises a question I still don’t exactly know the answer to. For years, corporations and governments have been using individualistic rhetoric to place the blame for the climate crisis on the consumer and avoid the imperative for systemic change. So, by taking such extreme individual action, am I endorsing the propaganda that I am guilty and in the process, absolving the real perpetrators? Or is individual action, paired with this understanding, the real route to progress? Regardless, Facebook Marketplace has a chokehold on me in a way that is both delightful and concerning.

4. How to do a handstand

Self-explanatory.

5. When to call it a night

My roommate and I share an adorable quirk: we simply do not know when to call it a night. Our friendship first bloomed on park benches dotted around North London at 3am. So, we are evidence to the contrary that nothing good ever happens after midnight.

Yet, this cute habit has become an undeniable burden. I am desperate to be seen as a fun, spontaneous ‘yes man’ and shirk my prudish head girl reputation to people who don’t know nor care that I was once singlehandedly responsible for five deputies and a dozen prefects. Concerningly, my body has now taken to bursting into tears whenever I want to go home before I can register my own emotions. Although, at least when I say that I am ‘crying in the club rn’, I mean it.

6. What my boundaries are

One Friday not long ago, I decided to have a night in. I went to an obnoxiously fancy organic supermarket to get some bits to treat myself (French cultured butter with sea salt crystals? I hardly know her!). I looked around at the four other whole-food heads wandering the nut-butter laden aisles and thought smugly, ‘Wow, look at all of us, protecting our peace’.

I’ve recently discovered something called ‘boundaries’. Currently, I have very few of them. But according to an audio book my therapist prescribed to me, I am enroute to figuring out what they are and how to assert them. I do, however, have another nine and a half hours of listening to go before I can do that.

What I have learnt so far is that having a distinct lack of boundaries means that I often take on a submissive, caring role for others, and tend to defer to the stronger characters in my life. Luckily, I have surrounded myself with beautiful, fascinating characters who are a joy to defer to (yes, I will go to your vegetable celebrity lookalike competition, thank you). But, I also need to start identifying when I need time to myself and actively proposing activities that interest me. As the audio book I listen to in Spotify ‘private session’ says, identifying your lack of boundaries is the first step to establishing them.

7. How to drive/that I am not immortal

Not having a drivers license used to be charming, but now is a real threat to others. I am someone who unfortunately identifies as a ‘cyclist’. Yet, not knowing any of the rules of the road makes me feel as though I am playing a board game where I have zoned out at the exact moment my friend has read out the instructions. This is notoriously the worst feeling in the world, because board games are the most fun (says Big Board Game).

My treacherous ignorance became apparent when I accidentally rode a Lime bike on the motorway. I had selected the ‘car route’ on Google Maps to save a whole 15 minutes and landed myself on a dual carriageway with no apparent means of escape. Did you know that Lime bikes switch off on the motorway because for some unimaginable reason, they are deemed ‘no-ride zones’? Therefore, I was forced to proceed at a dangerously slow pace, all whilst getting swerved by cars and beeped at by my beloved Learner motorcyclists.

Twelve minutes into my leisurely death march/ride, I decided to ditch my steed on the side of the road, climb over a wall and find my way home. I couldn’t stop seeing the headlines: 24-year-old girl with so much potential found dead on the A406 on her way to pick up a set of nesting tables from Facebook Marketplace. At least she died doing what she loved.

Despite this, have I stopped using Limes? No. Have I organised driving lessons? Obviously not. Have I come to terms with the precarious nature of my own mortality? Not yet, but I did eventually pick up a glorious staple of mid-century modern furniture design for a total steal.

8. How to be creative consistently

An eternal struggle that I know would be instantly resolved if I finally bothered to read, The Artist’s Way.

9. How to be present

At school, we once had a 35-minute PSHE lesson on mindfulness. We assumed that our kind yet masochistic biology teacher, Mrs Mason, was about to show us the childbirth video again, so we thoughtfully reminded her that ‘Becky is a fainter’.

Instead, she handed each of us an M&M and told us to focus on the feeling of the cold sugar shell in our palms, to engage all of our senses to examine its shape, colour and texture. This was irrelevant to me as the M&M had only touched my palm for a negligible amount of time. Once she had redistributed to the greedy trolls amongst us, we were asked to taste the chocolate, to let it dissolve in our mouths and truly experience the different sensations. If our insecure teenage minds wander, to say, how many calories are in this unforeseen M&M, don’t be critical of yourself, just gently guide your thoughts back.

The experiment continued, with biscuits, boiled sweets and finally chilli peppers. Mrs Mason told us to take a small bite of the pepper, feel the tingling on our tongues and oh please god do not touch your eyes, Becky! Her well-meaning attempt to teach a classroom of 15-year-old girls about being present resulted in tears, both spice and calorie-related.

This is not dissimilar to my approach to mindfulness now. Since then, every meditation attempt has left me with a profound feeling of failure and a non-refundable year-long subscription to the Headspace app. But, if I learned anything from Mrs Mason, it is to not be too critical of myself, and gently guide my thoughts back to the M&M at hand.

10. What I look like

I understand that bodies are everchanging, fluctuating, sagging things that allow us to dance and think and moan about our knees. I understand that because of this, maybe we can and should never truly understand what we look like. However, this line of reasoning does not account for the fact that whenever I see a photograph of myself, I am genuinely shocked that I am ginger. If I look in the mirror, I am simply a brunette. Having bright red hair is inherently attention-seeking and I have not yet come to terms with having my external self being so violently salient at all times.

In fact, I only recently found out that I have ‘high cheekbones’ because someone else told me. Clearly, my sense of self is exclusively informed by other people’s perceptions of me, both externally and internally. Therefore, I think that the only way to truly find out what I look like is to buy a £15.85 off-peak train to Brighton, using my 16-25 Railcard of course, head on down to the shore and pay a near-retiree with a foul sense of humour £18 to draw me as a caricature.

11. Who my celebrity lookalike is

Adding to the lack of awareness of my physical appearance is the fact that no one has come up with a satisfactory celebrity lookalike for me. People either jump straight to any ginger actress ever - unfortunately I do not believe that I resemble Emma Stone - or they tell me that I ‘don’t look like anyone they’ve ever seen before’. Depending on the tone, I take this as a compliment or an unforgivable insult. Perhaps my insistence on asking everyone in my life which celebrity I look like holds the truth of my situation. What I look like is: desperate.

12. How to get a stranger’s number

I have a male friend (okay, brag) who is constantly receiving girls’ numbers. They are drawn to him like a skinny scarfed moth to a mulleted flame. He is a lovely handsome boy and certainly worthy of all the attention he receives. But am I not also a lovely handsome girl, also worthy of receiving attention? I worry that this discrepancy is the result of two things: a) feminism has gone too far (I refuse to expand on this null point) or b) he actually talks to strangers (not in a predatory way).

My friend quite naturally seeks out conversation with strangers. For example, he absurdly asks people about what they are reading on the Overground. This recently led to a girl writing down her number on her book page, ripping it out and handing it to him. Unfortunately, in the suaveness of the moment, she had only written down 10 of her 11 digits and was forever lost to the underbelly of the Mildmay Line.

I, on the other hand, am understandably frightened of strangers in public places and see eye contact as a direct sign of aggression. Whilst stranger danger is certainly a sensible proverb to live by, I do perhaps take it too far. Clubbing as a teenager, my friends and I would hold hands and form a dance circle of protection to stop men from approaching us. This method was so incredibly effective that it stopped any of us from kissing anyone for the whole of interrailing. So, in many ways, both a success and a failure.

After I heard the fateful Mildmay Line story, I vowed to stare at people on the Overground. One creepy attempt later, I decided that public transport is probably not where I’m going to meet the love of my life. Yet, I’m working my way up to being more confident around new people, as you never know who or what you may find. Worst case, I have a very reliable mulleted wing man who can make the introductions for me.

13. With what frequency should I back up my photos

Once a week? Once a month? Certainly more than I already do. And with what method? An old fashioned harddrive? That will inevitably get lost in a flood or become corrupt with power. Or forever become a slave to the enigmatic Google-Drive or iCloud? Who will eventually hold my photos and memories hostage in exchange for my first-born son. These are the things that keep me up at night.

14. How to stay politically engaged

Every morning, whilst scrolling Facebook marketplace on my phone, I listen to BBC World Service on my orange radio alarm clock that I got to avoid scrolling on my phone in the mornings. This means that I wake up to the sounds and sights of the world slowly but surely disintegrating before my ears and eyes.

I technically have a Politics, Philosophy and Economics degree. Yet, this wealth of knowledge is easily forgotten when faced with a constant influx of terrible news regarding the miserable state of the world. I often feel dumb and ill-equipped for today’s debates, and as a result, can find myself wanting to disengage. Frustratingly, this is not because I don’t have the tools at my disposal to fight for what I feel is right.

It is because firstly, there are too many headlines for me to focus my energy on any one. Secondly, it feels like I am entering the political minefield totally unprepared. I walk in armed with my logic, tolerance, and PPE degree, when the right-wing has thrown away my neat sensible toolbox entirely.

Whenever I feel disillusioned with the world, and as though I lack the power to initiate change, I find it slightly helpful to first try and focus on a few key issues that I’m passionate about. For example, climate justice and gender equality. These are vast topics that intertwine with so much current affairs. But, if I focus my political action through the lens of these two things, it is slightly less broad than focusing my energy on literally everything that I find unjust. I also think that it remains important to nonetheless engage the tools I have at my disposal: protest, petitions, and talking to others. Although, I also need to start looking at other avenues that I haven’t explored yet, or ones that don’t come naturally to me.

15. How to relax

My roommate is in awe at my ability to never sit still. But how could I possibly rest when I have a task from my incredibly specific to-do list to complete, or a plant to water or a tapestry to get started on? She describes me as eternally pottering about, always looking over her shoulder at a side table that I should probably sand and re-oil. We are like an old married couple in the 70s; she is the dismayed housewife, begging for a scrap of her distant husband’s time - ‘even when you’re here it’s like you’re not really here’.

She has gone to impressive lengths to try to get me to properly relax. Yet, chill movie nights and home-cooked meals are no match for my natural state of being. In the battle of hyper-stress and relaxation, I am winning. In fact, not only have I resisted her chillaxed advances, I have infected her with my ‘driven by a motor’ sensibility. She has now started to potter about, picking things up and putting them down for no apparent reason. I am not saying that I am proud of this achievement. What I am saying is that she just needs to try harder, think outside the box, and surprise me. To make any sort of progress in this battle of wits, she needs to use the patience that I lack, and I need to learn how to surrender.

16. Which aches and pains I should be concerned about and which are a natural consequence of being alive

The other day, I had a GP appointment (not to brag). I have a litany of feet issues, including flat feet, a torn ATFL, and now regularly numb toes (not to brag). Yet, I am always wary that my issues are too silly or mundane to burden our darling NHS with. Numb toes sounds like a post-punk band, not something a 25-year-old child need worry about.

Whenever I do go to the GP about any of the problems I’ve regarded as slightly goofy, they fast-track me instantly. It turns out, my quirks of the body are real medical conditions and my numb toes are: ‘structural’. How can that be? I am not a structure - I am not the Golden Gate Bridge or the Walkie-Talkie building. I believe that I must have the opposite of hypochondria, or that I am quite out of touch with my body, or both. Once I learn mindfulness, and that I am not immortal, maybe I will finally understand what parts of myself are screaming out to be noticed, and which parts of myself are just flat-footedness.

17. What does it feel like to faint

I’ve never done it, and I want to know.

18. What is success

When I was younger, I had a very specific image of success. It had a lot to do with a level of fame just below not being able to go to the supermarket in peace. When I was even younger, I thought success was being a child actor. Notably not an adult actor, because then I would have failed as a child actor. Impeccable logic.

Recently, fame has become far less entrenched in my conception of success. Ambition has also become less of a sticking point for me, as I find that some versions of ambition can necessitate a sense of dissatisfaction. If I am constantly striving for something new, better, more performatively commendable, then will I ever have the time to be content with where I am?

Which leads me to a newer, less rigid sense of success. Success is no longer a binary tick box of achievement, and is definitely not fame. Success is getting to spend my time doing the things that I want to do, with the people that I want to do them with, and being able to enjoy myself as I do it. This vague definition still entails desire, as the things I want to do unfortunately are quite ambitious. I suppose ultimately, it is just the start of a philosophy of success that is internally driven.

19. Why chicken is impossible for me to give up

I have never eaten red meat in my life. No, not even bacon. Initially, this was not for any particularly moral reason. My American mom had me at the height of Mad Cow Disease, where brits were getting infected by a fatal brain disease given to them through beef. As a result, she decided to swear completely off red meat (other than a lamb curry the night before my birth). It was only later when the rationale became more health, climate and animal cruelty-based.

Thus, I grew up eating exclusively chicken and fish, alongside every other non-meat food item other than mushrooms (my sister hated mushrooms). When my sister turned 16, she decided to go vegetarian, vegan and then back to vegetarian again. When I was 16, I publicly gave up chicken and declared that until there was a good vegetarian alternative for fish, I would go pescatarian. Privately, I had not given up chicken. I’m not preaching that everyone should give up chicken, but I definitely should.

I have gone through chicken-less stints, and I think that Quorn is authentically one of the best things ever invented. Yet, maybe because it is so shrouded in shame for me, it has become such a delightful little secret treat. After my last two breakups, instead of turning to the traditional ice-cream and clichéd comfort foods, I fed my urge for self-destruction and guilt through merely hitting my protein goals. Same indulgence, to very different effect. However, for the sake of my belief system and to stop myself from lying to people about my pescatarianism, I am going to give up properly this year. If only they had nicotine patches for chicken nugget addiction. I just hope that this is also the year that they make a passable alternative for chicken shawarma that is not just halloumi or worse, falafel.

20. How to walk past a mirror without looking at myself

This is perhaps one of my ickier habits. Every time I see a shiny surface, I become a puppy seeing their reflection for the first time: fascinated but slightly afraid. Perhaps this is due to the fact that I don’t know what I look like, so every mirror presents a hypnotising little surprise. Regardless, I am well aware of the frustration of talking to someone who keeps making eyes at themselves across the room. It is embarrassing. Primarily for the mirror person, who is suddenly deemed vapid and self-obsessed but also for the other person, whose physical presence cannot even contend with a mere illusion. Lest we forget the reflection, who is also humiliated because maybe they didn’t want the attention in the first place.

21. Where to get good quality tahini in London

Someone, please tell me (not Cypressa).

22. How to do makeup

I have had the same two-minute eye makeup routine since I was eighteen. Obviously, I relish in the label: ‘low-maintenance girlie’, and how impressed boys are when I tell them, ‘no, I literally like only wear moisturiser’. Alas, my lack of makeup is not for lack of trying. To accomplish my two-minute eyeliner ‘look’, it required 6 months of solid daily practice in a global pandemic; which is more commitment than I’ve shown to anything in my life. I think that it is an art to be able to do makeup well. Unfortunately, I do not possess such skill. My only respite is that whenever I do deign to publicly display my untouched face, I get the smug applause of men performing a version of feminism.

23. Why nothing is permanent

In 25 years I have slowly come to the conclusion that very little is permanent. I have gradually accepted how my weight, sense of self-worth and mood steadily fluctuates throughout the month. I have not so readily accepted how my relationships, beliefs and goals have shifted over the years. When relationships have ended in my life, romantic or platonic, it has always been for the best. We have grown in ways that aren’t compatible with each other, and that is okay. Yet, my childlike tendency towards the binary still relishes the safety of ‘best friends forever’, ‘soulmates’, ‘lifelong…’.

It is strange to both understand that things change and acknowledge that the objective outcome of the change is good, yet also be resentful of it. I suppose it’s why people cling on to the past, holding on to old beliefs out of fear or comfort. Change is confusing, and maybe there is no comprehensive answer for why it happens. But instead of treating my history as a backwards-looking permanent static, maybe I can treat my nostalgia as a progressive forward-looking tool.

24. Who I am

My therapist says that I know exactly who I am, I just don’t have the inner confidence to acknowledge it to myself yet. Therapists, they are so silly sometimes.

25. What I should do with my life

Not marketing.

Conclusion

I know a lot about the things that I am not, and very little about the things that I am. I am aware that this might not be a particularly comforting resolution. The goal is not to find satisfaction in the past, or to gloriously reminisce about previous versions of myself. Perhaps my intention is to be content in the knowledge that everything changes, and that my constant motion and pottering about is potentially reflective of how I see the world. The exciting part is that I’ve got plenty of years ahead of me to continue discovering new things, as long as I steer clear of motorways, chilli peppers and my GP.

Not one like on my LinkedIN update. Not one.

I have just passed the six-month probation at my first ever corporate 9 to 5 as a girl who copies and pastes things in exchange for monthly money. I’ve since determined that all jobs are some variation on copying and then pasting, staring earnestly at whatever you just pasted and discussing meal prep (you made how much couscous?).

For the first few weeks, I found the copying and pasting really overwhelming. At 5pm every day, I would leave work hot-faced, clutching my lanyard, holding back tears. Luckily, I work near the London Eye, so it was always relatively easy to join a throng of Richard Curtis fans ogling at an American couple’s wedding proposal. I could then pretend that I was crying because I am an empath rather than because I am easily provoked by Google Sheets (Excel for the oldies). If you ever see a viral flash mob proposal, chances are I am in the background, sobbing whilst doing the stanky leg.

There is one perk to having a real adult person profession. As the only ever twenty-ahh year old girl to ask herself the daily question, who am I? My job has thankfully given me a new identity. I am, in fact, my worst nightmare: a commuter. Not only that, a cyclist commuter. Even worse, a cyclist commuter who loves to tell people all about the benefits of cycling- you thought you knew the city before but trust me you didn’t know the city!

For a while, I refused to succumb to the inevitability of this lycra reality. Instead, every morning, I would join the flocks of mindless NPCs in grey suits, iphone 13s clutched in hand, shuffling towards green blinking beacons, only to find that their piss stained steed complete with a basket filled to the brim with scrap metal and liquids(!?) had been snatched by another player and was already halfway enroute to JP Morgan. Lime bikes have turned London mornings into Grand Theft Auto with fewer guns (yay) and more clothes (boo).

To be honest I have no clue if that reference makes any sense. If you can’t already tell by the number of times I insist on calling myself just a girl, I am not familiar with video games - other than the regrettable hours I clocked watching my ex-boyfriend play Fifa - yaaas king no I am definitely still watching yeessss I’m so proud of you babe shoot that shot into the thing you’re so handsome this is a super use of my time and brain capacity and I don’t find it icky at all!

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Eventually, I surrendered, and found a bright blue performative little lady’s bike on Facebook Marketplace. She was a total steal, in that she was almost definitely stolen. The man’s listing read: WOMAN BIKE. so easy to ride. the easiest ride. I thought, perfect: like mother, like daughter. I named her Cecily (truly she actually is such a Cecily, and I’m not just saying that) and immediately started telling people how transformative cycling can be for your mental health. Turns out the best way to start the day is not with a cup o coffee, but with the feeling of superiority.

Not that like I even care or anything, but the worst part was that I started my LinkedIN post with a supposedly ironic, ‘The long awaited LinkedIN post is finally here!’ No crying laughing emoji from Joan in HR, no ‘So proud of you girlie’ from an obviously more successful frenemy, who works in commodities (what does that mean?). Turns out, the only person who was long awaiting my linkedIN hard launch post was… me.

It may scare you to hear that I applied to 78 jobs before I got this one. A few people have told me that they use me as a story of inspiration! Resilience! Perseverance! Many more have lovingly informed me that they use me as a nightmare tale of the horrors of the job market. Hopeless! Desperate! As always, I’m just relieved that people are talking about me.

I blame my lack of success on three factors. Firstly, my ambition (delusion). How was I to know that Coordinator is a higher position than Officer which is a higher position than Assistant? Either way, why not whack in an application for COO, with a name that whimsical? If pigeons do it, why can’t I? Secondly, as a person who places a large amount of their identity on the fact that they don’t know who they are, it took me a long time to realise what job I had actually qualified myself to do. Surely my trendy shag haircut has far too many layers to slick back into a bun and adorn with a large velvet scrunchy. I couldn’t possibly work in… marketing? Thirdly, the job market actually is a horrible rancid place to be right now (meaning it was totally not my fault, I swear).

The long awaited LinkedIN post is finally here! I’m so absolutely proud and honoured to say that I have spent the last six months working as the Literature & Spoken Word and Public Programmes Marketing Assistant for a well established London arts venue. I can’t wait to keep working across such an exciting and diverse programme of events 😍💕

Not. one. Like. It is an unfortunate shame that there is no such thing as ‘success’ in a vacuum.

As someone who tends to date people who ‘read’, and then use them as my personal SparkNotes so that I don’t need to ‘read’, it is somewhat ironic that I now have a job in literature. To be earnest for one awful moment, I do feel lucky to have a first job working with a lot of lovely people on interesting projects, that also conveniently happens to make people I’ve dated respect me more (jealous), even if most of what I do consists almost entirely of CTRL+C and CTRL+V.

I have stopped crying about work now (personal crises only!). My last tearful moment was after one fateful morning atop Cecily, adorned in high-vis, when a cyclist (you’d think, a friend with all we had in common) shouted at me: who the fuck do you think you are?

When I got to work, I discovered the V button on my laptop had stopped working and I was left totally incapable of doing anything and I once again thought who the fuck do you think you are?

At 5pm, like clockwork, I was stood on Millennium Bridge, staring melancholically out at the Thames. People with actual places to be pushed past me whilst lone wanderers on their quest for a Lime that still has both it’s pedals shot me looks of despair. The app says there might be a free one in the river, should I jump in and check?

As one lonesome tear trickled down my face, looking across the London skyline as the sun set, I thought, who the fuck do you think you are? Bridget Jones? And I was cured. Yes, I am dramatic, but I’m not written by Richard Curtis dramatic. That being said, here’s a poem:

Google sheets n giggles

My boss loves to compliment my spreadsheets,

What a clean looking sheet,

The first man to ever value a clean sheet,

I am beyond gassed,

I show him my to-do list next,

Colour-coded!

He is beyond gassed,

You shouldn’t waste those talents here he says.

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Last week, I saw a family on the street on the way to work (she works? How retro) and their dog was off the leash, but their toddler was on the leash. It perturbed me deeply. I felt further unease because the entrapped toddler was carrying a baby doll. I find children who play with toy strollers perverse. Babies should simply not be allowed to carry around babies, it’s the equivalent of me carrying around a…legend? If motherhood is so fun, if it is truly child's play, then why do I try to avoid it so much? 

My birthday is approaching, according to Facebook (I would not remember it otherwise). This particular birthday is firmly a real age, which is appropriate because I am feeling myself undergo a slight third-season-of-a-sitcom character development; she makes all the same mistakes but this time she’s self aware about it! 

Despite being the youngest person to ever exist, certain elements of adulthood are creeping up on me. For example, I now have an ‘ex’, which I never had before, and I think it makes me seem like I have a checkered past- she’s a women with a history. I bought an expensive pair of shoes, with the income from my job (disgustingly capitalist of me) that I immediately put flat-footed corrective insoles in, which suggests a certain level of self-knowledge I never had prior. 

I’ve been stomping around the city in these expensive insoled boots and my trusty brown trench coat which makes me feel like Anastasia from the film Anastasia (sans the American propaganda). My trench coat is obnoxiously long, like an attention-seeking bride’s veil. So, quite rightly, it did nearly get caught in the escalator at Tottenham Court Road Station. However, I do think that death-by-vinted-trench-coat would be an appropriately pretentious way for me to go, especially as I was listening to a philosophy podcast at the time (it was a 15-minute summary of all post-structuralist thought played at 1.25x speed that I’m certain Derrida would not have okayed). 

The other day, I went on a date with someone who showed up in an identical trench coat to me, which made me feel uneasy in the children-having-toy-children way. Should trench coat people be allowed to date other trench coat people? Did our ancestors really fight in the trenches (in their coats) for their offspring to unironically discuss Marxism in Stoke Newington?

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Another sign of my ageing is that I have a fully ruptured ligament in my left ankle. I unknowingly tore my ankle 11 months ago at my birthday party after having three pints of cider, and I have been blissfully walking on it ever since. Being happily ignorant is something adults do constantly, so I’ve clearly been very mature about the whole thing. According to the doctor, and reaffirmed by google (when I double checked that I wasn’t being professionally gaslit) ruptured ligaments never heal. This means that, although I feel immortal, I am clearly not. It also means that I now have a medical recommendation to wear boots, hence the aforementioned Miista boots purchase. I will now have a slight weakness in my left ankle for the rest of my life (please nobody push me over or let me wear platform shoes again!). 

Other updates include my recent ADHD diagnosis (surprise surprise), which means that I now have an official excuse for all my prior behaviour and having a victim complex does feel very adult actually. I also discovered slicking my hair back into a bun. Why did no one tell me about this sooner?

And I am moving out soon! I’ve been viewing flats and shaking hands with real estate agents who hate my filthy guts. Yesterday, one Usain Bolted into the flat ahead of me and speedily turned on all the lights and lamps to disguise me from the fact that the flat’s ‘windows’ were pseudo falsified little things designed to deceive, as they do not, in fact, allow a speck of light into the space. He (of course it’s a he) told me that, if I decided against the pitch-black basement flat, I would never find a property this good again.

Despite this sudden onset of maturity, I have also recently re-developed a bout of my classic teenage cystic acne. Thanks world, I needed to be humbled! I went on Roaccutane as a teen and was warned by my dermatologist that some women (note- only women) have to go on Roaccutane again, aged around 24 (age reveal!). You were bang on the money Dr Granite! Three weeks before my birthday in fact. 

The girls who get it, get it and for the girls who knew boys in their teens: Roaccutane is a drug that gets rid of your acne, but has a pesky little side effect of giving you clinical depression. Luckily, my dermy told me that I might get feel clinically depressed, but my skin will look better, so I’ll be happier! Genius!

With my newly acquired victim complex, my response to this acne was that of course this would happen to me. Post-breakup glow up? How dare you! So, whilst I might feel like an adult, for the foreseeable future, I will have the relationship status, skin and induced poor mental health of myself as a teenager.

Anyway! Enough about me! Poems! 

Koi Pond

I crave a garden that requires expensive upkeep,
And an open plan apartment,
So open plan it is simply a field,
With exposed brick on the inside,
And a peloton sat by the double glazed warehouse window,
Or one of those standing desks with a treadmill beneath,
If walking at an incline were a crime,
Arrest me officer!
I want to be able to say that to people,

My therapist broke up with me,
Because she said we wanted different things,
But of course we do,
She wants my money,
I want spiritual enlightenment,
And a Koi Pond in my garden. 

A poem about people who describe themselves as honest but are really just rude

Whenever I wear clips in my hair,
Someone I thought was a friend,
Asks me if I'm finally growing my fringe out,
I'm untalented at keeping secrets I'm told, 
The most consistent thing about me is my password,
I am late to most things,
Other than my period,
For which I have no conception of time,
And I worry that I would lose those closest to me,
If I started wearing barefoot shoes,
But I suppose that is justified.

In recent news, my family cockapoo has been diagnosed with a rare health condition that mostly affects dogs but also affected J F Kennedy. She is mostly fine now, but has to take 8 pills a day, which she refuses to eat unless they are hidden in Extra Mature Cheddar Cheese. This is a great shame because she had finally lost all 2 kilos of her covid weight gain (dropping Luna’s weight loss exercise routine (no jumping) on my TikTok Live tomorrow at 4:73 am GMT). Despite, or rather because of her new Keto cheese diet, she has almost immediately gained one of those kilos back. 

The last couple of months, I have empathised with Luna. Not only are we both high maintenance girlies with a penchant for finer foods. But, like Luna, I’ve also had this bittersweet feeling of constantly taking two steps/kilos forward, and one step/kilo back. Whenever I worry about my life progress being not really very linear, I always try to remember: J.K Rowling was fired from her job before she became an internationally renowned TERF. 

Ever since I was a child, I’ve had this adorable habit of writing bold claims and empty promises in the first page of various floral notebooks. Like David Sedaris, I hoped to forever have a pool of my own inherently beautiful yet suburban anecdotes to draw inspiration from. Yet, unlike David Sedaris, I did not live in a Suburb, or have much follow-through as an eleven-year-old.

Many questions arise from this first, and only entry of my diary. Firstly, who is the ‘all’ that I am referring to and why must I show them a picture of myself? If I am talking to my future self or selves, then would I really require a photo of myself to prove to them that I am a ginger? Or perhaps my past self knew that I would eventually post my diary in my second blog, as blogging is entirely consistent with my quasi-alternative-Bell-Jar-reading-philosophy-girlies brand.

I would also argue that I definitely did not, and still do not really know the meaning of ‘soft features’ other than knowing that I almost certainly do not have them. The image that comes to mind is that of Antony Gormley’s Another Place – an installation of cast-iron sculptures on Crosby Beach. The purpose of the sculptures are to weather away over time, so their faces look faded and blurred.

For context, when I visited the beach, scattered with a hundred ghostly figures, I was nearly moved to tears. Not by the art piece but because my boyfriend had left a block of expensive cheese on the floor of the bus on the way there and an ash-coloured bulldog puppy walked past me whilst wagging its weeny little tail stub.

I’m not sure what could have been so truthful about my life aged 11 and two months. Maybe I had a raw authenticity back then that I lost somewhere between December 6th 2011 and September 2014, when I told the girls in my year 9 class that I had met Rita Ora. Why lie only to choose such a mid-level celebrity?

Thinking back on my bold and delulu pre-tween self, I have definitely progressed a lot. I am still very pale, still a ginger, still quite delusional, but I’m now probably about average height rather than tall for my age. So maybe I’ve actually regressed? Regardless, I think that I don’t always have to interpret my life progress in terms of linear steps. In part, because I am incredibly flat footed and have very weak ankles. So, of course my steps will be slightly different to everyone else’s.  

1

Walls

If my bedroom walls could talk,
They would bitch about me behind my back,
About how my sister printed off all the things she liked,
Tracy Emin Jackson Pollock The Office (US version) etc.,
And stuck them up using bluetack,
And then I printed off all the things that my sister liked,
Lily Allen Hozier Glee (except for the last 3 seasons) etc.,
And stuck them up using bluetack.

Or how when she grew out of that,
She bought cheap blackboard paint,
So she could turn her wall into a chalkboard,
She did drawings and wrote things like, 
‘Fuck Trump’ and ‘Piss off mum’,
I used her leftovers and wrote,
‘To do list’ at the top of mine
And then never wrote anything else.

I still don’t like enough things to fill a wall,
And I don’t think blackboard paint works
because chalk is impossible to get off it. 
When she painted her room white again,
I painted mine a pale fleshy pink
And then when she moved out,
I waited a year
And then so did I.

Welcome to what I can only hope will eventually form the basis for my autobiography/poetry anthology/coffee-table-book-about-interior-design. I feel like starting a hybrid blog-newsletter is the 23-year-old humanities girl version of starting a football podcast. So, it was just an inevitability and you can’t really blame me for this, or anything else I’ve ever done or will do. 

Firstly, I want to say thank you for being here- wherever here is. I think ‘here’ must be in Brixton or Hackney as that is where everything is. I can and will assume you are here for one of these five reasons: 

1. You are a girl from my secondary school and/or first year of university who wants to see if I’m actually as successful as my instagram says I am and, because I refuse to get LinkedIn as a matter of principle, you have resorted to my little blog to keep tabs. 

2. You are one of my five actual comedy fans (all of whom I know by first, middle and last name and love very dearly).  

3. You are a friend who I have roped into consuming all of my content forever and ever, you’re welcome x

4. You are one of my parents’ friends. Hi Paul! Most of my dad’s friends are called Paul. Having parents who are proud of you is lovely for life but terrible for coolness and clout. 

5. You have stalked me here, which I totally respect for you and would 100% definitely do if I was in your position. 

Secondly, as my first of what should be monthly posts, I thought I’d lay out some ground rules, because I am a goodie-two-shoes at heart and I thrive on order within disorder: 

1. From now on there will be no more than one numbered list in my blog.

2. I will include at least one mediocre poem that I’ve written (which I think is more for my benefit than it is for yours, and may occasionally appear contrived, cringe, or cliché; I am sorry but also, as we already established, I am not responsible nor blameworthy for anything).

3. Other than this first rambling one, my posts will be like Hilary Duff: short and sweet but also irrelevant to your life. For reference, she is 5’2 and currently starring in ‘How I Met your Father’, which is a feminist retelling of Ted Mosby’s ‘How I Met your Mother’. 

4. I will try to include any art that I have made, the word art being used very generously. 

5. I will occasionally plug my solo shows or my precious baby of a compilation show - Material Girls. Sorry, but self-promo is truly all I have in this life and is 90% of the reason why I have started a blog and/or do anything.

Now after only two apologies so far, let’s proceed!

My first ever lino print. It is loosely inspired by the artist Sylvian Mendy, whom I know nothing about other than the fact that they are French, which should already be obvious from the horizontal stripes.

The subject of the print is based on no one in particular. When my parents saw it they both asked, ‘Who is that? How do you know her? Is that Jessie J?’ which is also exactly what they ask whenever they see me like a photo of someone on Instagram. 

This is one of my favourite life drawings I did at uni, of one of my favourite life models. I like that it could almost be made into a print if I was more patient and better at lino printing.

One Shrove Tuesday, the model Chris brought in a heavy-duty frying pan and did a 15-minute pose holding it out extended, like superman would if he was doing a fry-up. It took 9 whole minutes before her arm started shaking and yet, she persisted for the entirety of the pose - even though no one had asked her to do it in the first place. I found it endearing. In part, because I think that is the attitude I tend to bring to things too. Earnest persistence and quite obvious struggle in the face of, what others may deem, pointless challenges. Like comedy or blog writing for instance.

A poem I wrote after watching the opening act for ‘The Bug Club’ in Kendal, in October. Unfortunately, I was not able to concentrate on their take on the post-punk genre because the lead guitarist wore a thick vintage woollen jumper, paired with very short athletic shorts.

23

I thought by this age I would finally have the self-restraint
To not stare at the knees of men who choose to wear shorts
And a North Face puffer jacket in deep winter,
Or I’d have the wisdom to stop calling myself a people pleaser,
How dare I assume that I am pleasing anyone?
Or the foresight to start using retinol,
And to stop expressing emotions on my face 
Lest the little wrinkle on the upper left quartile of my forehead 
becomes permanent. 

Sometimes, I think that if I am a main character,
Then I was surely written by a man,
Who is wearing jorts and Onitsuka Tigers in mid-December. 

A poem I wrote on the crowded train home from Cambridge that I think captured the slightly manic frame of mind that one has on a crowded train home on a Sunday in the beginning of January.

Resolutions

The girl opposite me on the train has her MacBook 
perched on her knee, 
wobbling,
for a 40 minute journey, 
has anything ever been that urgent? 
my new gym charges you for every class you miss,
and for every class you attend,
I've finished two books so far,
and I keep applying for things I'm unqualified for,
that girl must not be one of the people I've emailed
about unpaid work experience opportunities,
so I can continue missing my gym classes.
I started both of those books in November.

Thank you for reading (or at the very least, skimming) my first blog post. There will be more where that came from, for better or worse.