Turning 20!

Eeekk pictures have been taken with my dad's new camera, which I don't really know how to work (and some of them with the worst lightning), so apologies if some of the pictures are a bit blurry.

The time has come when I have to make a little change in my bio - I'm not nineteen, I'm twenty! Woah there. It sounds like such a big number. At least to my four year old cousin, who burst out crying and told me she didn't want me to get "old and ugly and wrinkly" just yet the day before my birthday. Lovely.

I don't remember having had such a nice birthday since I would go to those indoors amusement parks for kids. I stopped doing that when I turned 10, I believe, so you do the math. I didn't do anything particularly exciting thish year, but somehow it was special. I was in the greatest of moods, spent my day with some of my favourite people on Earth, got the most thoughtful gifts (see those customized mugs?!) and overall I was just overwhelmed with the love and kindness of the people around me. And to finish off my day, my sister and I had my favourite kind of night: we jumped into our sheep and reindeer onesies and watched One Direction's This Is Us, which was one of my presents from my grandad. I don't think I can ask for more!

So this is my first -cheesy- post as a 20 year old. In all honesty, I'm so grateful. For my family, my friends and my life in general. Thank you for making it all so worth it. 

I'm now off to listen to my brand new copy of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' The Heist full blast while trying to decide what to wear tonight. I hope you all have a fun night and a  wonderful start of the year. 

See you in 2014 :)

Tania x

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Dark days

 

"And then the cold came, the dark days, when fear crept into my mind..."

It feels even wrong to come back here after ignoring everything related to the blogging-verse for the past few months. I'm not going to say I'm sorry because I've got my reasons, but I do wish I'd been around more. I wish I could have. But I haven't been able to.

I ended my last post saying I would start posting soon if uni allowed me to, which as you can imagine didn't happen. Uni has become something tough to cope with these past two months. I have never done badly in school. Surely I'm the kind of student that leaves everything to the last minute (but really, in the Internet era we live in, who doesn't?), but that's never really gotten in the way. This year I started asking a lot more of myself because deep down I knew I could do better than just okay. It was working, I was getting really good results, so I kept pushing and pushing, testing myself to see how far I could take it. I never realized I was pushing way too hard until I cracked under the strain for the first time in my life.

As my grades were going up, a lot of different aspects in my life were starting to go downhill. Again, I won't get into it too much, but let's just say some things got too difficult for me to deal with. It got to a point where I didn't even want to deal with them. I would just quietly accept all the awful things that were coming my way and let this darkness sink into my skin, which I believe led me to become quite a difficult person to be around. And even though I've never felt more lonely or lost in my life, I didn't want to be with anyone either.

In the words of the always brilliant Marian Keyes,

"I couldn't be with people and I didn't want to be alone. Suddenly my perspective whooshed and I was far out in space, watching the world. I could see millions and millions of people, all slotted into their lives; then I could see me - I'd lost my place in the universe. It had closed up and there was nowhere for me to be. I was more lost than I had known it was possible for any human to be." Anybody Out There?

Just know that this is in no way, shape or form a sob story. In fact it took me some time to decide whether I wanted this post public or not, but hell, why not. I'm only human and I don't have a perfect life and there's no point in making it look like I do. We all have our ups and downs and I don't know a better way to deal with life than writing about it. I'm turning 20 on December 30th, which is now hours away, and I don't want to start my twenties with a bitter heart.

So roll on, 20. Roll on, 2014.
I'm so ready for you.

Tania x 

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