After school

Dear V

I thought we might shake it up a bit and ease into a new trajectory for our letters. So let me start again.

Hey you, it’s Michelle
I hope you’re doing well and I am very sorry I’ve been totally MIA in the last few months. I blame it on the after school blues that leaves everything you try to accomplish feel supremely unsatisfying and ultimately unfinished.
Anyway, I  though I might share what I did after my final exams where I would attempt to distract myself from the inevitable date the results are released- that of which is in a few days.
In my head I’ve kind of organised it into segments so I hope I translate my brain into coherency correctly.

1. Week One 3th-8th Nov

Moved in with my cousin for a week in Canberra. It was just me and her doing the shopping and me doing the dinners. Moving in was a very spontaneous decision which left me with a lacking supply of clean undergarments… (sorry TMI). But that is besides the point because despite that downfall, the whole experience of living (almost) by myself was inturn invaluable. My cousin was also going through her equivalent to HSC as it is a different education system in the state ACT.
   
The week passed quickly and it was when I began to flesh out a story idea for my book. I also mastered a yoga inversion (with a wall)! The good thing was she had her P’s. So we would blast Katy Perry, Iggy, and Eminem on the way back home whilst driving at 90 in a 110 speed zone.

2. Formal 10th & 13th Nov

Having a forced laugh for the sake of photos

Aftermath

Formal was essentially closure for most. It was lovely to see everyone glammed up and heaps of photos were taken and all that necessary stuff.

  

I wore my favourite dress to my formal on the 10th, which was my Mother’s originally. I like to think of the colour as a “Moonlight Blue,” and it was made of satin which just felt amazing against my skin. The back of my dress was the game-changer though- that was what got me hooked. It was such a creative design and its simplicity was something that totally won me.

I did my own makeup with my characteristic dark lippy which apparently gave me look an ‘Old Hollywood’ look. Eyes were very natural and highlight and contour was just a little more than subtle.
The second formal I went to was with a good friend of mine. I wore a classic black number with a sneaky slit at the side. Of course dark lip and good bronzing to finish it off.

3. Schoolies 27th Nov- 2nd Dec

I went to Nelsons Bay with a group of friends, which was about 2 hours from Sydney and like any other schoolies event… we had a lot of fun (I’ll leave that to your imagination).

  
 

We stayed at a resort 10mins from the bay called the Mantra Aqua. There was a gym we barely used and a shared pool we frequented often. The local shops were mostly of the surf and beach variety, the bay was calm and there was an option of parasailing and canoeing. The bay game me a bad reaction which made my skin bumpy :( Nevertheless I came back for another swim.

4. Melbourne School’s Cup Volleyball comp. 7th- 12 Dec

Melbourne's iconic graffiti lane

View from the apartment 

So much better than last year for sure! We won 2 out of about 9 games and a good number of sets.
We stayed at an apartment at Docklands and so in our spare time we could venture to the city via a free tram service that runs every 12mins to the city- It was tram number 35 if you were curious.



One morning two of my graduate friends and I left for the city which was a 10 min ride. We were in search for an alleyway- hipster-cafe which we didn’t really find at the end but we came to the conclusion that “hipster cafes are too hipster to be found.” It holds a level of legitimacy does it not?
We went to a small cafe on Flinders St call ‘Journal.’ I ordered a Chai Latte which came out to be $5.00 which was reasonable I thought. Then we got lost in H&M, jumped in a photo booth twice and bought our secret Santa presents.

Chai Latte

Basically the trip was more shopping than anything. Melbourne Architecture is so on point so Sydney better pickup their game. My wallet is more than truly maxed out unfortunately. Time for a new job!

5. Katy Perry Concert

Tonight is the concert! We bought tickets in March and so many friends have  raved about how good her show was so I am beyond excited yet I don’t know what to wear.
All in all, living away from home multiple times has in someway matured me- or that’s what keep telling myself. I have more confidence

Graduation- The Beginning, The End or Both?

Dear V

Sorry for not writing any sooner.

I’ve needed the time to accumulate my thoughts and bring coherency to my feelings.

I have graduated from high school.

I will be completing my secondary education by the end of October- signaled by my very last exam this time next month. Is it strange that I still partially remember my high school orientation day when I was just at the end of Year 6. That was the first time I met some of the people who would fill my life for the next 6 years. What a startling thought. And as I recall this memory, I remember the day before the first day of high school when I was contacting my exercise books under the air-conditioner of my living room, I was anxious about changing myself. Presenting to the world a new me. Or rather the real me. I personally believe, given my experience within an education system- that primary school contained much more peer pressure than high school. In retrospect I can see it so inherently that I’m ashamed that even my younger-self couldn’t recognise it. Parents, teachers, mentors etc. tell children that its ok to be unique, to deviate from the majority.

How is it that peer pressure exist then? That we confine ourselves to some prescribed ideology or expectation. When we relinquish ourselves to the majority. I tell you now friend, when you find yourself in such a dark place, think about your future, past the inky cloud that is suffocating you at the present, strain for the open air behind it- it is beckoning to you. Don't hide or cower. I know it is easier said than done- I understand it so, because I too have been there.

It will feel so unnatural even painful at first, but make a habit of exerting Yourself and it will begin to feel so natural. 

I recently had an email from Sydney University- the most prestigious university in Australia, probably listed among the big guns of the world- inviting me to an interview for a Combined Law degree I was applying for. I can honestly say I cannot remember what or how I answered the questions they asked- considering it was me vs. three academics, only the fact that I was outside in the waiting room re-reading my prepared answers (that would subsequently not be asked) and of course walking out of that beautiful and eerily intimidating Law faculty, dressed in my mother’s business suit.

Why did I just tell you that? Well it was such a profound moment that I realised the future was dawning. It was blinding my eyes, its rays hitting me right in the face. But really isn’t the future always upon us? Just around the bend of the road, the next foot step, the next thought? 
Life is so infinitely mysterious and uncertain. I have recently understood that. I mean really understood that. I used to say it half-heartily, throwing it about and not realising what it meant. Though I am yet to truly understand the magnitude of those words myself. I don’t think I will ever.

I’ll leave you with this serendipitous photo I took on the final day of high school, a few hours before the graduation ceremony. My phone len opened at just this particular moment and this angle to capture this beautiful sunset.

A few hours before graduation '14

At that moment I felt so much potential. It was thrumming through my veins, carried like oxygen by my blood.
The sun was too bright in the distance, though it was ok to look even though it was painful because it was so beautiful. Gently disappearing was the sun, and even the present moment, which becomes the past.

Definitely more beginning than the end, but nevertheless both. 

Love, 

M

Rain, Passivity, Sharks

Dear V
Let me tell you how to not let someone rain on your parade.
1. Focus in yourself for a second. Close your eyes and control your breathing until it slows significantly- now your calmer you won't do anything stupid that you will regret
2. Smile, because the best revenge is not to show weakness. Don't patronize though. That person is like a shark, so treat them like it. If there's blood they can smell it, so make sure none of the blood is yours. Soon they will get bored and find someone else to molester.
3. Passivity is key in this situation. Don't fight the tide but also don't let them walk all over you. You have standards and you have the right to be respected. Like number two it's like a diversion.
4. Tell them "y'all raining on my parade (insert noun)" approaches include sarcasm, aggression or any in between.
5. Be empathetic and try to decipher why they're doing this. It will be a lot easier to let go of what has made you tick. Just like you they're human too. They have problems aswell and everyone should not be so ignorant of this.
P.s If keeping this in mind was helpful for me than maybe it might be the same for you.
Love
Michelle

Kaleidoscope, Sadness, Likes

Dear V

Life is real good sometimes. Its about making things significant. Lately I have been trying to appreciate things more, especially the most common things. I find that when something is seen too often, or is integrated into the ordinary, there is a lost in beauty. There is so much to do and see in the world as cliche as it sounds. But its the truth, so many experiences and prospects that make me want to fill my bucket list with.

And I guess it there is this extreme there must be a corresponding opposite. There is also much sadness in the world. It is too fast to fall from happiness to sadness. It would almost be cruel, if it weren't a natural process of things.

Sitting here talking to you reminds me to look at things differently. Like though a kaleidoscope perhaps, there is so much color which I guess can be synonymous to life and opportunity but in certain cases there is vertigo with the patterns. 

That wasn't a bad analogy. But the only fault I suppose is the tunnel vision. You know the blurring edges, when only one aspect of the pattern is clear but the mirrored images of it is blurry? Anyway what I mean is that there is a lack of openness in the world these days. People need to come to empathize if not sympathize with their fellow human. For example maybe a friend is trying to get out of the friend zone- if your perceptive enough to see this, why not ease their struggle and be upfront about it. Imagine the world if everyone was like this.
"Hey Stranger, I could not leave this cafe without saying how beautiful your eyes. Sorry if I interrupted you, have a nice day."
There is too much self appreciation and jealousy. I see it so much on social media. I see people finding approval through the number of 'likes' they receive on their profile picture. Some of the comment make me chuckle to myself sometimes but in such a case it is best to be modest but balance a sort of grace to accept compliments.

 There are so many mundane things that now make me genuinely smile. And these opportunities to write make me really appreciative as an aspiring writer. Though many of my responses may not have made sense, its all very real. Like an spontaneous flow of thought from my mind. At every thought I try to manage comprehensible language to communicate the workings of my mind. I must confess it makes me feel powerful.

P.s
I suggest smiling when you can, but the best smile is the uncontrollable ones, the ones that surface deep within, the ones that only your intimates gets to see and the one the world is seldom graced with.

Love
Michelle

Update

Dear V

Sorry I've been away. Its Exam season as you know and I find it increasingly difficult to keep up. I need to Write to you more often to clear my head. I want it to be my therapy, you know? Something reflex leads me to.
Same time tomorrow?

Love Michelle

Sneezes, Perfection, Ice-cream

Dear V

I hope you are well. And I hope that you hope that I'm well. Because its a nice sentiment when someone else cares about you. Like how saying "bless you" after a sneeze is absolutely unnecessary but at least you hope that someone in the room will bless you. Either way it is usually just empty words, produced out of reflex. But really how can words make any difference to the sneeze you just released? None really.

Well I've had a rather poor day. And I feel like you are the only one I can really talk to right now. Its about Perfection. I don't think I'm a perfectionist but I pretty bias towards myself. Though I feel as though I have given myself standards that are much too high, and don't get me wrong high standards are great, fantastic! But it is the extremes that I expect of myself that usually let me down. When I don't reach them, I tend to crash and burn and demolish a decent 1.5L container of ice-cream. (those really expensive and indulgent ones that need a warning label to indicate that there is actually no conceivable healthy serving.) If you must know, I ate a salad for dinner in self defense. It was an assessment I received today, and I was not pleased with the mark. My teacher gave it to me and I felt like heaving.

I hate being wrong, it makes me feel vulnerable, weak, and inferior.  

I've been trying to get my head out this gridlock for the whole night. And I'm slowly getting over it. I should have started this earlier, to clearly document the states leading to this revelation, but you know, i was too busy feeling sorry for myself. As I have actually come to appreciate the learning process of being wrong or feeling disappointed. I feel like if I tell myself things, these things will be true. Like when I talk to friends and succumb to mirroring their likes and dislikes in order for them to like me, I slowly lose myself. I chip away at myself to slot in someone else. I noticed only recently when I had a strange urgency to have a spoon of peanut butter, that I actually enjoy the taste of it. All these years with an unreasonable distaste for peanut butter has deprived me! I am digressing...

So I'm going to tell myself;
1. That I should not have eaten all the ice-cream (in one sitting)
2. That I will take disappointment in stride
3. That I will be the caring one for others
4. That Karma is not a bitch
5. That I will study harder and be rewarded
6. That I am happy
7. That you are happy
8. That I will buy my mother more ice-cream


P.s Its ok to be wrong as long as you promise yourself to be right next time

Love,
Michelle

Twenty- Five, Eyes, Swings

Dear V

I'm getting older. I will never be as young as I was when I wrote these words. I'm older now. Older again. And just because I don't feel the atoms in my body disintegrating, there is a wizened part of me that realizes that I will not be young forever. I don't mean the physical aspects of being young, though I don't think I will miss certain things like acne and angst, but rather the mind set of being young. Finding joy and enthusiasm in passions that I will eventually characterize as immaturity. I want to be young in this way and though the thought of being physically older like not being able to run, jump but rather confined to wheel chairs, dinner tables, special toilets until someone retrieves me- is somewhat daunting. That I can't run as fast as I could when I was younger. I know this is life, that it is a fact universally acknowledged that all things living will decay because they are temporal. I can see myself however, with my vein-y hands grasping knitting needles recalling the wind rushing through my hair and violently caressing my face as I sprint down the track- crying, cursing my bones that are weary after such a life time.

It might sound strange or not so strange but I think I should like to die before it comes to that stage. But still things change like everything and I might regret writing that. I hope I do. 

A few years ago in Physical Development and Health class, someone off handily said; "you know you start dying once you reach twenty-five." I don't think anyone was as shell shocked as I was. I silently contemplated this idea for the rest of class- and the week. At times I wished I didn't hear it, that I didn't need to know that. Sometimes mysteries are good, it keeps people hopeful and where there is hope there is no potent fear. Fear of course is always present. Lurking behind a facade that we ourselves conceit ourselves with. No one can be truly fearless, only to pursue a state of being in harmony with one's fears.

I fear time so much. And it actually took a very long time for me to get over the twenty-five dilemma.  

I'm taking a day off school today. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. It's hard for me to day that because people don't associate me to stress or anxiety. So I don't associate myself with that. Its a hard standard to follow. I'm a bottler, but I like that sometimes. Its just me and my thoughts. I find that sometimes when I'm talking to someone, I'm thinking about something else but still managing to sustain a substantially complex conversation with another person. Its all about eye contact. Its not that I'm not interested, it just I have to think about something but I'm too much of a people pleaser to reject you.

Enclosed is a picture of me that I would like to remember when I'm older. The plaits in my hair heavy on my shoulders, my scarf twisted around the rope, the sensation of flying with the sudden hitches of free fall at the maximum of the swing. When I can remember things so vividly that I fool my heart to beat like the moment I was recalling, I leave the reverie and feel my heart beat. Thump, thump, thump, thump. I just hold my hand there letting it vibrate through my skin, reminding me after each beat is life. And Life means decay and tragedy because we are all doomed. But life goes on. It is far greater than one individual life.

P.s  "Those who fear life are already 3-parts dead"- Bertrand Russell

True self, Waffles, and Floaties

Dear V


Sometimes I worry about you. Sometimes you give me the impression that your invincible, in the sky with your own thoughts where no one can touch you. For that I'm jealous, until I see you vulnerable. If I look at you in a particular light I can see it real well. No one sees because that's how you fooled them. I'm beginning to realise how good you are at pretend.
Sometimes I wonder when you are you. Really you. But then again is anyone ever themselves. The true self is such an illusive subject that's so fleeting when your mind almost has a comprehension of it.

Like your mind has a light bulb moment and when you rush for a scrap of paper to write it down, the words won't come, or what you thought was coherent language was rather 'brain talk'- something that only has a definition or awareness in the mind. It would be otherwise confusing when human intellect is applied.

Ironically I've lost my trail of thought.... Alas my case exactly.
Let me return to your circumstance. You V are a 'floater' at school you don't belong anywhere or to anyone criteria. Chameleon soul. Is it something to hate or rejoice that you don't find your home, your affinity. Do you long for a meaningful connection? Or are you content in your disposition? Both? Knowing you, you would have answered the latter. But hey... Ok no there is no hate, I see the appeal actually, the freedom and the clarity of independance. But you did confess to be a two faced enity. Soo many bad connotations. But I think everyone is two faced. There are soo many dichotomies from this... Let me elaborate;
- the face for the public and private
- for the private and for the self
- for the self and the true self
The self I believe is who we kid ourselves to be. Private is our intimates ie family, close friends etc. Public is anyone else.
What I hate is that there is no certainty in finding the true self. Only our brains can reach that awarness. Do we achieve it when we are very happy? Is that how our body signals such a profound moment? I want to know my true self and I understand that I am only very young and that people take pilgrimages to the deep recesses of the Amazon to 'find themselves' but really? Can one find themselves? Let alone in the Amazon?
Humans are curious, and deep thought makes me feel euphoric and melancholy.
V, we might put our backs to the future but time still impaled us, and certainly it hurts too much sometimes not to be certain and sure- But we can't let the pain spoil the rest of our lives because you and I are still very young and shouldn't even be thinking of these things but we are cursed to be too sentimental or others too vain.
Throughout life humans humor ourselves with finding truth in mystery, when the punchline is the classic, good ole' death. We are so ephemeral, like tissue paper to the cardboard of the continuum of life.
P.s remember only young children, intoxicated or really pissed off people ever tell the truth
Enclosed photo is my idea of food for thought
Love,
Michelle

Update, Grandfather, Writing

Dear V

So recently I began to think about uni (not that I haven't already thought about it...) and the only thing I got from that experience was to thoroughly confirm that I don't really know what I want to do in life (well occupation-wise).

It is also becoming clear that I'm ok with that...

It might sound cliche but what senior school has taught me was that nothing should be taken for granted. You go through your junior years watching the seniors who looked so ready for the world, and you tell yourself that there is plenty of time to think about 'after-school.' In retrospect there is never enough time to think about these kind of things; there is no testing the waters, just some idiot that pushed you fully-clothed into the water. No one ever is prepared for life. I hope I'm making sense... (I don't even know who I'm talking to). As my Grandfather would say; "Its safe as life!" Life is dangerous that ironic bastard had told me so throughout my childhood (cute little pic with my sis and him attached).
I think I might write. I don't know what though. I was watching 'Stuck in Love' the other day and it was a firm advocated for 'experience.' To transcend the comfort zone to really experience life. That is what a writer needs. I think I'm too taken by this idea but I have tried to be more worldly. More open to everything and everyone. I even went on a date (definitely an extreme).

I want to be worldly. Then again I have a habit of being too ambitious. 

On a lighter note, I think I might get back into blogging. Otherwise I'm just thrashing around on the internet aimlessly.

P.s Don't sweat the small stuff, they're usually not worth it

Love always,
Michelle