a lil picture I took of my lil sis in my grandparents' garden (aka jungle)

Ahh. It feels good to be back! I've had many a blogging hiatus but I reckon this is the only one that's had a good reason behind it, not going to lie. Exams are the bane of everyone's life, and I have to say the last three weeks have almost certainly been the most stressful of my life, maybe even the last six months as well! But, I finished about five days ago and since then, a lot has been going through my mind so I thought I'd share those post-exam thoughts that we all have after a batch of tough ones.

- F*ck. Education is over.

- F*ck. I'm an adult.

- I don't have to feel guilty for spending an hour in the evening watching Love Island.

- Ugh, I can finally get rid of those folders and notes and piles and piles of flashcards that have been clogging up my life

- No, I'm not getting rid of a thing until results day

- Actually, I'll probably keep them a little bit longer just in case I need them

- I want to do a hundred and one things...yet it's midday and I'm still in bed...

- I wish my parents would stop making jokes about how I need to get up and do revisiom

- Personalised adverts on Channel 4 are really weird...what if I change my account name to "dick"...?

- Definitely not ready to be an adult.

- Bourbons are suddenly disgusting (context - they were my favourite revision snack and now I've gone straight back off them)

- Okay, I've really got to get a job now

- I'm still drinking eight cups of tea a day. Turns out that wasn't a stress thing and I am actually addicted to tea. I'm not complaining though.

- Mmmm...82 episodes of First Dates on All 4, 2 seasons of PLL, 3 seasons of OITNB, 3 seasons of Gilmore Girls, and 2 seasons of OUAT still left unfinished on Netflix. 

- It's going to be a good summer.

I hope you all enjoyed this little fun post, hopefully I'm going to have more content up on my YouTube channel and on this blog through the summer. If you still have exams going on until Thursday - push through, it's only four more days. If you're already finished, enjoy this time off to the full. Have a great summer and enjoy every minute of it.

Emilia xx

2017 // Is It Really New Year, New Me??

Whew, so keeping up with true emilia blogging style, this post is eighteen days late. Clap clap to me. Ah well, better late than never, am I right?

this is one of my four cacti, Caroline. she is now my favourite plant since my beloved Olivia the orchid dropped her final beautiful petals two weeks ago.

New Year is a very odd time of year. On the one hand, you're energised and you're going to make positive changes in your life. You're going to join a gym and eat healthily and start bullet journalling and do more photography and just generally subscribe to a healthier lifestyle. 

On the other hand...what's the point? You know that two weeks later your journal will be discarded at the bottom of your school bag/laptop case/whatever bag you carry around, or maybe it'll just be lying on your desk staring at you, making you feel guilty for not sticking to it. Your gym membership will glare at you every time you open your emails or your purse to see your card, reminding you that you still need to use it for perhaps the third or fourth time. The massive bag of kale and the box of quinoa you bought in an attempt at going vegan? Forgotten. 

So really, is New Year New Me real? Or is it just an ideal we all subscribe to at the beginning of January because we think this year, 2017, is going to be my year, I'm going to find myself this year, I'm going to be who I truly am. 

It's certainly an ideal I subscribed to. My new year new me positivity lasted for all of four days. It didn't help that on the fourth day of 2017 I broke up with my boyfriend and on the fifth day I had the worst parents' evening of my life - yes, even though I am nearly eighteen years old I still get told I'm failing by my teachers with my parents there - and on the sixth and seventh days I cried for a long time. 

But at the same time, none of that really matters. Yes, me and my boyfriend, someone I cared deeply for, broke up. But it's okay - it was the right thing to do, life moves on and if you watched my Letters to November you'll know how important it is to me to love yourself before you can love anyone else in the same way they love you. So that's okay. I'm not there yet - but nearly. Parents' evening? That's easily solvable. Do more work and plan your time and actually just for fuck's sake knuckle down Emilia. There are five months left of this. Five months and then you are free of school and this whole crappy education system. Five months and then the rest of your life begins. It's not that long in the grand scheme of things. Someone who's just got pregnant won't have had their baby by the time your exams are over. Weird analogy, I know, but it's true.

So yes. I had a few shitty days at the beginning of 2017. But I can still make this year my year. So many huge changes are happening this year. Like I said before, my school life ends in five months. I have a whole year before I go to university to do whatever I like. I still haven't decided what I'm doing yet but I am going to make the absolute most of that year. This Christmas I'll be in a completely different place doing a completely different thing and while that terrifies me, in another way I am so, so excited. I'm looking forward to a new chapter of my life this year.

And yes, I still have depression. But something changed recently and I realised that actually, while I might be depressed for the rest of my life, I don't have to be like this for the rest of my life. I can get myself better, no one else can do it for me. What changes with depression is the way you deal with it. My outlook on life has hugely changed in the last six months and in a way I feel like I'm finally realising who I am. 

And this is me.

I am a girl who loves horoscopes, oversized sweatshirts, boyfriend jeans, studying in Costa with cups of tea and being pretentious trash. I have depression but I'm coping through my art, writing and surrounding myself with people who are going to make positive changes to my life. And as for A Levels? Well, I am a girl who is going to prove everyone wrong. My teachers who told me I'm going to fail if I don't do something? I'm going to do it. I know you don't think I will, and I know you don't think I can do this - but I can and I will and I'll wave my results in your face on Results Day in August before phoning my favourite university to accept my place for September 2018. 

And then the rest of my life begins.

Here's to 2017.

Emilia xx

here is a list of people who have changed my life in 2016.

♥ claire

♥ duncan

♥ jess

♥ heidi

♥ victoria

♥ rach

♥ jack

♥ becca

♥ vicky

♥ emma

♥ james

♥ beccy

♥ sophia

♥ izzi

♥ christian

♥ izzie

♥ honor

♥ libby

♥ georgia

♥ georgie

♥ tom

♥ catherine

♥ conor

♥ jake

...and everyone else who has constantly supported me through mistakes I make when I've drunk too much vodka. 

Why We Celebrate World Mental Health Day

So I did have a different plan for a post to break my little blogging hiatus but given that yesterday was World Mental Health Day (or WMHD as I'll be calling it because that's just a lot easier and a lot less time consuming) I thought I'd write a post explaining just why we need WMHD and why it is so important.

"A semicolon is used when an author could have ended a sentence but chose not to. You are the author and the sentence is your life. Your story is not over."

You can read more about Project Semicolon here - it's an amazing non profit movement that I've been supporting for a long time. They are dedicated to spreading hope and love to those struggling with mental illnesses, suicide, addiction and self-harm.  Please consider donating or getting involved in any way you can - it's very special to me.

As I'm sure a lot of you know, I was diagnosed with clinical depression three years ago. I haven't ever been medicated for it because my case wasn't "bad enough" for medication, and I've struggled through the past few years with combinations of CBT and DBT and many other different coping methods proposed to me. For the best part of those three years I self-harmed, and am as of today two weeks and five days clean. I did make it to a year on the 5th May which I was really proud of, but you know, life is full of ups and downs and relapses happen and that's okay.

Mental illnesses are not a walk in the park. I wake up every day feeling slightly different, and I wake up every day wondering how this particular day is going to work out for me. Of course, there are the good days and there are the bad days. The worst ones are the days when getting out of bed takes every little bit of energy I have, and I feel nothing and everything at the same time. I'm so fragile that a single feather could make me explode and whether I explode with anger, sadness or any other emotion is just another gamble I have to take every day. I'm a difficult person for my family to live with and I'm a difficult person to be friends with because my mood can change so quickly, one minute I can be laughing and the next I can be angry and frustrated. I'm so sensitive that the smallest thing like someone raising their voice at me will make me cry and I spend my time trying to find things to distract me from the pain that comes from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

That's what depression, and other mental illnesses are like. They're enemies that are everywhere and nowhere all at once. They're mountains that we have to keep moving. I have friends that also suffer from a number of mental illnesses and I see the struggle they go through every day and it breaks my heart to know that that's happening to them. As someone who suffers and knows people close to me suffering, I have a vested interest in spreading awareness and breaking down the stigma.

This is why we have WMHD. No, we don't have World Physical Health Day because there's no stigma surrounding physical health conditions. If you break your leg you get taken to the hospital, everyone sighs if you've been a bit stupid, you get told not to do it again and you heal. You get a bit of a fuss made about you and there's nothing wrong with that at all. But if you're having suicidal thoughts, self-harming thoughts, panic attacks, sudden mood swings, and the myriad of other symptoms of a mental health condition, you're labelled as "crazy". You're labelled as fragile and emotionally unstable, and you're made to feel ashamed of it and you're beaten down and told not to mention it to people and "just to act normal". We are accepting of every broken bone, pulled muscle, torn ligament, strained tendon, of every body part that goes wrong, except the brain. If something goes wrong in the brain that we have no control over, it's a huge mystery that we just have to keep hidden.

World Mental Health Day is important for everyone. It's important for the sufferers because it's a day when we truly don't have to be ashamed. I don't feel like I have to hide the depression normally but it always feels slightly awkward to talk about. It's important for us because it's our chance to speak out about our experiences and spread awareness of illnesses that have just as much impact on our lives as physical ones would and do on others. It's important for non-sufferers as well because (and I'm so trying not to sound patronising and I'm so sorry if I do) it just helps you be aware of what people around you may be going through.

Notice how in the title of this post I said "celebrate" as well. It's true. We celebrate WMHD because we celebrate our mental illnesses. They're a wonderful flaw in our lives that make us us, and while they won't be there forever, while they are, they're nothing to be ashamed of. You shouldn't have to hide in fear of letting other people know about your illness because if they think it's embarrassing then they're the ones who have to deal with it, not you. Your friends and family will stick by you through anything. Remember, those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. Working together and spreading the message of love and support is the only way we can end the stigma that makes people suffer in silence.

Sometimes it feels like I'm never going to get better, and maybe I won't. Maybe we will have our illnesses for the rest of our lives but what will change is the way we deal with it. Things can always get better and gradually the bad days will be few and far between. There are times in your life where you'll laugh so hard you'll cry,  you'll have sex and get high at eight in the morning and you'll travel to far off countries and look out over the world with not a single worry, and you'll think to yourself "What was I ever thinking? Why did I ever think I deserved to miss out on this?"

Some days will be better than others, but they're just days, and you always have more where they came from. The world keeps turning, the stars keep shining and the sun keeps rising, and you can hold your head high in defiance, because your very existence is a rebellion. Against everyone who said you weren't strong enough, against everyone who knocked you down time and time again. Against everyone who told you you were worthless. Against the very thing that brought you here in the first place.

And, like I said on my Instagram post, if Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez could get through the summer at Lava Springs, then girl you can get through anything.

Emilia xx

Talking Frankly About Nudes | #IAmMoreThanMyBody

Today, I'm going to tell you a story. This is a true story, everything in this blog post happened exactly how I tell it.

Oh, by the way, if you want to skip the story, just scroll down to where the screenshots end. Some of you might be in a hurry and there's a lot of screenshots involved in this.

I have a dating app that you might have heard of. It's called Tinder. Now, I don't feel like I should justify why I have it, but the main reason is that I like talking to new people and meeting new people and just having different conversations with different people. Most of the time I make some pretty good friends and most people on there (both guys and girls) are nice.

But then, every maybe two in ten, think this is okay.

This was nearly a year ago...I wonder why he never replied...

And this is where the main part of the story begins.

So I'm happily swiping away in front of 24 Hours In Police Custody (which you should all watch, by the way, it was very good) and then this comes up. You can imagine my reaction.

"Oh. My. Lord."

Quickly followed by

"That can't be a real photo of him."

I took my chances and swiped right anyway, and nearly screamed when this happened.

Ten minutes later, this pops up and I'm like "I am on my way to a long relationship with a hot guy full of love, happiness, good sex and beautiful babies."

Things didn't exactly work out that way.

I was going to go on a feminist rant at him about how it's not okay to ask for nudes etc, but then  thought a bit more, and decided I was going to troll him...big time.

Upstairs my little legs carried me and out I whipped my Naked 2 and Naked Smoky, MAC Hue (woud've used Velvet Teddy but it was in my bag lol), Rimmel Kate Moss 45, Rimmel The One in "Naughty Nude" and NYX Butter Lipstick in the shade Pops.

And then this happened.

After a response (and a couple of dick pics which I really did not need to see) asking to "send real nudes", I decided that yes, I would go on my feminist rant at him.

In response to the question "Why are you sending me pictures of lipsticks?"

And on a parting note...

And just to prove I actually did this...

Ahh, the joys of screenshotting.

The End.

To ANYONE who has EVER asked ANYONE for nudes,

My main question is what makes you think it's okay to ask for nudes? Boys or girls, this is. It's not, alright, it's really not. Asking for nudes is rude, degrading, objectifying and frankly a really horrible thing to do.

Think about the implications about asking for nudes. 

You're telling a man/woman that their body is only in existence for your pleasure. 

You're telling them that they aren't worth talking to and actually getting to know.

You're telling them that they are their body, and there is nothing else to them.

You're telling them that they are worthless.

It's not okay.

I am a woman and I have boobs. I am a woman and I have a vagina. I am a woman, and do you know something? I have a brain. I have a personality. I have intelligence, curiosity, imagination, ideas, views, opinions, thoughts, dreams, hopes, cares. I am so much more than my body.

My body is not there to bring you pleasure. My body is not in existence for me to show you my boobs as soon as you ask. And there you go, acting like you have a right to my body, a right to ask me to show you my body like I'm not a self-respecting girl who is saving my body for the right man/woman when s/he comes along. I am a self-respecting girl who has a lot more to her than her body, but no, you don't care about that, do you? You only care about satisfying your own needs. You don't care about how it might make a girl/boy feel when you ask her/him for nudes. You don't care that s/he might look at herself in the mirror and ask herself. "Is this really all people see in me?". You don't care that she might look at the recent A she got through working hard in an English essay and think to herself "Is this really worth anything?"

And as a note to any girl who has ever gone through that - you are more than your body. You have beauty, brains and intelligence that far surpass any gorilla of a teenage boy/girl who thinks that asking for nudes is okay.

Maybe one day, boys and girls alike will learn to respect other people's bodies and their privacy.

And anyway, what's so satisfying about nudes anyway? Surely taking the time to get to know someone and seeing it in real life is better than just a boring old picture...

#IAmMoreThanMyBody

Emilia xx