Setting things straight. (14/06/12-16/06/12)

2 year of my life
A level - the paper version

 Thursday (final exam!)
On arriving home from the little celebration Emma and I had at McDonalds, (despite the fact that she still has a sociology exam to do, oh and a general studies resit...that i got 100/100 on...who does that?) I decided that this was it. My fondness and love of history and politics was displayed through the array of notes blu-tacked (that I hoped wouldn't, but has peeled away at some paint).

 I took down all of my Politics, and Modern British History of 1951-64 but I've kept 1964-2007 next to my bed...

British Politics: 1964-2007 - The Laura May version

I quite enjoy waking up to affirm my own opinions with facts, and remember stuff that i need to remember in order to win arguments at the tea table.

Friday:
I had to be up bright, and ready for the breezy day. I had an appointment at the hospital with the dermatologist. Like most people, I've suffered from acne since about the age of ten, probably parallel to developing scoliosis. They got really bad this last academic year, (most probably due to stress surrounding college/life) and I gave in and went to the Doctor. I got referred to the dermatologist in December, he put me on tablets and two sets of cream. My acne has cleared up a treat and now I've been discharged and need to just use the cream!

My now "zit-free" face!
Well...almost, there's still the odd "lurker!"

Triumphantly returning home. I found my "to-do" list and completed it. These past few weeks I have done so well to isolate myself away from the outside world. I'm easily distracted, not because I want to be, but because I don't see "distractions" as "distractions"...more than often, they are actual things that need to be done. Though, this year for a few weeks at least, I had to remind myself that in the context of A levels, they  were very much "distractions."

So I filled in my questionnaire for the media training I'm going to have with Back Up on the 18th July. I answered outstanding emails from the few people who actually email me, I responded to the tasks I'd promised to do for Hannah as a member of the youth advisory group; reading some excellent cartoon scripts to help educate young people on how to deal with the everyday social issues that arise when you obtain a spinal cord injury. If I'd have been shown or had access to something like that at the age of 11, It would have dramatically changed my way of thinking!

Slight detour round a mountain...

Becky attempting to lasso me up Latrigg, while Richard uses
his map as
a loin cloth.

I also counted the rest of the offline sponsorship money we've collected in the past few weeks that will go towards my Snowdon Push (7th July). This again, is in aid of the charity Back Up. Our aim is to raise £2200 and we're currently at £1,294.45...so we're getting there. We've got a quiz night a week on Monday, a few more sponsors from family members and other people's work places. About a month ago now, Emma Reed and I (the loudest people in college) did a sponsored silence for the entire day. I can honestly say that it was one of the most difficult challenges I've ever attempted! We raised about £140 though...I'd much rather climb a mountain any day.
(Snowdon to me = fun)
The weirdest place I've been sponsored though is on top of a tiny mountain; Latrigg near Keswick in the Lake District. I've done that about 4 times, and my friends aren't very experienced in the outdoors so I though it'd be a good day out and might help them realise physically and mentally that they're going to be climbing a mountain in July! As usual, I got spotted. People came over telling me it was "amazing" what i was doing. I wasn't doing anything, they were pushing me! But still...i explained why "I" was doing what "I" was doing and I got a £5 note and a load of coins shoved in my hand!
£12 going in!

Back to Friday...

Completing my "to-do" list apart from "set-up" blog, I sighed in happiness at the corner of my room that's home to my guitars..
My reward. I could finally, selfishly, innocently and without shame pick up my acoustic and play Emmy the Great, Frank Turner and Green Day until midnight without thinking "Shit...revision!!"
So that's what I did, Oh and I wrote that rather long blog post that was very much needed to set the sails.

Saturday:

Ignore the sun, this was a few weeks ago.
(You know, when it was actually sunny?)

The positivity doesn't feel as fresh, the rain and wind are still here and my friends still have exams.
I woke up and got up quite late too, my routine out the way, didn't really get going till 11:30am. I once again embarked upon completing yet another to-do list, emailing links for Snowdon for people that needed me to do so. I also wrote quite a (if i say so myself) professional letter of gratitude to a Rotary Club that gave a substantial donation to our Snowdon fund oh, and there was the free wheel issue...

I snapped my footrest the other week. (Apparently the strongest part of a wheelchair. My wheelchair is also titanium!) So (in a panic a few weeks ago) from college, got in my car, went to da vinci and showed them...
One guy said it would cost me.
Another guy said it wouldn't.
I misunderstood, it did.
They just didn't charge me for the repair that they did.
Embarrassing phone call was made ending with me saying, "Sorry, was only making sure!"
And there was me, going to give them hell.


You're never quite as strong as you sound.

So this is it. Sort of...(end of A levels rant)

I completed my final A level exam yesterday. Government and Politics...To be honest I'd say it was a bit of  a "wobbly Thursday"...Out of all the exams I've done this summer, it didn't feel like it was my best. But still, they're done now and I can live with the thought that the final words I ever wrote in my last ever A level exam were "Guantanamo Bay."

I got rid of English Literature last month, by resitting my As exam for the SECOND time! Despite beginning this blog with the aspiration to study English at Oxford...this year, I soon realised I was lucky to get rejected from so many places. I loved studying "pastoral genres" but after that...all the coursework and frankly "airy-fairy" essay structure, I discovered my true love (as a subject/passion) is history; political history to be precise. So these final weeks, studying just history and politics have been great!
Why did i choose to apply to study English then?

1. I felt obliged to...(yep, don't do that anymore. It's my life, no one else's)
2. I didn't feel as confident to assert my opinion as i do now.
   
   The truth.

Well...before and after my rejections I soon grew out of those insecurities! I began to hate the false atmosphere of English and that entire department and allowed my love to grow in to a confidence within the intense atmosphere that my own and other people's opinions can create in history! I was no longer scared of not being able to "stand up to the boys" or assert my own opinion...as at the end of term my entire history class voted for me to be named "motor-mouth". That won't come as a surprise to anyone who's ever known me in any situation, particularly history, but this year I found myself not talking complete rubbish because I was nervous...I actually found myself making strong, coherent points that actually made sense!
I'm revealing  a lot about myself here. Though, I suppose by expressing the fact that though I'm confident and daring to try new things and break the mould, on the inside I'm usually extremely nervous and unsure of myself, I'm proving that it's something I'm aware of and I have overcome.
THAT'S WHAT LED ME TO APPLY TO STUDY ENGLISH.
My own uncertainty and ability to appear strong in a classroom where you're not supposed to hold a strong opinion, you're just supposed to "look at things from a different perspective".
Well this year I've learned to look at myself from a different perspective, a real perspective, not marked by anyone else. I started questionin my chosen path last summer, I could take you all to the exact spot and moment. Wearing my "pretty bow-ey dress", next to a pool table, diet irn bru in one hand, the best week of my life behind me and future lifelong friends surrounding me.
My thoughts were,
"English? University straight away? Oxford? all the sitting, thinking, no fun...I've seen so much of the world and myself this week that I can't go back. This was me. This is me."
I did go back.
I had to, and inevitably just like everyone else at Winstanley College, I jumped onto the university bandwagon and made myself into a prospective English Student, all the while knowing deep down that something wasn't right...
I found myself crying and listening to "Who you are" every night in the car coming home...but I told myself I was doing that because, well because I was trying to become who I was.
I wasn't though.
December 16th: Rejected from Warwick
December 23rd: Rejected from Oxford...
...something wasn't right. I didn't want to study English, not at Nottingham, or Queen Mary or Oxford Brookes...i didn't want to study it anywhere...

I needed to take a year out. That was the logical move, that's what everyone else does. They go traveling, they see the world and themselves...I could do that.
Oh wait.
Wheelchair...
I mean, I always said I'd do it...but afterwards, you know, not so soon.
Then I remembered myself, again.
Sat next to that pool table, unable to speak for the lump in my throat, thinking "Is jumping into this English world or words and lardy-dah reviews really me?"
I was a mess this Christmas.
Not because I'd got rejected from Oxford, but because I had nowhere to go.
I didn't know I was going to do, and there was no one to help me...
Just a few teachers telling me I'd get over Oxford...
But Oxford wasn't the problem! It was something else.

It got to the day before New Year's Eve. And if things couldn't get any worse, i'd figured out David Tennant was getting married...talk about reality smacking you in the face.
I logged onto facebook to see if anyone else had written a comment to make me feel better and my mate who's never online was online...I needed a laugh. It worked and his positivity and fact that he was one of the people who made me re-realise me in the summer led me to think..."I can do this."
And so from that misty day of thinking my entire world was over thanks to a stinking university rejection letter, scrabbling at times, i've found myself forming a path, my own one to the real me and what I want to do.
In all honesty I'm still at the beginning, scratching my way out...but that's the point of this. It's always been easy for me to reflect and tell "my story" of how I came such a long way...but I've never really been able to, or wanted to record the times when I am struggling, when I don't know where I'm going and where I'm clinging on to the last remnants of hope, knowing that i've got to keep going...

I'm doing that now.
I've to accept the difficulty of figuring my own way out and not running and hiding for another 3 years because I'm scared of reality.
No, I've got to do this
So i will.

So anyone who reads this, and I doubt anyone will have bothered to get to this point, this isn't an account of some "inspirational girl's" achievements  of being a success.
This is the reality of dreaming, believing and following your heart, with extra hardships and physical obstacles thrown in.

Ending this long ramble in a sub-ironic way...I'll quote a book I studied in English Literature this year, a book about the coming of age; "Oranges are not the only fruit" by Jeanette Winterson. I suppose I was seduced by literature too. The dreams of Fitzgerald's Gatsby, the nostalgic memories of my childhood through pastoral poetry, the strength of Tess Durbeyfield...
I've certainly to some extent, come of age this year...it's not clear. I don't know how or why but I've discovered my strengths, weaknesses and overcome some of them. I've also learned not to be emotionally obliged to people who mean the best but don't always necessarily know it, not for you at least.

I don't necessarily believe in God or demons...but I believe in something saving us and reminding us of who we are. That moment, last summer sat next to the pool table and the day before New Years Eve, before I spoke to my friend, and stormed out of the house, sitting next to a tree and field shouting at my legs to kick and run and feel...there was something in my head and in my heart crying out. It had been shouting for seven years, well now I was ready to listen;

"If I keep you, what will happen?”
"You’ll have a difficult, different time.”
"Is it worth it?”
"That’s up to you.”

 I've chosen to keep it. It was as though I'd tried to suppress "it" through "being clever". I'm still clever, and I think ever since I've let that part of me reappear and evolve into an 18 year old, instead of the 11 year old angry kid standing on a tree branch wanting to break free and demand her right of a childhood back, I've been even more clever, and had the guts to be!

So this, this is me choosing to have a difficult, different time.
This is me choosing to be clever.
This is me choosing to be me, the real me.

“She must find a boat and sail in it. No guarantee of shore. Only a conviction that what she wanted could exist, if she dared to find it.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit

Back Up's youth advisory group: Our first event was a success!

Despite the first half of my Easter holidays allowing my head to form a fruitful relationship with a brick wall, the second half settled a quick, clean divorce with this situation.
I found myself driving down to London on Wednesday, the day after watching Steps at the MEN (amazing night!!) to organise and hold a "youth event" a Stanmore spinal unit. I ran this along with Sophie as part of our youth advisory group that we are pioneering for the amazing charity, Back Up. The event was a great success (so we were told, even better? :). It was all for under 18s with a spinal cord injury, their parents and their siblings. There were 4 young people with sci and with all their families it came to about 20 people. It basically turned into a family fun day, we had additional wheelchairs so everyone could have a go at the activities and it was interesting to see how certain siblings were experts…(I think some wheelchair stealing has been going on!)
I went to all the parents and asked for permission to film and take photographs for Back Up and for my extended project. They were all lovely and ok with it but you could tell they were nervous and unsure about their own and their child’s future, let alone the 3 hour event! I later found out that majority of participants were still in hospital with one only having been home for a week...

We started with a presentation about who we are (Jessie J reference ;), what Back Up has done, what Back Up does in general and what the Youth advisory group are aiming to do! As I was speaking I looked at parents and kids faces...I never thought a persons attitude and outlook on life could be physically displayed upon a person's face, until then! (And I've spoke in front of audiences many times, for many years...)
 One parent who I remember being particularly nervous at the beginning was literally bouncing at the end and came over congratulating us, wishing us luck in our A levels as well as saying how she now knew her son would have a good life. I assured her that he would. That was the moment I realised "We'd done good!!!" and a lot of thoughts and a personal realisation of achievement came into my head...

I’d almost forgotten that feeling of thinking you had no future or worth on this planet. That exact feeling of not knowing where you would go or what you would do once you finally got “released”. The feeling of knowing that any expectations your friends, school, Mum, Dad and family had of you had completely fallen out into the enternal universe that is nowhere and it was your job to build them back up and do something...but you couldn't do anything because you had nowhere to go. Feeling trapped. Feeling alone. You feel alone. You feel like no one will ever understand what you're going through and all those that ever say they listen to you, don't really, they just want to feel like they've given a helping hand and done their bit for the day...I want to make sure that I never become that person. If I ever inspire, help or make someone realise they can achieve and be themsleves, I want them to know that I'm not a "do gooder", I'm just a believer. I believe in humanity and the power people have. I believe in myself. I believe in you.

 I’ve experienced that feeling recently, in all honesty. That feeling of being alone with no one quite understanding you, and everyone undermining and assuming that you'll give in sooner or later. Well...I haven't done...and I still don't intend too!  I’m doing what I'm doing and trying to get where I'm going because I want to and i'm be true to the person I am. That all comes from the ten year old girl up a tree, showing the boys who's boss while gobbing off to the headteacher...combined with the 11 year old girl who spend a year in hospital with babies and adults...I've felt the real world for all its harshness..now I'm tasting it. I couldn't cope with another 3 years of a bubble where people are just "talking"...so I'm doing and I'm inpsiring and making people realise they can be who they want to be no matter what life throws at them. I didn't have that help when I was 11, sat in a hospital, waiting for Doctor Who to start with Green Day on my personal CD player...but those families did...and for three hours at least, they got to taste, remember and re-realise how wonderful, though challenging, their lives and future will be.

A moment of personal annoyance.

Over the past few months I’ve been inspired by other people and different movements have allowed me to really try and embrace and love who I am and be proud of that.
Over a year ago I had a “boyfriend” for about 3 weeks. It was basically mutual lust. However, he said one thing that has stuck with me and still makes me really self conscious.
“You have a nice body, it just needs toning.”
He didn’t understand my spinal cord injury. He couldn’t get it in his brain that I will never walk again and that I’m ok with that. It just proves he didn’t like me for who I am, he wanted to change me…one of the reasons why I got rid of him.
But that statement…it’s stuck with me.
I’m paralysed form the chest down, meaning my stomach muscles don’t work and can’t be toned…they’re paralysed. All’s I can do is try to keep thin and hope for the best that people or any boyfriends in the future will accept me and love me for who I am. But I still try so I hard to see, even when I spasm, those stomach muscles existing and toning and I just hate looking at myself in the mirror because of this stomach that shouldn’t belong to me; a healthy, leggy, skinny person. It should belong to someone else.
When I’ve conquered this feeling of self rejection to something as stupid as my stomach, I think my opinion of myself will be even more positive than it already is. I just wish I could accept it and love myself.
This may sound rude, but what annoys me even more is when people who have fully functioning stomach muscles moan about having a large stomach. THEY CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! I CAN’T! When people say, “ye, but you can’t help it.” It doesn’t make it better. It makes it worse and makes me feel as though I’m inhuman, imperfect, not right…and I find my view of my own body image heading back down the negative road and I begin hating myself.
Sorry if this sounds whiny. But I needed to express this in some way.

May be of help to any of my sci readers:

I often find it difficult to find aywhere or anyoneto give me guidance on maintaining a healthy diet routine, to prevent me from putting weight on.
As you know…it’s very easy to do so when you’re sat down.
(The whole “you use up more energy pushing your wheelchair” statement is a myth btw.)
http://www.unitedspinal.org/publications/action/2010/09/03/battling-the-bulges/

Want to make a difference? Do it differently then.

Canteen, College, Friday Lunch Time:
 
Trying to decide whether to go for the m&m's or a white choc-chip cookie that's clearly been through the worst of the fumbles of nervous, indeterminate lower sixth's attempts to manage the bizarre pincer thing that lets cherry tomatoes loose everywhere...
Then I see it; "Stop Kony."
A tiny part of me, one that is growing. A part of me that's beginning to take hold and become more impulsive, wanted to roll over to it, reach up and pull it down.
Not because I want to stick "Keep Kony" posters up everywhere (No, I really don't.)...but because I wanted to find someone else to put it up there...someone who generally cares and doesn't just want to jump on yet another self satisfying "social media bandwagon" that will "change the world!"

Yup, I'm being sceptical/cynical again.

I'm comparing my entire education to the London Marathon. The Oxford rejection was Paula Radcliffe pissing herself in the Street, I'm now on last the few miles...they're hard, but I can just about make the blurry finish line and I'm confident enough to take in the sites around me.
Unlike most of my peers (sorry, if this sounds arsey) who yesterday pissed themselves in the street; the street that was January results day...or are yet to do so on August 18th.


I'm not about to say that all of the amazing movements students have created and led from the beginning of whenever, are full of shallow, do-gooding, lazy dreamers. What I am saying, is that it's very clear that those who feel lost, only free and happy once they've drank half a bottle of wine, and feel guilty from living a relatively comfortable early life can have the tendency to be moved by an issue they know little of, jump on that Christmas coca cola advert's bandwagon (ye, i know it's a train), and the "join the fight!" because they feel better for..."making a difference."


Also, it can look cool.
Maybe it started with those bracelets that came out back when I was in hospital, around 2005. At the time that was a fantastic notion to gain awareness and make people react. It even woke me up to the outside world a little. (And believe me 15 weeks of Alder Hey, 53 weeks of hospital altogether, is a bubble. I had no idea a general election was going on until i bumped into Chery Blair on my way to Mac House, and this is a girl who remembers standing at the polling booth with her Mum, Dad and Nanna in '97 shouting, "My Mummy fancies that man called Tony!")
But like i said, emotion, awareness (in an awareness for awareness's sake sense) was brilliant, at the time. But time has moved on, and we're moving on. Twitter may well have raised awareness and kept people informed and still does with the Arab Spring, particularly the Egyption revolution...but more importantly it was a tool that was used to advance, get people moving and bring down the ruling elite. And that, is what I think we're moving into...we're now using media, it's power as a tool to actually do something, instead of shouting about. We can still shout, but we can do more with it now!


When trying to publicise and raise money for a charity I truly care about (Back Up) I do sometimes find myself and others playing the emotion card, but I'm trying to change that...I'm trying to get things done! I'm climbing a mountain in July and I'm not just raising money. i'm actively helping...doing videos for young people to give advice to them about re-starting school with a spinal cord injury, leading an under 13s multi-activity course...(so excited about that!) and generally having an active input as a member of the Youth Advisory Group. I'm not just shouting about it, I'm doing. And i think that's what people need to start doing more of. We're living in shitty hard times and people are becoming hard...they're a lot less likely to sit crying at videos of kids dying, now they're having to cut back on the weekly shop, than they would have done in the early-mid noughties.


Maybe the pre-uni students thinking shoving posters on the walls of colleges and I'm assuming Unis, and tweeting "let's get Kony famous!" are a little behind in the times...the bandwagon's slowing down and the new notion of getting things done has ate up its Burger King at the M6 service Station (I like the one at "Corley" it's like a fake "Chorley!") and is well on its way of doing so!

If you want to make a difference, accept that efforts in the past have caused differences to be made and do something different and better about it.


I chose the m&m's by the way.

Power: ?

Say shit that no one understands.
Or
Say shit that everyone understands to be racism.

It seems pretty negative.
Maybe it is.
I think the entire political, economic and social system (History A level student) that we have all been a part of, whether we like it or not, is on the brink of something...People, normal people, like me!...are seeing cracks, questioning, getting angry.
The cracks are getting wider and we're seeing through them...most people have something against most members of Parliament, (especially The Lords), thanks to the media matrix we live in. However most of us don't trust the those guys in red tops with flashy cameras that are supposed to keep the powers that be under control. They are the bloody powers that be...well, they were.
Almost no one feels (well I don't) generally happy and reassured by the idea of living an ordinary capitalist lifestyle, it seems people are clinging on to this bizarre concept called "fame" is it because we are so afraid of being forgotten?

Though these are all ideas whizzing round my head early on a Tuesday morning; to me and most of the people around me, they seem pretty accurate. I clearly don't have the power to form opinions for myself, we saw that with The English degree that was an never will be. Since that day of realising that I'm never going to be quite your average outstanding academic who would happily spend 3 years living in a box with a £27 000 debt to throw my toys out of my pram with, I have this annoyingly content, powerful feeling of..."Fuck this! I can do what I want...it doesn't matter anymore!"

So as a cynic, (as that is what I have spent the past 13 years of my life being taught to be.) The people or power that's tried to keep us down should know that by attempting to scare us into either rushing to uni to save ourselves from that scary place some people call society...or not go at all because of "money", hasn't worked.
Ok, majority of us have given in without even a second thought...I almost did. But I didn't, and that's the key thing.
There's a few of us, a few angry kids with minds voices and more importantly, education and the internet at our finger tips.
We know stuff, we can figure stuff out and now we're free and no longer afraid, we can do something about it.

Watch out "power", there's a storm brewing, and I think the kettle's just boiled.