Attempts at... stuff - a summary

Okay so I'm trying to post a little more regularly, therefore I thought I'd give you some insight as to what I've been up to the last couple of days.

A week ago I visited Barcelona for the weekend, and found it to be rather beautiful and extraordinarily easy to walk around and remember the ways to places. Gaudi's work is truly amazing and I was lucky enough to stay in a hotel between La Pedrera and Casa Batllo, both wonderful buildings. I took some film photos there.

( click the photo for the rest of the film )

This past weekend I finally learned how to ride a bicycle. I still can't do it properly but I was able to actually do some circles and ride it on my own without anyone holding me for a few minutes. I'd never done it before so I'm rather proud of myself. It's been a major setback in my life because I've always wanted to know how to do it and now, with my impending move to Rome where I really wanted to have a bicycle to move around, the necessity arose. I wonder why it took me so long or why I was so chicken about it. I need to practice a LOT before I can actually say 'I can ride a bicycle' because right now I just look like a squealing retard on a wobbly metal frame. I have all summer!

Also I made this:

A little bit of an inspirational motto of mine using a film photo from a few months back.

Also in a bit of news! It turns out I might not be renting a room in Rome and will actually move into an apartment on my own. This doesn't really scare me even though I am aware I could use some help in the first few weeks. The problem is the company I contacted hasn't said anything yet so I'll assume they won't since it's been a month now... And I don't know anyone in the city looking to share an apartment so the gameplan is rent out an apartment and pay full rent until I get to talk with everyone and see who wants to share a flat.

More news - my driving exam is scheduled for the 28th. I was supposed to have a two-hour lesson today but I'm home sick with a fever, nausea, runny nose, cough etc etc (an actual proper flu) so I had to go there and tell my instructor I couldn't do it. I must have looked like hell because he actually asked if I wanted him to drive me to the taxi area. I told him I could walk but he was seriously doubting me! 

I also bought a new moleskine since mine is almost full, which is a shame. All my HURTS autographs and doodles are in that sketchbook! A year full of memories just archived away in a shelf. I can't carry it with me if it's full though and I might wait until I move to Rome to start my new one. I'm really happy because it's red. I used to have a red one, sketchbook paper, but it was stolen along with all my possessions in London last December. Since then red sketchbook Moleskines have been nowhere to be found and someone told me they'd been discontinued. Today I found one and I bought it immediately.

I suppose that's all. If I have any more news I'll post here, but this is just a little summary of the last two weeks :)

x

On loneliness

While I was growing up, I was obsessed with having a boyfriend. The whole notion of having someone actually feel attracted to me was so alien, so unconceivable that it drove me into being a very sad, troubled person.
The thing is, I've never had a boyfriend. I've never even so much as had a fling. I've lived all my life having to get used to the idea that men couldn't like me, that it was impossible for a man to feel attracted to me. While every other 14/15 year old I knew was out kissing guys and hopping from one boy to the next, I was being insulted by those same boys for being fat/ugly/etc.

Eventually I became a chronic daydreamer. Someone who is constantly sad and hopeless about life and can only find a sliver of hope and a smile whenever she closes her eyes and dreams that she is loved by someone who, in reality, doesn't even know she exists - can be a musician, an actor, even a fictional character. I have always, since I can remember, been that person. I don't mean normal daydreaming, wishing you could be with someone impossible; I mean the bad, sick kind of daydreaming, when you simply can't be happy unless you're imagining some sort of ideal romance.
Because I was that desperate; I was that lonely. And my self-esteem never helped - in fact, it's kind of like a vicious cycle. I felt ugly and fat, so that made me feel lonely, so I daydreamed, but then every five minutes I realized it could never happen, so I felt lonely and ugly again. It never ends.

These last few months though I did a lot of growing up. I finally realized the idiocy in believing that your happiness depends on having a boyfriend. That kind of thinking completely destroys your individuality. Sure, it's probably nice to have someone say they love you every now and then, to have someone that thinks you're attractive. But is it really the only thing that can make you happy?
I realized I don't need a boyfriend, I don't need a relationship - deep down, however, I still felt lonely. Unwanted. Needy would be the best word. And even though I acknowledged I didn't need one, I craved for a boy to like me.

Then, in these last few weeks, one day I woke up from it all. I just woke up one day and decided.

"I don't care about having a boyfriend."

For the first time in my life I seriously don't give a damn. I don't need a guy, I don't crave for a guy, I'm not even sure I like the idea of having a boyfriend right now. If I liked someone, if I had feelings for that person of course the matter would be different, I would obviously want to be with that person.
But come on, let's face it - I'm 19 years old, going on 20. I've only ever liked two guys in my life and both were unrequited loves. It's very hard for me to feel attracted to someone, to have that sort of romantic interest in someone. Maybe I'm picky, I swear I don't do it on purpose! Or maybe I'm just not in the right environment, with people that 'click' with me.
Nonetheless, having any kind of relationship right now besides friendship would be a total hindrance.

I'm moving to Rome in September. For the first time in my life I have the opportunity to follow my dreams, to be the person I've always wanted to be, to fight for the life that I want to live.
I want to be the best, I want to be myself, I want to have fun in my own nerdy, non-partying kind of way. I want to be creative, to work hard, to study hard, to take pictures, to travel, to hug people, to make friends.

I want to be happy on my own.

I don't want a guy on me, I don't want anyone pulling me down. It's already hard having time for myself because I'm always going out with different groups of friends.
I'm going to start over in a new place, I'm getting a new life in a new city all for myself. Maybe then, maybe there, yes I will find someone.


But I can't help to wonder...

Maybe that big, gaping hole in my soul that kept growing deeper every day while I was growing up, that big empty space that screamed for attention and love and a boy that would come and say 'You're beautiful, I like you'...

Maybe that empty space was filled. Maybe that's why for the first time I find myself not even caring about relationships or boys or whatever.
Because that void was filled with me and that one letter saying 'Congratulations, you were accepted'.


Deep down, that was all I ever needed.
Not a boyfriend.


Myself and my own happiness.

I know places

It just dawned on me that I am going to move out of my house in 3 months. For the first time I will be living on my own. I am not afraid of the responsibility but I will be so far away from home, it's not like I'll just be moving across town. I'm moving from Portugal to Italy. It's close in international terms, but so far... It's what I've always wanted, to leave my country, but there are several things that I will miss. Not people - family or friends... But mostly my dogs and my garden.

I won't even get started on my dogs because I'll just cry like a fucking idiot but I'd never realized how much my garden means to me.
I've lived in this house since I was 10 - I lived in an apartment before. It's an old, early 18th century house with three storeys and a big garden. We have vines and a small fountain and a big area of grass that I have to water on weekends. We have a pine tree and a peach tree, a tangerine tree, a pot with a strawberry plant. Camellias,  dozens and dozens of all kinds of roses my mom imported from England to plant here, bougainvillaea, there's an old stone structure where I planted my cactus the day I moved here - it used to be pot-sized, now it's gigantic and full of flowers.
We have a heated outdoors pool right next to the grass. We have a pool house with a bathroom and a small charcoal deposit for a grill, that were built along with the house so they're 18th century as well. There's sunlight outside, everywhere, all day, since we tend to the trees to keep shade from inhibiting the grass from growing.

We have an enormous lemon tree that has lemons all year round. Really big, juicy lemons that are - somehow - very sweet. I got used to making lemonade without sugar. We have parsley that we pick whenever we want to use it for cooking, same thing with coriander and chives.

While I'm sitting here at the computer, there's a window at my side. I'm looking at a small courtyard with a single tree and an old marble vase on a pedestal and an archway that leads to the kitchen door further ahead. Rustic stone steps that go up to the garden itself.
Sun, so much sun.

I will miss my garden.

I had the best dream last night

This might sound odd to all of you who haven't known me for that long, but I've had a priest fetish for years. Probably since I was in 9th grade. I was 14 at the time.
I had a priest fetish at 14, which probably means I had and/or have deep-seated mental issues, had a precocious brain or was just a really weird kid. Anyway, it has kept on livin' on pretty strongly in my brain and I believe I can admit now that it has evolved from a fetish and became an actual preference when it comes to men.

Awkward post is awkward. And it will get worse than this, trust me.

Last night I had a dream. We all dream, right? Well, most of us, some people don't dream, even I don't dream all the time when I'm stressed, I heard stress can actually prevent you from dreaming as opposed to giving you nightmares but oh man I'm rambling again I'm sorry. Anyway, I had a dream and it was really cool.


When I was in Tuscany a few weeks ago I stayed in a hotel called Castel Monastero. It was beautiful - an old monastery turned into a hotel. Well I dreamt of this place, but it wasn't all hotel, it was my house. I was actually pretty (HAHA) and living there with my grandparents. Half of the monastery was still a hotel though and there was a chapel that could be used for weddings and people had weddings and baptism ceremonies all the time. I was sort of the manager or something, I don't know, I owned the place so whatever.
And I was pretty.

One day one of the guys that works at the hotel drives into the fort with a priest and says he's staying there for a while, I don't remember the reason but it was work-related. And oh god he was so gorgeous I swear there are no real men like that but he wasn't the typical gorgeous, not model-like in the least but.. he was seriously my type all over. And he was a priest. So I went to greet him and I was all H-Hi I'm Ines welcome , I hope you enjoy your s-stay and he just smiled in a charming but kind of slightly shy way and shook my hand and bowed his head a little and said his name was Will.
Did I mention I was pretty?

So this went on with me showing the guy around the next day and eventually going on a long car ride giving him a glimpse of the nearby towns and the pretty scenery and having lunch and everything and he was really charming and cool but he always seemed a little uncomfortable. And, well, you know me, always the friendly sport, so I told him to relax because I'd rather be his friend than just a hostess and you could tell he was a little more comfortable with the whole thing.

I don't know he was just so perfect oh god I hate my brain this is why I'm single, I dream of this stuff then I can't fall in love with actual REAL people. True story.

Further on he confessed to me he'd been having ~doubts~ because he had decided to be a priest really early and he'd never been with a woman before and he just stared at me and I was all OH LORD WHAT'S HAPPENING

And then we had sex.

Next morning at breakfast with the rest of the staff was really awkward.

This was the best dream I've ever had though. Hats off to my own brain!

There is time for everything.

Tomorrow I will be getting my documents translated, hopefully a University document will count as a high school diploma.
I will also be taking photographs at an abandoned factory. I want them to turn out wonderful so I can put them in my portfolio! Diana will be my model, if the weather is nice enough. Then I will be picking up more black and white photographs, some film I got developed.

Then on Friday, I'm off to Italy for a week. I can't even express how much it's calming me down thinking about this. I've been horribly stressed lately for more reasons than I've posted here and today has been a particularly rough day, especially when it comes to my ego - which seems to be practically non-existant sometimes. Today I gained 1kg and completely broke down, as if that meant I'd lost control over myself; I've been in a dreadful mood all day because one thought pulls another thought along and in five minutes, I'm telling myself I'm ugly and disgusting and untalented and everything is wrong with me, nothing is ever right.
This happens, day in and day out. I've tried to deal with it and stop it from happening but I can't, at least not right now. Maybe with practice, who knows? But I don't want to feel like this so often, if you know how it is, then you know I mean it when I say it destroys you from the inside out; when you're like this, nothing is good, everything has a bad side.

But a week in Italy is just bliss to me right now. I absolutely adore Italy. Everything is beautiful, the people are amazing and this is partly the reason I want to get into Rome so much. This time we will be visiting Siena, Pompeii and Ercolano (I write it Herculaneum, like the olden days), three places I've always wanted to visit since I was... I don't know, 10? I'm kind of a history nerd so the whole Vesuvius eruption story has always fascinated me. My mother is a Roman-nut so she taught me a lot of things, got me into reading history novels at an early age and everything.
I can't wait! I'm not going to Rome, which is a pity, and I'm not seeing Verona like I wanted to, but oh my god Pompeii! I'm so excited.

I will try to film something and upload it; I will also try to keep a diary but I doubt I'll manage it (I'm a procrastinator). Still, I will update this at least once while I'm there.

Then in May, off to the UK!

Personal posts

I've decided I'm going to start posting on this blog as well as tumblr, it was supposed to be more of a "professional" thing but I guess I need to talk about things somewhere, so why not on a blog? I can always make an online portfolio when I need one.

So I guess a personal post, since I rarely talk about my private life to people. The thing is I don't talk about it because it's not interesting. The depressive stuff... well, even that isn't remotely interesting. There's nothing really bad in my life but everything is always wrong on the inside.

I would go on about it but I just noticed I can't. I feel uncomfortable and it's weird and I know I shouldn't because it's my own blog but come on! What am I supposed to say? It's just strange talking about myself without being asked about it. I can't just start explaining why I'm so fucked up and can't be happy despite my circumstances. I really don't want to, either, because I automatically feel embarassed, like I shouldn't be bringing it up in the first place, like those words don't belong outside my head.

So this is basically it, the way I think, the way my brain functions. Fun, isn't it?
Very.

Okay so let me try this personal post thing and see how it goes.

I hate my University.
I love the people I met there, I love one or two teachers and the student council. The building is amazing.
But I fucking hate everything else.
My classes, my course, some teachers, everything. And I don't mean it in a "I hate it but I deal with it" kind of way, I mean it in a "I will fucking kill myself if I have to stand this for another year" and crying myself to sleep every night because I have to go to class kind of way. This isn't whining, by the way, it's ranting. I just want to get out of there ASAP and study what I'm really passionate about because this is just killing me inside.

I feel so lonely all the time even though I have a lot of friends and people who truly care for me. I don't want a boyfriend right now because I have too much going on to even care about that kind of thing, and it would only hinder me. But I feel so lonely. It's ridiculous, doesn't make any sort of sense. I have wonderful friends, my parents care about me a lot, I don't want a boyfriend, I have undying love for my dogs (like my children)... I still don't understand why there's such a huge void in my life. Why I constantly feel like I'm completely and utterly alone. I don't understand and I hate it.

Despite not wanting a boyfriend right now, I worry over the fact I never had one; I honestly doubt a man can ever find me attractive and interesting enough to want a relationship with me and I think I'm unlovable - if the word exists.

I like animals more than people, way more.

I need to leave this country and live somewhere else; otherwise I will wither and die like a rejected plant.

People compliment me all the time on various things - singing, photography, writing, even advice - and it flatters me and makes me happy for a while but afterwards I just feel worthless all over again. I'm not good enough, I'm never good enough. I don't think I'll ever be.

So yeah, this was a personal post. I'll try to make more in the future because, as I've been told, it's supposed to help you. Getting things out of your system. I tell this to everyone else too, but for me, as I said above, it's just plain weird.
It's like.... I don't know. It's just not supposed to leave my head. As if posting it or talking about it makes it real, more real than it already is. That's scary.


Oh well.

A Monologue

Whenever I get out of a house and into the car I like to put my hand out of the window. Feeling the wind brush between your fingers and against your palm almost makes you believe you can actually grab that freedom, that cold, bitter air that fills your lungs and makes your heart stop. A painful, perfect freedom.

From the start we were meant to live like this, like ghosts. And like ghosts, we wander. Our home is whatever coat we wear that day, the back seat of the old car that will never look the same anymore, the 24-hour diner we happen to find open on our way to yet another barren land where we won’t stay for long. To many of you this might seem like freedom, to us, it’s an everyday prison.

I’ve thought about death. How liberating it must be, not being imprisoned in your own body anymore, even if it does end there, even if there is nothing beyond our physical self. Maybe if I died I’d have a home; maybe if I died at least I would be sleeping forever under some kind of roof, until I finally withered away. Right now, I am slowly decomposing, I am a shadow of the human I was born as. There is nothing to me but bags in the trunk of a car, two books hidden in a seat back pocket and a pair of dark eyes that have long lost their shine.

I have secrets. The three of us have secrets. They keep us going, help us breathe, help us eat. They wash our backs in the public showers and tuck us into hostel beds at night. We live off our secrets, we feed on them to stay sharp. Most of them we can never share with anyone outside our group, some of them we can never share with each other. A few of them we can’t even admit them to ourselves. But everyone is like this, not just us. Living, breathing people are full of secrets - poisonous, like parasites. But the living are fed on by their secrets. Ghosts, like us, feed off them. Eventually, they will be hollow, and we will be out of things to hide.

What then? What will be left then?

An empty car, a worn coat, second-hand gloves and two books hidden in a seat back pocket. This is all there is to us. It’s all there will be once we run of out secrets, of virgin roads, abandoned houses, cheap hostels and outdated maps. And you probably wonder why I’m being so mysterious… this is a diary, after all. But I can’t even know what I’m hiding, so you can’t either. I lie to myself. We all do. You do too.

But if I could just grab that freedom that brushes past my fingers and against my palm when I put my hand out the car window… Maybe if I could grab it, things would change.

This image of freedom would be over, and I would be free.

white queen dreams in colour

Hello everyone. This is an official first post.
The blog is set up for now but I might change things around in the near future, which includes adding a playlist.