On wearing glasses and body image

Lately I've been thinking a lot about my looks. I know that sounds narcissistic at first glance, but please let me explain:

We all know there is a lot of pressure in society for females in particular to look a certain way. We've all had to deal with stereotypes based on our looks, with judgement and criticism, and I'm sure that most of us, at some point, have been ashamed of our bodies, or at least certain aspects of them. I have been ashamed of aspects of my own body, and struggle with body image on a daily basis. I was bullied in school, first for having freckles and wearing glasses, and later for being "too thin". I was called anorexic, I was called "horse face" (my head is kinda long) and was ashamed of the body and face I was born with. When I was in year 8, the bullying (not just about my body, but about other stuff too) got so bad that I developed severe depression and was having thoughts I'm not proud of. It all culminated in me getting a ball to the face (deliberately), which pushed my glasses back into my eye sockets and bruised my face, with me snapping and hitting the main antagonist back (open palm, but to this day the only thing I regret about the situation is not doing it sooner, and not doing it with a clenched fist), and a change of schools which made me infinitely happier, and ended the bullying (for the most part. Teenage girls can be mean!).

The incessant bullying, the comments on my body, they stuck with me. I won't pretend that "what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger", because that is bullshit. The comments these people made to me, the confrontations, the name-calling and the insults have all stuck with me. They're branded in my mind and soul and I have to battle those demons every day. The things that have stuck most are the comments about my glasses. I know the word "nerd" is seen as endearing and "in" right now, but believe you me that when you're a preteen struggling to come to terms with being female, with society's ideas of what is "pretty", being called a nerd is not cool.

For years I struggled to accept the fact I need to wear glasses. I've had them since I was seven years old and so spent all of my teen and preteen life feeling ashamed of my freckly face and the metal frames that were perched on it. Despite needing to wear glasses pretty much all day every day, you will be lucky to find a photo of me wearing them in my teenage years. Every time someone whipped a camera out, my glasses came off. To my silly little brain, glasses were ugly, and wearing them made me an ugly nerd. 

I'm happy to report that somewhere along the line, once I left school I had a change of heart. Thanks to the sudden attention of boys, my confidence built. I'm totally ashamed to say that it took a male's approval to shake me out of my silly, unconfident, glasses-hating ways, but it's true. A guy told me I was beautiful while I had glasses on, and kissed me and I remember excitedly telling my mum when I got home "He thinks I'm beautiful with my glasses on!" as if it was a total miracle. I started wearing eye make up to accentuate my eyes behind the lenses, I bought a pair of attractive designer frames and I began to own those glasses! I began to accept them as a part of me! I wear them as if they're a banner saying "I'm an attractive, well-educated, intelligent and classy woman, dammit! And my glasses frame my face and draw attention to my sparkly green-brown eyes!"

Recently, I have begun considering getting laser surgery on my eyes to fix my short sightedness. It's something the teenaged me wanted for years, but 20 year old me is in two minds about it. Over the past three years, as I have come to accept and even love my freckly, glasses-wearing face, I've begun to feel like my glasses are a part of me. Contrary to my teenage years, these days you're lucky to find a photo of me not wearing my glasses! I feel as if my face looks naked without them, and as much as I'd love to not have to constantly wipe my glasses in the rain or wear safety goggles over my glasses like a fool in my lab classes so I can see my experiments, I think I would kind of miss them if I didn't have to wear them anymore.

It's been a long road to acceptance of my body and face and self-love for me, but I know I'm not alone in my experiences. Is it really so crazy to think that I may miss my glasses, which gave me such hell growing up, if I were to have my vision fixed? Won't I still be the attractive, well-educated, intelligent and classy woman without them? I'll just have to find something else to draw attention to my eyes and frame my face. 

Write about a favourite summer night from your childhood

The days stretch on in summer and the evenings creep up on you with sticky fingers, casting shadows as long as the day. The heat plays tricks on your brain as you walk back up the street, hair dripping, boogie board under one arm. Feet drag on the bitumen, and you jump at every rattle in the grass. Snake? No, just grasshoppers and butterflies bending long, yellow stalks in the dying sun. There is a chorus of birds and cicadas in the background, mixed in with the gentle whoosh of the waves you've not long left behind. Your mind singles out the whoosh of the tide, focuses on it, and reflects…

Anticipation builds as you wait, board at the ready, head turned as you seek out the perfect wave. This one you say to yourself. You jump forward onto the board, kick-kick-kicking as a wet roar grows louder in your ears. You look back - it's coming! You look forward once more and feel your lips press together, your brows knitting in concentration and determination. Your legs are pounding up and down, and then the wave hits you, picks you up and carries you toward the shore! Your face widens in elation, butterflies do somersaults in your stomach and you feel free! You twist your body to the right, wrenching your board with you to follow the wave down the line. The shoreline looms closer as the wave begins to fizzle out. You awaken from your reflection, hair still dripping, board under one arm and look up at the dying sun. The birds and cicadas come back into focus. The rumble of the ocean is replaced with a rumble in your tummy. A smile spreads across your face as you continue onwards, homebound.

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Creative writing is something I've wanted to do a lot more of on the blog for quite some time, but I never seem to know just where to start. I recently found this prompt through Kate's new Write It Out series, which I came across on Tori's blog. With my new look, and desire for an update in blogging direction, it seemed like the perfect time to give something like this a go. If you're interested, head on over to Kate's blog to link up your own post, and find more like-minded, creative bloggers to follow. This is actually last month's prompt, but I will be posting this month's soon, in an effort to catch up!

This little reflection has me yearning for the long summer nights it describes. I'm sitting here in my big, fluffy dressing gown late at night with my skin tingling from an imaginary sun's touch. The summers here are long and dry and hot, but I wouldn't trade them for anything! I've recently swapped my boogie board for a surf board, but  ache too much in winter to head out into the deep blue, even with a wetsuit. Bring on summer, big, floppy hats and long days in the surf chasing the rush that only a roaring wave and a plank of fibreglass can give you. I'm craving the long awaited (our three months of cooler weather drags on forever) return to my second home, beyond the sand. 

Questions, Comments and Reflections. Oh, and Where I Have Been Lately.

I've been gone for a while. Well, physical I've still been in the same place as ever, but in Internetland, I've not been quite as "on the radar" as usual. My Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts have still been pretty active, and I've been scrolling away the hours on Pinterest and Tumblr, but my blog presence has been practically non-existent. I'm sure this has left some of you wondering why, but I'm not sure there is really any answer. Right now my unread posts on Bloglovin' stand at 664 though, a number I can no longer ignore and I feel as though I need to jump back in to my online life. I'm ready for it!

In the last few weeks, life has been crazy. I started back at uni, and all you students out there will know what a massive time-consuming monster that is. I have had to make the decision to move house, I have cried over that decision, stressed over that decision and had multiple panic attacks over that decision, and that has also taken up a lot of my time, and on top of all of this, I have been sick. Not just with my usual CFS aches and pains and exhaustion, though. On top of that I have had a flu, and I guess that is a big part of why I have been absent from the blog lately. But before I give you all a proper update on what I've been up to, there is something I'd like to discuss. Blog guilt. Or rather, my lack of it over the past few weeks.

I'm sure that many of you bloggers out there know exactly what I mean when I talk about blog guilt. You will all know how it gnaws at your soul when you can't tend to your blog. How even though you know that you need time out, have taken too  much on, or just don't have anything to say right now, you can feel the guilt nagging at your brain, tugging at your heart and eating your soul whenever you go on a hiatus from blog world. It's a horrible feeling, and one I have felt many times, but over the last week or so, I haven't felt it once.

Does this make me a bad blogger? Does the fact I haven't posted in a week render me hopeless and doomed to fail in this overly competitive, PR driven world? Do I not even care about my blog anymore? These are the questions that I have been asking myself over the last few days, and they have been nagging at my brain more than blog guilt ever has. I'm not sure what it is about blogging, but this fun little hobby has a way of taking over your life after a while. You end up spending more and more time sat behind a computer, and less and less out in the real world doing things. You stress over content, over pictures, over how many times you should post a week. You compare yourself to other bloggers, stress yourself out over why no PR companies have contacted you yet, and find yourself getting caught up in silly little numbers. If you need to take a break for whatever reason, the guilt shimmies in, and the thing that you once loved to do all of a sudden feels like a massive chore. You want to do well with your blogging, you want to have hundreds of followers, and get sent free stuff and have people respect you, but in that moment, it all feels like too much. You wonder if you should even be blogging at all.

I have felt like this too many times. I have felt like a total blog failure just because I'm not noticed by PR or because so-and-so started blogging at the same time as me, and look how many thousands of followers she has. Feeling like that is total crap. Getting caught up in the business side of blogging, in trying to be successful and trying to be better than everyone else is total crap. I don't want that, I just want to write and make friends and read about all the fantastic things that my friends from all over the world have been getting up to lately, which is exactly why I decided today that my lack of blog guilt is a good thing. Not being guilty over not posting for a few days is the most liberating feeling! Finally I feel like I can step back and start enjoying blogging for what it really is again - a hobby. I'm removing advertising from my sidebar, having a total blog overhaul and starting fresh with blogging for me, and for fun without getting caught up in the competitiveness. It's going to be great, and you know, if good things come my blog's way, that will be a bonus but I'm not feeling pressured to stick to a schedule, or post about this or that, or gain followers. What happens happens and I'll be grateful for the supportive friendships that I make along the way.