the tiktok beauty pandemic

 Beauty trends come and go, we've seen it for a century. But one thing that never changes is the pressure on women and young girls to be as pretty as possible (by some people's standards). As a society, we are constantly fed ideas about what we should look like and the aesthetics and trends we should follow. Tiktok is plagued with these ideas, specifically 'beautytok'.

 There is an immense expectation on women and girls to have long skincare routines, own the newest and most trendy makeup products and become pretty. There is a new trend every week and the cycle goes on and on. I've noticed on TikTok there is a huge obsession with skincare, products are constantly being advertised to make you 'prettier', so you can look just like those influencers who promote them. There is also a pressure to have a morning routine, night routine and skincare/beauty routine. I see chin straps being promoted as 'face-slimming' however this just is not true, it might reduce puffiness in the face but chin straps are not and should not be used with the intention of getting a sharper jaw. Chin straps are often used to reduce snoring and to force the mouth shut, especially with people who require a CPAP machine at night. But now, chin straps and mouth tape are often used to prevent a 'mouth-breather face', which consists of having a crooked nose, receding chin and narrow face as a result of breathing through your mouth instead of your nose. However mouth tape is used by people with mild obstructive sleep apnea and also to reduce snoring. It is not uncommon for products with medical uses to be advertised as beauty products, for example, Ozempic/semaglutide, an antidiabetic medication used to treat type 2 diabetes and for long-term weight management In obese people. It has become popular for weight loss but that is not what it should be used for unless it is prescribed or recommended by a doctor because you are morbidly obese.

As I mentioned there is pressure to have specific routines in your life and to make them as aesthetic as possible, the 'morning shed' is a common one. The 'morning shed' is a trend on Tiktok that describes the shedding of skincare products that have been used overnight, often including pimple patches, face masks, lip masks, nose masks, lip stain, wrinkle tape, mouth tape, chin straps and maybe a hair bonnet. This is a ridiculous amount of product, all to attain that wrinkle-free clear skin. There is an obsession with anti-aging and anti-wrinkle products especially among young women and girls, whom these products are often targeted towards. There is an expectation for women to never age and to look 21 forever, but it shouldn't be this way. Ageing is a normal part of life, it is a natural process that your body goes through as you get older, it should not be forced into us that it makes you ugly and undesirable, because it's simply not true. Unfortunately, women and girls are more often than not the sole target of these beauty trends and are influenced by celebrities, brands and even people around them to conform to these expectations of being wrinkle-free and being 'pretty'. 

When it comes to this, we need to realise that we cannot win. There is no pleasing everyone and we cannot make everyone happy and conform to everyone's standards, it just doesn't work. If we spend our entire lives trying to be 'pretty' and aesthetic then we will only be wasting our time, we cannot be pretty in everyone's eyes so there is no point trying to make it that way. 

worsening of weaponized incompetence on TikTok

 Have you ever been in a situation where you asked someone to do something for you but realised that you should've done it yourself? You ask for a simple task to be completed, and you are met with the task being half-assed or done completely wrong; it's not because the person is incapable of doing it, they just don't want to do it. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with being a little bit lazy sometimes, but most people I'd like to think don't want to be in a relationship where they're dating essentially a toddler stuck in a grown-up's body. Or have to put up with someone's inability to show common courtesy to others. 
This is where weaponised incompetence comes in. 

Now, what does weaponised incompetence actually entail? It's an act that takes place quite commonly in romantic relationships where a partner feels that, because they are with a woman, she is expected to take on all domestic responsibilities in the household. When they are asked to do a simple task, they purposefully screw it up so that they are never asked to do a task ever again. It's a phenomenon that tiktok has recently discovered, making people more aware of the fact that this is a real thing that exists and annoys many women.
 It is easy to do something wrong, so people feel the need to do the task themself, but there is no learning opportunity in being lazy. Using weaponised incompetence in a relationship is lazy and selfish. You shouldn't act like an animal or a toddler as a grown adult in the house you live in and with your partner. It is not down to the woman to do every domestic task in the household just because she is a woman. If women should revert to these standards, then these men should do the same instead of lazing around on their gaming consoles all day or ignoring basic responsibilities like throwing their scraps in the bin.

It is not down to the woman to clean up after her husband or do every domestic duty in the house; this is not 1930, this is the 21st century. There is no excuse for this behaviour; we shouldn't infantilise or excuse these men's behaviour because then it will just continue. If your partner does a task incorrectly over and over, they know you'll eventually give in and just do it yourself, meaning they do not have to do it ever again.  Just because a man marries a woman doesn't mean she is his servant or personal cleaner for the rest of his life. To be quite honest, I don't care if the man pays all of the bills. So many people do that every day and they don't get rewarded because they are single and have to do it themselves anyway, they still have to clean their kitchen after cooking so why is it any different in a relationship? 

Many men have the audacity to call women lazy for not doing "her job" but then act and treat their wives like this.

Is Lunchly really as good as they say it is?

 A few weeks ago, KSI, Logan Paul and Mr Beast released a new product called Lunchly. Their advertisements claim it is 'better' than the notorious Lunchables, but it seems it is almost a copy of the latter. Lunchly offers three kits, the first being "The Pizza", which consists of 3 small pizza crusts, cheese and pepperoni. The second is a "turkey stack 'ems, containing 3 small crackers, turkey slices and cheese. Their third kit is the "fiesta nachos", which contains small nacho crisps, cheese sauce and a salsa dip. All 3 also come with a mini Feastables bar and a 355ml bottle of Prime. 
It must be said that these kits are not lunch, though they're advertised to be; they are more like a snack food, as they do not contain enough food or nutrition to be considered a good lunch for growing children. 

These kits are marketed as having fewer calories than Lunchables and are stated as a healthy alternative because they have less sugar, fats and more electrolytes. Electrolytes also seem to be a big part of their campaign. I will get into the deeper facts on electrolytes later. Although Lunchly is a better alternative, it's only marginally better than its competitor.

They compare their kits with Lunchables, making it known that they offer 12fl oz (355ml) whereas Lunchables only offers 6fl oz (roughly 177ml). Prime contains "more A and B vitamins and more electrolytes". They offer a Feastables bar and Lunchables offers a crunch bar, but the two are hardly any different at all, the main difference being that Feastables is a product made by Mr Beast. Feastables is stated as being "better for you", but the sugar content is relatively the same as other chocolate bars, such as Cadbury's or Hershey's. Half a Feastables bar is 30g and contains 15g of sugar.

"The Pizza" uses real cheese (which is heavily emphasised), but this shouldn't be seen as such a big deal, as it really should be the basic standard in food production. The calories of these kits are compared with Lunchables in the promotional video; their pizza kit contains 360 Kcal, whereas the Lunchables version contains 390, 15g of fat versus 18g of fat and 12g of sugar versus 20g of sugar. The turkey kit contains 230Kcals, versus 310Kcals and has 7g of sugar versus 21g of sugar.

Logan Paul also called out the fact that Lunchables has had reports of lead contamination; however, Twitter cited his tweet by saying that the Ice Pop flavour of Prime had reports of lead contamination from the ERC. 

Recently, while touring a parent around my secondary school, we had a passing conversation about Lunchly. This parent had then told me that their children, aged 11 and 9, tried the 'Glowberry' flavour of Prime, and it had made them violently ill. This raises the question of whether Prime should be consumed by the children, whom this product is marketed towards.

In the promotional video, when trying the Lunchables turkey kit, Logan spits out the product before any of it enters his mouth and states, "That's trash". It is widely known that Lunchables is not a great product whatsoever, but it doesn't warrant that reaction, making the advert seem too artificial and over the top. When trying their own version, Logan says, "We're not biased at all, but ours is way better". The nacho product for both companies does not look great, but I will hand it to Lunchly that their cheese sauce does look better and looks less plasticky; however, the salsa sauces look exactly the same. On the Lunchly website, they advertise that their kits have "flavourful combos" versus Lunchables having "standard picks", but the kits that are offered by Lunchly are nearly identical, so how much more flavourful and fantastic is Lunchly? The marketing around Lunchly consists of lots of buzzwords, bright colours and competitive language. This is common in advertising, but it is a bold move to name-drop a company and claim you are better than them when, in reality, your product is marginally better.

Recently, there has been some controversy surrounding DanTDM, a very famous YouTuber, who tweeted out the following: "What happened to YouTubers man... I can't not say anything anymore. This is selling stuff for the sake of making money, simple. How does this benefit fans? This is selling crap to kids who don't know better than to trust the people who are selling it to them. do better." DanTDM's audience is mostly young children, as it has been for his entire career - I used to watch him too when I was young. Understandably, Dan would be so angry about this.
All 3 of the creators responded, though they could've ignored it and left it alone. KSI posted a screenshot of Dan's toys and says, "looks like crap to me", which really isn't relevant to Dan's point whatsoever. 
I agree with what Dan is saying, Lunchly does seem like a simple cash grab, almost taking advantage of the influence that the 3 creators have over their younger audience. It doesn't really benefit their fans much, and they know that they will profit massively from this because of their high influence and popularity among young people. Plenty of creators do things just to make money, but they also care about their fans and how their products will affect them. This is one of the biggest issues of Lunchly, the creators of the product have little regard for the consumers and only for the profit they will make from it. 

Dr Brian Sutterer, a well-known sports medicine physician, posted a detailed video talking about electrolyte drinks and had plenty of interesting takes on the situation. He talks about how electrolytes are crucial to us as our bodies need them for most functions, but consuming too many or too few can cause problems. He also says that we don't need electrolytes as part of daily life and in our daily diets, as our bodies can sustain the levels naturally and do not need supplementation. Sutterer compares Prime and Gatorade, both highly popular electrolyte drinks. Prime has no sugar but also lacks sodium. Gatorade has sugar in it, but sugar is necessary when trying to rehydrate after exercise. Gatorade is seen as a bad product because of its sugar content; however, sugar and electrolytes are necessary to replenish salt loss from sweat and hydration in exercise. Electrolyte drinks were originally created as sports drinks to replenish the loss of electrolytes from exercise, not to be consumed as part of a daily diet. Should electrolyte drinks be advertised to the average child? KSI and Logan Paul are, and always have been, popular among young people; therefore products they put out will naturally be desired by their young audience. Children know the brand name of Prime, but they do not fully understand what Prime is and how it impacts their bodies. 

Doctor Mike, a board-certified family physician, stated in a YouTube video about Lunchly that it was hard to draw clear conclusions from comparing the products. Lunchly is missing nutritional facts for each part of their kits. The portion sizes are not the same; for example, the Lunchables turkey stack 'ems is 82 grams, whereas the Lunchly version is 72 grams. Lunchly has less sugar and therefore fewer calories. The Capri-Sun offered in a Lunchable contains sugar, and the Prime has artificial sweeteners.
Prime also has more A and B vitamins. Dr Mike states that A vitamins are fat-soluble and overconsumption can lead to toxicity. The A vitamins in Prime were raised as an issue, as per the 500ml bottle, it has 900µg, but the daily recommended amount is 600µg. You get A vitamins from eggs, dairy and red and orange coloured vegetables, so when Prime is consumed with a daily diet, that is a huge overconsumption of A vitamins. 
The USDA caloric guidelines state that a lunch meal for children aged Kindergarten through 8 should be 600-700 calories, as children need the energy to function. A Lunchly turkey kit has 230 calories, which would mean kids would need 2.7 portions to consume enough calories; however, this would mean consuming 1300mg of Sodium, which is over the USDA standards. The USDA also states that at least 80% of grains consumed weekly must be whole-grain rich, but there are no whole grains in Lunchly.

So is Lunchly really as healthy as claimed, and should it be consumed as part of the daily diet for children? The answer is clearly no. All evidence points to this, and it's incredibly important that parents are aware that this is not a product they should be buying for their children, as it has been proven by medical professionals that this is not a healthy product.

Logan Paul is cookedly..

 Logan Paul from the 'Logang' is not having the best time at the moment, all of it is self-inflicted though. First, we had Lunchly, which was a pretty bad product released by Logan, KSI and Mr Beast and they all received major backlash for it. It was supposedly a better alternative to Lunchables even though it looks basically the same, only somewhat slightly better. (the Lunchly situation is a whole thing in itself, which I will cover in my next post.) They could've just left it at that and not responded because it isn't a big deal at all. It's not uncommon now that YouTubers make bad, poorly thought-through products. The only one of the 3 that hasn't responded with a flurry of ill-conceived responses is Mr Beast. He must be so annoyed at KSI and Logan because their response has been first of all, completely unnecessary. After all, this isn't serious at all and they could've said nothing. Second of all, every response has been dreadful, poorly received and ratioed. To be fair, Logan didn't have the best public image to begin with - think back to the Suicide Forest incident. To me and many others, he just appears to be yet another youtuber who is extremely desperate for any scraps of money and attention he can get. He did the NFT scam, which to be fair was a very obvious scam. I understand there was a lot of hype around the bored apes, but if you fell for it it's on you. He's bad for doing it, but if you fell for it you're not the sharpest tool in the shed - if you were born 10,000 years ago, natural selection would've got you.

The lengths I've seen Logan go to to promote this pretty dismal product - Lunchly - are insane. At the recent birth of his first child, a sacred experience, he was promoting Prime and Lunchly. It was a momentous and beautiful experience for him and his partner, yet he was integrating his product into it. I can't imagine how his partner must've felt with him because of his complete disrespect and lack of awareness at that moment. How much more money do you need that you're willing to have the birth of your first child essentially sponsored by a Lunchables knockoff? Logan's net worth must be millions of pounds yet he's almost selling off a special moment in his life to promote a product that doesn't look great. I haven't tried Lunchly as it's only sold in areas on the West Coast of the USA -mainly California, and I refuse to try Prime, so I cannot definitively say it's bad but it doesn't look good whatsoever. Sure you get to a point where you have enough money to stop doing things for the sake of money and promotion. 
On top of this, he just lies and says Lunchly is "one of the best meals in the world", they're clearly not - crackers, processed meat and cheese. 

In addition, Logan has decided to pick a fight with TommyInnit. Tommy posted a screenshot of Logan's 'Impaulsive' interview with Donald Trump with the caption "Right I'm done". In a section about the Gaza conflict, Logan is promoting prime. There is a shameless transition from Trump talking about Gaza to Logan immediately promoting the Prime and Lunchly sponsorship. He could've left that to a more light-hearted segment but he picked that section of all. In response to Tommy's tweet, he tweeted several screenshotted messages of conversations between the two of them, consisting of purely kind messages from Tommy to Logan. There was no reason for Logan to tweet those screenshots, as there is nothing worth noting, only Tommy asking for advice or to meet up with him for a coffee. Logan tweeted "Tommy is lashing out because I've been neglecting him, sorry I didn't chill with you buddy". I personally find it really weird when people screenshot and post private messages between them and other people, of course in some circumstances it's necessary but there's nothing worth noting in these text messages. This is only going to make Logan seem untrustworthy. Logan wasn't even responding to Tommy's initial issue, only trying to start things with Tommy. Logan didn't stop there, he carried on insisting that Tommy was desperate for his attention and running to Twitter when he wasn't acknowledged. It is completely unclear what Logan was trying to achieve by this, other than being incredibly immature and self-centred.

Overall, it's clear that Logan needs to clear up his act as it's becoming more and more obvious how much of a horrible and self-absorbed person he is. He has zero respect for those around him or his audience, just churning out mindless babbles of promotion to children and losing the trust of many.

New blog on SpaceHey! (and an update to yesterday)

 Heyy! i found SpaceHey this morning and made myself an account, so I've started a new blog on there. Ill still be posting here but also on there. My layout on there is arguably cooler than on there, I have a song on my autoplay on my spacehey profile (myspys by lifelover).

Yesterday I went out with my friend Rara, we did what we usually do and went to HMV, The Oasis market, Forbidden Planet and then Mcdonalds. We sat in Pigeon Park for a while and we sat near a guy who was dressed in a fancy suit and smoking a pipe - we found it hilarious and spoke about him in egg language so he wouldn't understand it (we weren't being cruel, just found him quite interesting as it was a Friday afternoon and he was dressed exactly like a peaky blinder while smoking a pipe). We saw some really cool people in the Oasis as we usually do, we like to ogle and drool over them while we look around the shop and not buy anything. We made a joke that the staff definitely get tired of seeing us two as we go to the market so often and we browse the same items and never buy anything. We also make constant jokes when we see a Yungblud item and go "oh my god, it's your favourite singer". Rara also hates Alice In Chains for no reason but I really like them, so every time we are in HMV and I spot a CD ill point it out or when we are in Oasis and I see some merch ill say "look it's your favourite band". She gets so mad but it's hilarious.

We are going to town again today and no doubt we will do the same thing we did yesterday, in the same order because we always do that. 

See ya later!! :p

A flood shut my school today

Several schools in my area have shut down today after major flooding issues from the storm yesterday evening. Many places were flooded including several roads, causing issues with transport and road closures, especially in the south of the city, where I live. 

The storm yesterday consisted of pelting rain, claps of thunder and flashes of lightning. The rain started as I was on my way home, it got very heavy as I got off my bus and walked back to my house. It only got worse after that and my school had to cancel our Y11 parents' evening - which was a shame, but I didn't go anyway.
There is a river by my school, which must've overflowed and it doesn't help that my school is very old and has issues with the buildings, especially when there are storms. I wouldn't doubt that the drains overflowed inside the school. I'm not sure of the exact details of the floodage in my school. They announced that we should assume they're open on Monday 30th unless otherwise stated. 

This does give me more time to revise though, so its not the end of the world :)

GCSE Art page ideas!

 So I've just started year 11 and we're currently working on a project on eyes, but once we are done with that we will go back to doing our main projects individually - based on the topic 'fantastic and strange'. I've been giving some thought to what I want to do for the rest of my sketchbook, my coursework is due in January and there's still a bunch I should do. 

I was thinking since I'm such a huge geek and fanatic for horror movies, I'll do some pieces on different movies. I have different movies in mind from different horror genres such as:

-Dawn of the Dead "When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth"
-The shining
-Frankenstein
-Terrifier 
-Scream
-Silence of the lambs
-The Babadook
-Requiem for a Dream 


I might not do all of them or do others instead but those are just a few that I'm brainstorming. For each one that I do, I'll draw something from the movie and add some quotes- for example, from RFaD I'll probably draw the eye from the movie poster and a couple of needles as well as a quote such as "I suspect there will never be a requiem for a dream, simply because it will destroy us before we have an opportunity to mourn its passing"
I'm pretty sure my final piece will be based on this project so I'll also need to brainstorm ideas for that but because I'm so indecisive it'll probably take me a while and I'll end up regretting whatever I choose.

I'll update you when I have more ideas or when I've settled on something to start on!

no more procrastinating this year >:(  !!

Man or bear?

 Introduction: 
When the debate on whether or not you'd want to be stuck in the woods with a man or bear was trending, I was writing my speech for my English spoken language exam in July in year 10. I got a Distinction for it, which is the highest level you can get in marking. It was marked based on the structure and way I presented the speech, making sure I addressed the audience well and used all of the necessary features required in my speech. I'm very proud of it and found it while I was looking for my Macbeth revision, so I thought I'd share it here.


Speech:
Would you rather be stuck in the woods with a man or a bear? This is a question many women are asking themselves, many women chose the bear, but why? You'd think surely that a bear is much more dangerous and violent than a man, but evidence suggests otherwise. This debate is sparking crucial conversations about violence against women, with many sharing their personal experiences with violence.

Bears operate on natural instinct and need for survival. Its aggression is down to hunger or defence. The man, however, understands he is in the wrong, he does not continue out of necessity, but pleasure.

In a TikTok, a user compiled together some of the reasons that most women chose the bear, such as "the bear doesn't get sexual enjoyment out of it", "the worst a bear can do is kill me", "the bear leaves physical scars, then I'd be believed", "the bear because then id be congratulated for surviving instead of judged and questioned as to what I was doing or wearing". 

The National Park Service in the USA stated that bear attacks are "rare", and that there is an average of 40 attacks on humans by brown bears per year and just 1 fatal black bear attack per year. But between April 2022 and March 2023, 242 domestic abuse-related deaths were recorded, and police receive a domestic abuse-related call every 30 seconds, yet less than 24% of domestic abuse crimes are reported to the police. 1 in 4 women in England and Wales will experience domestic abuse in her lifetime, that's approximately 4 of us in this room. 2 women a week are killed by a current or former partner in England and Wales.  41% of girls in the UK aged 14-17 in an intimate relationship experience sexual violence from a partner. 1 in 5 children in the UK have lived with a perpetrator of domestic abuse and every 9 minutes a child becomes a victim of sexual abuse. If you think that's a lot of statistics, the list only goes on.
This doesn't even begin to account for every woman or girl every day, every week and every year that faces abuse from child sexual assault or exploitation, to rape and sexual assault, and even incest. Many cases go unreported; if they are, they're often not taken seriously. 

Some say "not all men", but what about not all bears? You know they can be dangerous, so you take precautions and fight back when necessary. We know it's not all men, but how can we know that this hypothetical man in the woods is part of that?

Men and boys weren't considered "spoils of war" in the Yugoslav wars for women to violate by the millions after achieving victory in conflict instigated and carried out by women. There are no countries where boys are habitually married off to ageing, wealthy women. There are no places where men are advised to only travel with a female chaperone because of fear of being followed or assaulted.
There is no legislation for digital cameras and smartphones to make an audible shutter noise when taking pictures because women couldn't stop themselves from taking pictures of men's private parts on public transport.

It's very important to realise that men can also be assaulted and women can be perpetrators. It is much less common but does still happen. We cannot be ignorant of the fact that in an overwhelming majority of cases, men are the perpetrators. It is truly disgusting that anyone can be capable of doing such violent things, we have to stay aware. We cannot use "not all men" and other arguments to weaponize against women. 

A lot of people have said the hypothetical was only created to make men look bad and stoke unnecessary controversy, which is a convenient thing to believe if you're unaffected by the reality represented by the hypothetical.
Was it hypothetical when Gabby Petito was murdered by her fiance? Or when a 13-year-old was raped in Wickersley Woods, Rotherham? Or perhaps in the "Babes in the Wood murders"? Was it just a hypothetical when 17-year-old Junko Furuta was tortured and raped for 40 days, then murdered? Or maybe when Bundy raped and killed at least 100 young women and girls? Need I say more? 

As a teenage girl, I often fear violence or harassment from men, and that one day I might be 1 in 4 or that my sister or future daughter might be. I know my friends and millions of girls worldwide fear the same fate. I've been cat-called, humiliated and followed home by men, I know several girls who've been victims of similar things - even one being raped when she was just 4 years old. I've seen first-hand how much it can destroy someone, so enough is enough.

This needs to change so that future women and girls don't have to live in fear or choose to be mauled to death by a bear. We need to act now to protect our women, the mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, partners and so on. This debate is so much more than a bear, it's raising awareness, it's supporting the victims regardless of gender and circumstance and it's realising that we need to change. I don't want to end up dead at the hands of a man.

Digging the hole deeper

I am digging myself deeper into this pit, deeper than the pit in my stomach that forms when I think about my feelings. It is more poisonous than the pit of a cherry. 

Is this youthfulness? Have I peaked already? I sure feel like it. 

My name's Sandy, I'm 14 years old
My insides are changing
And right now I just wanna grow up 

Sandy is how it feels to be a 14-year-old girl, and while I was 14 just 2 years ago, now, I can't help but think that I will be Sandy forever. Why does adolescence feel so alienating?
I think the reality of where I'm at in life is really hitting me right now. I previously posted about the Fig Tree Analogy, and I'm almost certain that the reason I'm being hit with all this again is that the reality of growing up and going to college in less than a year is really crashing down on me. I want to climb that tree and never come down because I can't look up at those figs from the bottom anymore. 

Who am i?

 Do you ever feel like there's something wrong with you but you can't quite explain it or figure it out? Me too. I wish this could be a post where I help others going through the same thing but unfortunately, it's not because I don't even know how to help myself. This is quite a vulnerable post. Every day I feel like I'm different people in one body, my mood and personality feel so mercurial that I don't even know who I am. I can't figure myself out and don't feel understood by anybody. I don't feel like anyone gets me. I always feel like a problem, and I feel like there is a problem inside me, but I don't know what it is. I want to be normal- I said this to my old therapist, and she answered with "What is normal?" and what I think normal is, but I can't put that into words. Normal is just normal, normal is not what I'm feeling, it's something else - it's just normal, you know? I don't know who I am, and it's killing me. I want to know who I am. I want someone to understand me, but I can never find them. I want to be left alone, but I also want help. I can't face whatever this is that's inside of me - I don't have the guts to truly understand myself. So maybe that is my problem? Maybe it's because I can never face what makes me uncomfortable and do something challenging. I don't want to be a person, but I want to be every person, I want to understand every emotion - maybe to try and figure out my own. I want to be something else, anything but myself.

But I'm just a teenage girl, is this really what life is? Is this really what I will be forever, unsure of myself and of my life?

I want to go to bed and sleep through it all.

"hell is a teenage girl" - Jennifer's Body

The fig tree analogy - i want to be understood

 

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” - The Bell Jar 

The fig tree is a metaphor used by Sylvia Plath in her novel 'The Bell Jar'. I hold this book dear to my heart and I love Sylvia Plath very much. She just gets me, maybe it is because she was once a teenage girl or maybe it's the mental illness that she also endured. This particular metaphor really resonates with me as I have NO clue where I want my life to lead, I have so many ideas and so many dreams that I can't live out. I'm unsure which fig to pick from my tree and which one is right for me. What if the fig I choose is rotten, or it's not sweet enough for me? I am the most indecisive person ever and I will admit I rely on others often to help me/ make decisions for me. It's a bad habit, I know but I don't know where to start. I cannot pick one fig from the tree, the sheer prospect of losing the others is daunting to me. This analogy is my Roman empire because this is truly all I can think of at the moment, the idea of having to pick A-levels for college and decide what I want to be doing in 10 years time is truly frightening. I fear that by the time I make this decision, all opportunities will be lost and all of my options gone. It is incredibly overwhelming and quite paralysing, I feel completely stuck and frozen. I can't face the things that I find difficult, I cannot do it. I always choose the easy way out and I fear that in this, there isn't one. 
I hate the idea of uncertainty and not knowing where I'm going to be in the future, I need it laid out for me, I need to know what is going to happen. I can't help but think I'd rather starve at the crotch of this tree than choose a fig to eat.

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”

Who am I, if I cannot be everything? 

I think that Sylvia and those much like her could be the only ones on the planet who TRULY understand, who really know how my brain works. I don't want my journal to be the only thing that understands me, because it can't reassure me, and tell me I'm okay.

Sylvia Plath is someone who inspires me, not only because she truly assimilated things in incredible ways, but because I am so much like she was. I completely understand her. The alienation and self-destruction she describes in her work resonates with me in ways I simply cannot put into words. Sometimes I wonder if it's just a coincidence that I am so similar to her, or maybe I am connected to her somehow. It sounds silly, but I want to believe that there is some link there, even though I know it's not true. As much as I wish I was not born into this body and growing into this mind, I do sometimes enjoy being able to understand and feel such complex and deep things - even though it brings great pain. Because I want to understand everything, every emotion and idea. I need to understand it. I know I'm naive and unpragmatic.

Will I ever be understood?