I Hate Seagulls, by Kate Nash.

I have a friend

With whom I like to spend

Any time I can find with

I like sleeping in your bed

I like knowing what is going on inside your head

I like taking time and I like your mind

And I like when your hand is in mine

I like getting drunk on the dunes by the beach

I like picking strawberries

I like cream teas and I like reading ghost stories

And my heart skips a beat every time that we met

It's been a while and now your smile is almost like a memory

But then you're back and I am fine 'cause you're with me and I'm in love with you

And I can't find the words to make it sound unique

But honestly you make me strong

I can't believe I've found someone this kind

I hope you'll carry on'

Cause you're so nice and I'm in love with you..

There's nothing NOT to love about me.

So we trample in singing and linking arms with each other and the humble six of us form circle and start playing a game with the overhang of a drunken haze and more importantly a good bit of dutch courage. We start playing an unnamed game involved a bouncy ball and a whole lot of secrets and part heartache.

What you had to do was tell a fact about yourself and then bounce the ball to another person who had to do the same. It started off with silly things about things that turned us on, and to honest in went into one of those memorable nights where you really feel the impact of each others lives laid on top of you. I got to really challenge my own honesty from embarrassing childhood memories to life's uncertainties, and so did everybody else.

A lot of people were revealing personal insecurities and battles. I felt like being honest in a seemingly different way and instead of telling something laughable, embarrassing or revealing to just tell something which showed a different angle. My fact of that bounce was; 'I secretly think my body looks kinda awesome naked.' I got a load of woohoos and 'good on you's which made me think that it was a braver thing to say than 'I hate my body naked'

I started to think about how unacceptable it seems to be to be body confident. And I don't mean 'I think I'm the sexiest person in the world, I should be a model' confident. I mean the kind of confident where you realise you should be comfortable and happy and proud of your body rather than apologise over it and hide behind it.

I think when you're single especially when people make jokes about 'That's why you're single' and 'It's not my fault you can't get a boyfriend' you have to remind yourself why you are single; you love the independence, you love the freedom, you haven't found somebody who you want to put a lot of effort into, you're enjoying having a lot of time for yourself etc. You sometimes forget how wonderful you are, how somebody would be lucky to have you just as much as you'll be lucky to have them.

We need to remember as individuals we're totally unique. That the right person will see how talented, gorgeous, funny, kind and inspiring we are; and that's nothing to be afraid of. I'm not afraid of being single but I am afraid of wasting my time with somebody who won't get me, somebody who won't treat me right. I guess it's easy to get caught up in the bad things, and the things you try and change daily but just remember; There's NOTHING not to love about you. You're wonderful, and some day somebody wonderful is going to realise it too.

I wish I had a pet panda.

This is my life, and this is me.

My name's Janine and everytime I meet new people they tell the same jokes for 10 minutes and I never even pretend they're funny. I like video games and eating with my friends, especially at restaurants. I like drinking cider in the daytime talking and organising big nights out. I hate eating outside but I like going for a long walks with one person and feeling so much lighter afterwards; the same with long car drives.

My friends would describe me probably as clumsy, mostly inappropiate and a good laugh. We like doing almost everything with each other. From going out to hanging up washing and leaving the bins out. I think having somebody around you who'll always include you is one of the most valuable things you can ever be proud to have.

I believe in honesty, and this can come off as being very blunt. Once I've let you into my heart it takes me a long time to let go of you completely and I'm not sure I can fully let go at all. I don't trust others until they trust me first and I give out my life story when I've had a few drink and am feeling nostalgic.

I hate snobbery, and those who'll add you on facebook yet walk swiftly past in real life. I've no time for those who break you down to build themselves up or those who never even give you a chance. I believe that people are in the most part good and you have to believe that to get anywhere in life.

I get stressed, angry, and go absolutely ballistic if somebody belittles or patronises me. If my hearts broken I say everything I can to hurt somebody back and I feel the song Leave me Alone (I'm Lonely) so much it's pretty embarrassing. I also feel like I wrote 70% of all the Kate Nash songs she's ever put on an album. Joni Mitchell always makes me think of my childhood and very distant ex-boyfriends who bought me hot chocolate in winter.

Winter makes me feel more creative than the summer ever does and that warm fuzzy feeling going around town when the Christmas lights are on makes me think about falling in love for the very first time.

And I love being the only girl in the room.

Letting it float on.

So you're all having a good laugh and you get that feeling again, as the subject arises. You do that thing where you change the subject to what's for dinner or what movie you're going to watch but it steers right back and all you can do is ask questions as if it doesn't really hurt you. Y'know the 'really?' and 'When did this happen?' questions with a smirk as if it's all great craic. All you can do is pretend to be watching what's on TV or go and grab yourself the fifth ice lolly of the night. You come back in 10 minutes once you've picked up the clothes on your floor and got into your jammies at 8 o'clock.

By this point the conversation has steered away from the original event but has got to the point where if you leave they might wonder why. That ball of sand is at the very top of your throat as you hear more and more about it with everybody's point of view thickening and threading together you witness that you haven't spoken in a pretty long time and you have to say your piece. your shoulders shrug down as you try to say how you feel without turning into an emotional wreck and again telling your life story.

You just gotta let it float on.
And you gotta keep dancing, if nothing else.

This looks amazing.

One Tree Hill.

Experiencing the experience.

I have been thinking recently about all the different things in life; all the different areas in life. In work, friendships, career, church, learning, parenting, and absolutely everything else we learn practically everything we know through experience, we learn how to be better in experience.

In work, if I make a terrible mistake and y'know a customer gets narky all you can say is that you'll do something different to get what they want perfect. You will try again, using what you've done wrong to show you how to do it better, and I think that's what's life's all about.

You see we can often be intimidated through lack of experience. Lets say career wise because generally it's the more experience the better; the more you've been through, witnessed, worked at and successfully achieved, the more it appeals to others and of course the more it helps us as the worker. Obviously not all experience is good experience (think abusive relationships) but in the long term - it really is. Although we get hurt and all the rest of it, without some bad experience we'd really be no better off. We'd never be able to pick ourselves and dust ourselves off. In fact if all we had was good experience as soon as we ran into bad experience we'd immediately be just be destroyed, and that would well, be then end of that because we haven't LEARNT how to deal with failure.

Experiencing anything in life is what makes our lives what they are, what makes us strong and honestly what makes us weak. We are weak because of previous (or current) life traumas which do hold us back from living with the dreaded 'What if?' question and the thought that actually it's comfortable here so I'm just going to stay here (even in misery). Yet naturally this is denying ourselves any breed of life experience at all.

You see we listen to these songs and watch these movies that tell us that all we need is to believe in ourselves yet we've all these people on the dole chasing big pipe dreams and not doing anything about it, waiting for a publisher, a movie producer, a recording artist to knock on their doors and offer them a job. We think if we listen to enough love songs and read enough books about people finding themselves on a road trip that suddenly we'll fall in love and it'll last forever and we'll discover who we are and it'll be wonderful and we can paint our houses lilac. It's just LIFE that we've got and life is what we have to embrace.

I just think life's too bloody short for crying about how hard your life is or telling everybody about why you're self-conscious or why you don't believe in love. I think what we should do is just wise the flip up and go out and meet people, go places take that chance and to a certain extent just don't ever look back. Life's an experience (not to sound too like a Marian Keys novels) and instead of being afraid we should just experience the experience and man up to what we have to to do be happy.

Promise this is the last one of these.

I am so angry. And I hate writing this blog about it but I literally just don't want to tell anybody and I don't want encolse lots of details about how hurt, and upset and absolutely balistic I feel. I just need this to sit here as a reminder of what I have to remain like to not get hurt like I did. A reminder that I have to continue like this because going back to my attitude before this is the absolute worst thing I could ever do.

'Nothing is real, until you let go completely'

And yeah maybe I didn't let go. Maybe I was just that stupid and that vulnerable that I thought maybe it'd be okay and maybe things would work out great and I wouldn't get hurt anymore if I just acted a certain way but no matter how many good words you say about someone, and how much you pretend they're actually really honourable they just rip you to pieces without ever knowing what you're going through in the first place.

I need to just stop and think about the people in my life that actually accept and love me all the time. The ones that listen, don't judge, don't patronise. And I swear right now that this is the last pathetic tears I'm going to pour out over this utter rubbish.