So, this is apparently becoming an annual thing. I feel like, even for someone as unorganized as me, one post a year is achievable, even if there’s no rhyme or reason to them.

Here’s the thing, the only real reason I’m writing this post is because I’m too much of a coward to say it out loud. It’s been five years and it’s still difficult to talk about verbally and I couldn’t tell you why, only that it is.

My last proper relapse into self-harm was roughly five years ago this semester. I think it’s around September, honestly I kind of blocked it out so it really could be any time around now. But still. Five years.

I still have the scars. I still have the memories and the urges and the battles. It never goes away, not really.

But I made it.

As typical of this time of the year, my brain has gone into possible meltdown and instead of emphasizing what is good, it immediately thinks of what is bad. What is broken. I’m very good at focusing on what is going wrong currently in my life, magnifying every issue until I’m pretty sure that nothing is good and will ever be good again and I’m trudging along without any kind of aim. I will never achieve anything.

So I’m using this post to show myself that isn’t true. It can’t be. Because five years ago, when I decided enough was enough and I had too many lines up my arms showing me that bad times can never truly leave, I thought it was impossible. I thought any kind of normal life, any kind of real feeling, was impossible.

(depressed but still cute)

Losing a coping mechanism is destroying. You go through days drowning, except now someone has taken away your armbands and Jesus Christ it’s been so long since you didn’t have them that you’ve forgotten how to swim. Your lungs get more and more water inside, sloshing around, slowing your breathing until every breath hurts. Every day, you get a little fuller. Every day, your breathing gets a little slower. Until suddenly, it’s like you’ve been drained. Someone’s poked a hole in you and you’re finally leaking and the air is coming back and the water is fucking off. And you’re learning how to swim again. Instead of drowning, you remember how to float. So you float. And you’re not moving forwards, you’re not saving yourself really, not yet, but you’re floating. You’re managing. And then you start moving your arms. Slowly. It still hurts, you’re still rusty, not quite good enough to front crawl so you just doggy paddle, stopping every thirty seconds for breath. But eventually, eventually, you’ve swum so far that you can see the land, getting faster with every day. You can see safety, the place you thought didn’t even exist, and fucking hell you’ve done it. You can look back at that exact spot that you drowned in, you can see how empty it looks now without you there, screaming.

Recovery is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’m still doing it, like I said. Those urges don’t ever go away fully, they don’t ever truly shut the fuck up, no matter how much you try and drown them the way they used to with you. But you can muffle them. And the more they’re muffled, the slower they get, the quieter. And it’s easy to ignore them and get on with your life on land.

(15 and never quite mastered costume making)

Okay look, I’m an English student – metaphors are my thing. I’m not really sure how to display a point in other ways so just go with it.

But at one point, I really was drowning. Fifteen year old me hadn’t just forgotten how to swim, it was like she’d never learned and she’d forgotten how to talk and breathe and there was a general acceptance that this was life now. This IS life now. Nothing will change. Nothing will get better.

But that just isn’t true. Rough patches last however long they last, but they never last forever and the fact is that it’s been five years and I’m still here, still breathing, lungs only filled with a little bit of water. I’m alive, which fifteen year old me wouldn’t have comprehended. AND SO – if fifteen year old me can’t believe where I’m at now, then twenty year old me won’t believe where I’m at at twenty five and so forth and so forward. Just keep swimming and all that.

I survived the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. I can survive anything. I can survive the memories I know is associated with so many of the scars, I can survive a deadline tomorrow (that I’m definitely not procrastinating by writing this), I can survive a degree and whatever else is thrown at me because the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was entirely to do with me. I caused the problem, I realised the problem, and fuck it I fucking kicked that problem so hard it’s still bruised to this day, which means any problem other people present has nothing on me.

At least, that’s what I’m telling myself in order to get this essay written.

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IMPOSTER SYNDROME

Ahem

It’s been a while.

I mean, a while may be an understatement but hey… at least I’m back?

In another post I promise I will address my eerily long absence with a 20 page rant on work schedules, laziness and a fight with HTML I have long since accepted I will always lose, but today, I’m here to discuss something that’s been on my mind a lot recently, and that is the idea of Imposter Syndrome.

To those who don’t know what Imposter Syndrome is, god bless your sweet innocent summer souls, I envy your self-confidence and worth and hope you never lose it. However, the majority of us will completely understand the feeling of Imposter Syndrome, that idea of looking at everyone around you and going “What the hell am I doing here?” That feeling of not being as good as or good enough for anyone and everyone around you.

I go to the University of St. Andrews, regularly listed as a top university in Scotland, Britain and the world. It’s a big name to live up to and I have had a lot of interested oo-ing and ah-ing whenever I tell someone. There’s a reputation; I mean the freaking monarch to be came here so of course I expected a high standard. What I didn’t expect is the sheer level of brilliance – which admittedly was stupid on my part. I am surrounded by geniuses from all areas of the globe (namely America – good lord there are a lot of you here), and for someone who has always been doubtful of their ability, it’s kind of taking an impact.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know that buried way down deep under the self -doubt, insecurity and rage against a system that takes a love of learning and twists it into a fear of failure, there is an intelligent person in my brain screaming “FOR GOD’S SAKE JUST LISTEN TO ME!”. But as someone who got into this university with a questionable work ethic and grades lower than the conditions they set me, that voice has shrunk down to a whisper, unable to compete with the other voice who’s simply and monotonously repeating “Why are you here?”.  The first few times it’s easy to bat it away, ignore it, keep pushing through knowing that you deserve a place. But after two months of it, it can be exhausting.

I’m absolutely happy to be here, and I wouldn’t dream of dropping out or losing a place I did genuinely work hard for, even if the grades didn’t show it, but this battle with myself is something I have to deal with day in day out, the idea of insecurity and fear as I write an essay, knowing it’s not good enough but knowing I’ve left it so late that it’s what I have to hand in, watching friends who are just brilliant tear themselves down intellectually because they believe they’re stupid, while you sit there knowing factually they are more brilliant than you could arguably ever be.

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There’s no real point to this, and I’m fully aware of how depressing this is to kick off my blog again, but I guess I just want to let people know that if you’re going through this, no matter what context or your ability, you’re not anywhere you shouldn’t be, and that’s something I too need to remind myself. I deserve to be here just as much as Prince William did and just as much as anyone else does, otherwise quite simply, I wouldn’t be sat here right now, watching the waves crash into the pier, writing a blog post about how I don’t feel clever enough to be at a top university. I just need to remind myself more often.

My Naked Palette is one of my most well loved products. A selection of everyday shades that could also be turned into much smokier nightwear with amazing quality and pigmentation. However, I am also aware that for a lot of people the Naked Palette is slightly out of their price range, and so we look to the other palette in the photo. 

w7's In The Buff Palette in Lightly Toasted is pretty much a shade by shade copy for a fraction of the price. The quality of the shades is not as good as the Naked, but still very good for the price, especially with the Toasted, Smog and Hustle dupes. The Naked Palette as a whole has more of a creamy, shimmery finish while the w7 does verge on glittery for a few shades, especially the Creep and Gunmetal shades. However, Lightly Toasted still has a lot of pigmentation in most of its shades and is long lasting and creamy.

Something I do love about this palette is the Half Baked dupe. The Half Baked shade in the actual palette brings me out with an allergic reaction and my eyelid swells up (yeah, it's not fun). However, the w7's shade is pretty much exactly the same shade and I have had no reaction as of yet! 

Lightly Toasted Palette's quality, while not at the same level as the Naked, lives up to the expectations I had when I purchased it and more. While w7 is a US brand, I managed to pick this up by complete surprise in B&M Bargains of all places for something ridiculous like £4. So if you are around somewhere that sells these and you want to give the Naked Palette a go but you don't want to fork out, here's your option!

Thanks for reading!

Shannon

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With summer comes heat, and with heat comes sweat and the inevitable smudging and melting of make up. Bearing this in mind, I decided to expand my matte lipstick collection by picking up three shades of the MUA Velvet Lip Lacquer online to give a try. The shades I got are Criminal, Reckless and Serene (left to right). 

Reckless and Criminal really impressed me. Both were highly pigmented and incredible colours. While slightly sticky at first application, they quickly dried and mattified, and after this you could hardly feel them on. They are slightly drying due to how matte the finish actually is. They do not transfer at all and keep their opacity for several hours, even after eating, drinking and sweating. 

However, with Serene I had some issues. While it applied similarly to the other two, I found after a few seconds of it being matte the product almost seemed to peel off my lips from the centre. It gave a much streakier finish and also did not have the same opacity as the other two lacquers. Due to the picture being slightly off on the website, I found the colour to not match me at all and instead make me look ill or an odd colour. However, on application I'm really not sure who this would suit...

All in all for £3 each, the quality of Reckless and Criminal was unexpected and far surpasses what I actually was expecting. Definitely a recommendation for those two, and maybe stay away from Serene.

Shannon

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I spend nearly all of my time watching some sort of media, be it YouTube, films or tv shows. One I have been loving recently and mentioned on my weekly roundup a few weeks ago was Daredevil, a Netflix original that I have fallen in love with in a big way. 

As an actor, the acting is one of the first things I notice in anything I watch. I want it to be believable, I want the subtle idiosyncrasies that real people have and the continuity of real life, and this delivered. Big time. The show stealer for me was Charlie Cox in the role of Matt Murdock. He really stepped up to the part and showed a complex character full of internal conflict and a want to do the right thing, but not knowing how to get there. He also really played with the Catholicism of the character and how it would influence his actions, and we as an audience can see this. 

We also see the strengths of the other actors, with the likes of Elden Henson as Foggy and Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk, the main antagonist. Henson shows a complexity to the character of Foggy that I believe someone else may have missed. This really helps add to the friendship between Foggy and Matt and makes it incredibly believable. D'Onofrio also shines in this, with the audience ending up almost sympathising with the character we should hate. A highlight from the entire series is the "ill intent" monologue, as it truly shows his capabilities. There are many other scenes that come to mind, but in order to avoid spoilers, I will not mention them.

Another thing I really liked about the show was the continuity and style. Each episode started off exactly where the last one had finished, and so as a result felt like an extremely long film.  There was also a huge amount of detail .e.g. a healing bruise over a few episodes. This just helped add to the realism. Things such as lighting and cinematography also impressed me massively as despite it being a  TV show, they were incredibly thought out and clever, helping to set the scenes nicely. 

All in all, the only real fault I can find with it is that Season 2 isn't out sooner! Definitely recommend to anyone who is looking for a new TV show to watch.

Shannon

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