who the fuck was i two years ago

Two years ago I was merely 16 years old. It was 2013 and I was just about to finish my GCSEs which I had worked so hard for. It was a big moment in my life. It’s your first time in proper exam mode where they really count. But, as I watch my younger sister go through the same thing now, I try to keep a bit of perspective. (Sometimes I feel like I have too much perspective and that I'm so withdrawn I get literally nothing done apart from some crappy retrospective blogpost)

(eating burnt cake from a tin on a bus at 22:30ish, March 2013)

I remember crying in the street when I only achieved a B in history as I needed to get an A to study it at Alevel at my college (and history is the only topic I truly care about), and I also remember crying after my parents yelled at me for messing about rather than revising when I got home from my outburst outside the co-op. Looking back, I really don’t know what all the fuss was about. Sometimes the universe has its own weird way of working these things out and, when it just so happens to be a lucky coincidence that the timetable is in an order where the only available subject for you to study is history anyway, there is a little bit of faith restored in my miserable heart.

Though I do sometimes wonder that if this was my piece of luck in my younger years, and that the exam boards won’t be so forgiving this time around. Maybe they’ll expect me to do some work and achieve the grades that they actually require. Relying on leniency is probably the worst way to go into exams. I do worry about it but then again here I am sat at this laptop rather than looking at my economics notes and practising past paper questions in a cosy outside den like my friends.

Being around people who are so excellent at all that school stuff, when you're so distinctly average, is so difficult. You tell yourself that you are you, and that you just have to focus on yourself and what your grade requirements are and how you are going to achieve them – but when your close friends are solid AAA candidates, and you scored a D one time in a mock exam; it gets a lot harder to be so positive. Sometimes I think that going to this college was the worst decision of my life because I am so out of my depth and have had little enjoyment from the school itself, but I have met some great people and I think in some sort of weird way, they’d be just as lost without me as I would be without them. I don’t know if that what friendship is supposed to be like or if I'm being arrogant, but who knows. I think paths cross for a reason and even though I spent 5 years literally up the road from these people, the universe has its own little way of doing things that you just shouldn’t question.

(looking quizzical after finishing decorating an old friend's birthday cake, March 2013)

Aside from all the superficial stuff, I was also a bleach virgin and my naturally black hair was boob length and untainted by hair dye. In the last 2 years, if I could undo anything, it would be messing about with my hair so much. The process of growing it out in order to be bleached up again in about a year is slowly killing me and my black roots are barely 3cm long. I also have tattoos and have been drinking. I have smoked around 100 to 120 cigarettes (I estimate) and have had been through 2 handbag journals. I have moved the furniture in my room and bought high heels and make up. Hell, I've even had a real job with an hourly wage in the last 2 years. I have also been fired and called in sick when I just wanted a lie in. I have had knock downs from other jobs and spent an inhumane amount of money on lemonade and chocolate buttons from the corner shop. I have managed to retain contact with some of the people from my old school (and I think this is a massive achievement) and I have also made some friends I know I’ll keep with me for life no matter what city they live in or which country around the world.

(putting glow sticks in a bottle of coke at a camping trip, July 2013)

But not that much has changed. I am still sat on my bed typing on my laptop and I still have the same records in my record collection (although there are some new additions) and I still enjoy macaroni cheese more than spaghetti bolognaise. I still only enjoy history at school and I don’t think that’s going to change even in the next 3 years (if I get into university). I still need glasses to see anything out of reaching distance and I still steal my mum’s luxury eyeshadows. I think that although I've changed on the surface and on the inside, I'm still the same person I was 2 years ago, but now with longer legs and more opinions on people in bars and with more clothes in my wardrobe.