Grief and Pills. Pills and Grief.

Pills.

This week has all been pills, pills, pills.

I wake up unable to walk and reach for the codeine.

I end up in the doctor's chairs and magnesium vitamins are making their way down my throat.

I wake up with a cracking headache and I reach for the paracetamol.

The next day it’s the cold and the lemsip capsules are jumping into my hand.

When we get to the final day and its all body aches, fevers, and swollen glands there’s not much left, so hey lets take them all together.

But what happens when there is no pill you can take to get rid of the pain. The pain inside. The pain of losing your inspiration. The pain of losing yourself. The pain of being hurt.

This week has been the worst week of my life. I might have fought off malaria this year. I might have had my kidneys start to fail. I might have been forced into cold turkey from my addictions. But no, this week was the worst.

Why. Well I never want to have to go in a broken circle again.

You break up with someone and the cuddle you want is your Grandfather.

Your Grandfather dies and the person you want to talk to breaks up with you.

It goes on and on. Again and again. No release until you realise you are just empty and upset. No cure for that if you want to keep your soul. But is your soul even there to keep. Not really.

When I look at why I am sitting here shivering grabbing that lemsip an hour too soon, I am not surprised my body just gave up. I would have if I was trying to run round in circles after my emotions.

There aren’t any left, no tears left to cry, no migraines left to start, no pills left to take.

Grief. That’s the illness, and memories are the only cure.

Memories of greatness, inspiration and strength. Strength you have to channel when that person steps out of your life, and just feel their comfort and their happiness of taking that next step. Because while this is one journey, there next one has just begun, hand-in-hand with the one they love. I love you Grandfather, thank you for making me dream and stand on my own two feet. 

1 year, 8 boys and an opened book.

I have kissed a lot of frogs in my past but this year I took it one step further. I dated a lot of frogs instead.

Now pre-university, I dated a uniboy. What did he teach me? That you want something when it is gone, that you can completely grow apart from someone and that he was actually a complete sweetheart and I was an idiot. Simples.

A boy asked me out at university and I learnt to trust your own gut and not your friends. My friend at the time, she actually wasn’t the nicest, said he was too short. She was wrong and I regretted not giving it a go a fair bit.

But it was this past year where I jumped head first past commitment issues into the dating pool. It was educational to say the least.

1)    Undefinableboy: I still don’t understand how or why we ever ended up starting, or what we even were. Drunken hook up after drunken hook up. Late night phone call after late night phone call. The real issue was that I developed feelings and he didn’t. What it taught me is that two people can have a completely different concept of exactly the same event. It also taught me that someone has to be mentally sound in an undefined relationship.

2)    Oldboy: He was a family friend: good start. We had hooked up before with amazing chemistry: very good start. He was 35: hold up there. This at first was not a problem but soon came the realisation that age can be an issue. In this case we are now friends and likely to one day hook up if neither of us have kids when I’m 35 and he is 50. Works well enough.

3)    Wildboy: Now he was sexy, attractive and adventurous. He was actually a breath of fresh air against graduates and the like. He had a PhD, he had been in a Thai prison, he had a tattoo on a certain bodypart. The problem is he was wild, exciting and only really suitable for the short-term. Not the husband material if you get what I mean.

4)    180flipboy: Oh wow. Now he was the long-term husband material boy, until he did a 180 degree shift on me. Queue: lets be in a relationship (me: only open), lets get you to spend 100s of pounds calling from Uganda, lets talk about how much I love you, how you are the best girl I have ever dated etc etc etc: bullshit. So he broke up with me while I was in a stormy taxi in Uganda. Chicken squawking one side, baby screaming on the other, me with tears pouring down my cheeks in the middle. It was not the best moment. It got even worse when he broke up with his new girlfriend and came crawling back a sex-obsessed arse hole (queue majorly off-putting for most girls out there, majorly majorly off-putting for Christian girls out there).

5)    Then came Charityboy. Tall, dark, handsome and now married. He was, for both of us, the most confusing element of relationships. He inspired me, his passion for charity was sexy as hell and I felt like I was drawn to him whenever I saw him. When I found out about the girlfriend that all came shattering down and I guess it was his charity work and what he taught me about it that made me really fall for him. So that taught me that you have to decipher what makes you mad about someone – them or what they do.

6)    Lovedhimsomuchboy. It actually hurts to type his name. He was the first boy I loved, the first to break my heart, but worst of all the first to make me completely change all my spots. He had a girlfriend. It was a one-time thing and then a month later erupted. He would say he loved me so much, he’d do anything for me in the world. The moment I left the country he went straight back to her and my phone came full of death threats and declarations that I was mad and imagined the whole thing. So what did that teach me. Love is not nice, simple or understandable. It is painful, it is mean and it hurts like hell when it is yanked away from you, but it is still worth every minute (bar becoming the other woman skank).

7)    FWBboy was an amazing discovery to add to the list. He became a good friend beyond anything. He was there when I needed him and actually made me feel worth more than a hole. So I can just keep it simple. Sometimes you will get on with someone really well. Sometimes that same person is ok to kiss, to hug, to cuddle, to do many things. But maybe that person isn’t relationship material. I don’t know if that is timing, not being emotionally available or just life, but all I know is he was exactly what I needed at that precise moment, and I am so grateful for his existence in my life.

8)    Unexpectedboy. One night with a friend and we swung open an unwritten book. We will have to see what happens with this one, but I guess surprises come and go.

Now this chorus of boys might leave something to be answered. Where now? I have two possible options. The sensible choice and the not so sensible choice, as well as various of the above reemerging. But one thing can be said for certain – I have learnt a lot this year. A hell of a lot, about myself, about men and about dating. 

I now want a relationship (I think) – casual and open didn’t do it for me in the end (tonight anyway). I now want to be respected, to be loved, to be adored (definitely). I now want to have someone texting me at night, to be holding my hand during the day . But most of all I now have loved for the first time, fell for a friend for the first time, and well yeh there were a lot of firsts.

So what has this got to do with God and Christianity. Well because God gave me what I have been asking for. I prayed to be loved and I was, but beyond that he gave me more than I could have ever dreamed. He allowed me to experience, learn and mess up by myself - just like a Father would. So thank you God. 

** A certain friend has been left out of this list because his book is opened, closed and remains completely unanswered. I hope one day to decipher what and who he will become in my life. Right now he is something very special with his own category personalised just for him, and that is someone I am very grateful for. 

(Trigger warning) Gender stereotypes, social rape and the He4She campaign

No person deserves to be punished against a gender stereotype. No child deserves to be hit for not conforming to a life of blue or pink. No woman deserves to be raped because she is a lesbian. No man deserves to be disfigured because he is gay. No celebrity deserves to be hounded by paparazzi because he is transgender.

God created each and every one of us in our special way. Each and every person is different. Yes, there is a reason behind different sexes - sexual reproduction. But sex is not gender, far from it. 


Gender is the social norm which surrounds the accepted behaviours and in turn hierarchy which exists in our and many other societies. That's it - a social norm.


I am not talking sex. Sex is the biological differences between men and women. Yes a woman can bear a child, feed a baby, has different hormones. Men grow beards, muscles, broader shoulders. In turn these biological differences come to play a large role in the gendered norms we have constructed.


The woman as a mother and the father as a protector. But these social norms were not constructed to be a level of comparison, a level which if you fail to reach it you will be punished. They were invented to allow our society to exist, to allow our population to grow, to ensure that the world continues to have enough people on it to survive. 

We are now at a level where our world has many people of different shapes and sizes to survive. We even live in a world where there are robots and computers which are able to do many of the tasks which humans used to be able to complete. 

These machines are the reason that many women can now go to work. Before the washing machine, the dishwasher, the electric iron - ie before the 1950s - the western house wife was a figure for a reason. She relied on her domestic prowess and her beauty to find a husband who could support her and her children. That was part of the package, that was part of the social hierarchy. 

But around the world, right now, people do not have washing machines or electric irons. Some people don't have fridges, or electricity at all. In these places many women look after a home, raise the children, and well work. They work to have independence, to send their children to school, to eat, to survive.

But all over the world there is still a hierarchy between men and women, a gender stereotype, a social norm. 

This is both ways. One of my greatest annoyances is when you hear of young men committing suicide because they do not reach up to the epitome of masculinity. All men deserve to be able to cry. They too have emotions. When you hear of men taking too many steroids to live up to the ideal of masculine muscle, the triangle. When you hear of a man abusing a woman, or hurting someone or something, to show he is a 'real man'. 


In the same way I have come to believe that one of many reasons behind the rape culture in the UK is the worrying trend of 'us' and 'them' which has become part of the feminist discourse. The way that masculinities are challenged and men are painted as an enemy. This backlash has as much to blame on women, as it does to do on men. It is not to blame on a particular grouping of us and them, but a total social hierarchy. 

In ways I believe in it is the ability to remove oneself from their own body. Many rapists, social rapists should we call them, the ones that get drunk at university and force themselves on a girl when she says no; or the husbands that believe that having sex with their wife is a right. Many of these social rapists would not accept that they are rapists. If you asked one of these men if he was willing to ruin a woman's life by forcing her to have sex with him against her will, he would probably say no. Yet he has done it anyway. 

Rape is a very, very common problem in the UK, and all over the world. But why is this? Why is it no longer those of criminal mind that believe they have power over another human being? That is what rape is often associated with: power play. 

I am not saying that rape is at all one way either. Men get raped, by men, or by women. Women get raped, by men, or other women. So why is there a backlash where sexual gratification against another's will is a common theme in many young people's lives? Because it is - however much we, society and the government, try to ignore it. 

Who can blame us? How does one sit there and admit that society has created, and maybe it always has, people who will force themselves upon others whatever the consequence?

For a rapist, a rape can last a few minuites, a few hours. They can walk away, gratified. For a victim it can take a lifetime. 

I have many theories to as why rape is so common, but one, which might be truly controversial is that rape is a backlash against gender stereotypes and those gender stereotypes becoming challenged by societal development. 

Now I don't know if this is true but could rape by a man over a woman or another man be a way to prove ones masculinity, if a man feels that it is being diminished by the feminist movement or by women beating him at work for example? Is rape of a man, or another woman, by a woman, due to a woman needing to feel power, to show that she is able to live up to this new position? Even though a house wife, raising a family, is in no way a lower position than a career. 

What it can show is a lack of social confidence which is becoming widespread. I am sure that many people would accept that rape and respect for other human beings, don't go hand in hand with happiness, confidence and love for other beings. What is to stop rape progressing to crimes which are still uncommon (in a way), like murder?

This is why I believe that the new He4She campaign is important. It is essential that we break down any us and them in the fight for gender equality and also the fight against abuse and rape. It is essential to acknowledge that men are raped, men are victimised. It is essential to not label women as the victims and men as the persecutors. It is essential to establish a support network for all victims. It is essential to provide an educational system which teaches rights, responsibilities and respect for every person on this planet. It is essential to stop a cycle in which people need to show power and supremacy by hurting, punishing and in turn psychologically murdering others. 

In time I want to join this movement. I want to found my own movement to introduce these classes and this love and respect to children all over the planet. Boys4Girls and Girls4Boys if you will. There was a reason for gender stereotypes - that cannot be denied - and there still is - but that was not to label us and them, but to work in cohesion, together, for a greater good, a greater world, a greater, and loving, society. That need has not gone, in ways it is more important than ever.