Feb-BROO-arry.

February is a weird time. It’s weird even to say – I pronounce it ‘Feb-BROO-arry’, is that wrong? I know a lot of people who say ‘Feb-YOU-arry’. Anyone else find this ridiculously hard? Or are you 100% confident in your pronunciation of this funny little month’s name, and am I the only one who’s stupidly struggling? 

Photos by the lovely Hattie Darling; she’s currently working on an ongoing 

project taking photos of women with buzz cuts, called ‘Buzzed’!

So, here’s what’s been happening in February.

I’ve started yet another weird yearly challenge thingy (y’know, like the silly coffee measurements thing? Yeah. Btw I'm up to 85 this year so far), and it involves making Spotify playlists for each month of 2020. They’ll just be full of any and all songs/albums I hear and like, over the 29-31 days of each month. I’m hoping that looking back on them and re-listening at the end of the year will give me exactly the right kind of feeling(s) I had, when I was living in those days and weeks and months. Music is so powerful. I have genuine flashbacks, warm fuzzies and sometimes straight-up triggers when I listen to certain songs or artists; ‘So Close’ by Jon McLaughlin will always make me dissolve into tears, ‘Lovely Day’ fills me with bliss and refreshment, ‘Little Bitty Pretty One’ has me dancing on any and all coffee tables, waving my arms in the air… and ‘Survivor’ by Destiny’s Child will probably always make me act out an entire Zumba routine I learned when I was 18 and actually made time for exercise classes. I often feel like I need to mix up my music taste; for too long I’ve listened to almost exclusively pretty men with guitars and sooo many feelings, and of course a select few sassy queens who light a fire in my tummy. I want some in betweens, and being able to stream music has given me the opportunity to discover them. Well, I mean, paying for it each month spurs me to find new things because I’ve gotta make it worth the £4.99 (god bless you, student discount). 

So far, from my playlists, I can gather: January was moody, chilled, and not very sassy, while February so far is both subtle and vibrant. Goodness me, how wanky do I sound? Time to put my ironic monocle and decorative bunches of sage away…

What else is happening? Well, another one of my ‘main couples’ has split up, and this has caused me to question everything and doubt the fragile, fickle hearts of hetero men now more than ever before (and that’s saying something). That said, I am also filled with empathy and the most immense admiration for my closest queens who are powering through all the nonsense, recognising that it’s not their fault, and staying true to themselves. 

I tweeted about my loss of faith in love and romance, etc. and asked folks to come forward with their best love stories to make me believe again. And gang, you delivered. WOW. 

Weirdly I am finding that in recent months, approximately half my friends are having their hearts broken… and then the rest are having babies suddenly. It’s two extremes, really. Best of luck to both of them. 

Hattie Darling.

It was Hands’s birthday earlier this month, too. He casually mentioned recently that I’ve actually known him for 3 years of his life; when we met he was 27, shortly after our first date he turned 28, and now he’s 29. But then, he’s only known me at 25 and 26. Strange, eh? 

I like being with someone slightly older. For a long time some years ago, I seemed to only ever find myself with younger people. Maybe that was just where my mind was at the time, and what it felt it needed, but it never ended well and now I feel like I’m in a much better head space. 

Hands’s birthday was a stressful thing for me. He’d foolishly told me he wasn’t big into his birthday, and hadn’t done much to celebrate it in recent years. Now, you readers must know that I LOVE birthdays. I think I even love friends’ more than mine, actually. And as a Leo, that’s quite a bold claim. 

Well, the grand surprise adventure plan I’d made for us weeks before had fallen apart just two days before THE day, and I ended up half re-formulating, and half winging it. It worked out well – there was a cinema trip to see Bad Boys 3, a cute late lunch at an old school Italian place, and even an unplanned visit to a cat cafe thrown in – but all the worrying gave me a sizeable ulcer on my bottom lip (actually it started as a hormonal zit that gave me a fat lip, which I then bit so much it tore and formed an ulcer somewhere within the mashed up flesh, mmm) and I stumbled into bed with him that night saying ‘that was fun, but never again’. (He then told me not to expect the same level of effort for my birthday. Cheers, babe. Love you.)

Now for a horrible yet hot topic that’s really got to me, this month… Caroline Flack’s death was awful. The fact that she felt she had to take her own life is devastating. But what I’ve found just as bad, is the aftermath in the media. I’ve seen newspapers backtrack frantically when celebs they hounded and dragged before have passed away. The classic example would be Jade Goody, who the Daily Mail called ‘Britain’s brightest star’ after she cancer took her from the world (I legit remember reading those words in a headline, on the shelf at my local Tesco Express), but before her diagnosis went public they were repeatedly slagging her off for her ‘bad’ mothering, TV appearances and choices in romantic partners, for months. Now apparently some major press sources are deleting/archiving posts on their websites from just a few weeks ago, in which they trolled Caroline for her recent assault charges, and back even further, to when she dated Prince Harry and they loudly deemed her ‘unworthy’. These kinds of attacks in the tabloids, on TV, and of course on social media platforms, have had a hand in quite a few celebrity deaths, now. We can’t ignore the bad influence our national press is having on our mental health (and our relationships with our bodies, but that’s a whole other rant y’all) any more. After umm’ing and ahh’ing about it for a while, and being scared of backlash, I finally tweeted my little piece; I’m truly horrified that the people who help create these publications, whether that’s writing the odd nasty column, running meetings about what new gossip they can fabricate, or taking photos of famous folks unawares (often in their swimwear, ripe for the red rings of shame), are still going into work every day with all the awful things that are happening, and the people who are hurting and even dying, because of them.

There. That’s it. I’m done. 

Hattie Darling.

I’ve been living alone for almost two months, now. And I’m finding that in my new place, I always have something to do. Laundry, washing up, plant care, fridge and cupboard replenishment… things I haven’t had to think about since I was at uni, and even then, I was living with friends so we’d help each other out or just pop to the shops together (well, we did in the beginning of our tenancy, anyway). It’s not just the doing, either. It’s the expenses. I have always been thrifty, I think, and since this move I have been trying to budget; I’ve made a spreadsheet, saved up my old jars for refilling stations, and got into the habit of dropping the odd bit of change into a jar next to my laundry basket… but it’s still hard. 

I'm also finding more things are getting to me these days, on a deeper level. I'm told that's because I'm alone, and can't get away from my thoughts as easily; I don't have other people around to bounce off and share things with. 

Why am I talking so openly about my money stresses and minor personal crises, you may ask? I don’t really know. I think this is me going back to my old days of blogging; being completely honest, ‘writing out’ my feelings, and not really thinking about who could be reading. I like not seeing who reads each post, or who specifically lands on the blog every day. It’s better to see it just in numbers and bar charts in the ‘behind the scenes’ area of Blogger. I feel like it protects me, and makes it easier for me to continue sharing on here.