Re-Reading Your Story So Far

During the Victorian Era books became far more affordable. With the improvements to the printing press, national literacy skills, and in general the price of making a book fell. Not only did this mean more people could get their hands on books, but also more people were writing books. To be fair there wasn't a lot to get up too, your choices were needle point, sit  in your house and hope someone drops by, or you could always die of polio writing seemed like a pretty decent pass time. 

Paperbacks became very cheap and people could either by a whole book or some books were sold a chapter at a time. In fact paper backs were so cheap that people would tear out the pages as they finished reading them and throwing them away. 

I feel myself doing this often. I finish a chapter of my life and I was to rip it out and throw it away. Sometimes because it was a difficult time, or  things haven't turned out how I wanted, other times things have all been great but for one reason or another I just find it difficult to look back on that time. 

When a boyfriend broke up with me when i was eighteen it broke my little teenage heart. Of course being eighteen I believed we were in love, the real thing that was going to go the distance and no one had ever had a love like this before. Of course like most teenage loves, surprise surprise, it didn't quite turn out like that. So I decided to start ripping this chapter apart. I changed how I looked, made my hair go from black to bleach blonde, I wore clothes I had never dared to before, changed how I did my make up and removed all traces of him from my life. I told my friends not to ask about him, hell I made sure they didn't say his name around me. A bit extreme now that I look back but I was a heartbroken teen and I wanted to pretend like that year of my life had never involved him let alone revolved around him. 

When my Grandmother died I wouldn't walk down the road her house was on. I didn't want to see a place that was once a place so full of love and family and happiness belong to a stranger who didn't know I use to love running around the bush in the front garden, and they had never attended one of the BBQ's in the back garden where my Grandmother would always rent bouncy castle for the grand children. It was difficult to look at a place where so many memories were formed and now I wasn't allowed in. I didn't want to forget my Grandmother but I preferred her house to become a dream house that exist only in my memories and the physical form doesn't exist any more to me.

Then there are friends, because I so often scrub out sections of my life. I clean out everything I don't want, and just carry forward what I am happy with means I am terrible at keeping in contact.I mean if you rip out a chapter it is hard to go back and just re-read the bits you enjoyed. I had some really close friends as a teenager, but then my Mum sold my childhood home and I no longer had a base in the place they lived it meant it was more difficult for me to stay in contact. Then when I would visit I was almost insulted that they had carried on their life with out me, they had made new friends and got on with their lives and they grew into people with these lives I hadn't been apart of. Although I still cared about them we know longer knew  other, and now when ever I see them post on-line I feel a prang of sadness for a friendship that once meant the world to me and now had faded. I find myself telling the stories of my teen years less as I slowly tear these pages from life. 

However recently things have been going pretty good for me. I have a nice flat, and I get to spend more time with my family. I am talking to my brother more, who has always been one of my favourite people, and I have a boyfriend who is caring and funny always tries to makes me feel good. A website decided my writing was good enough to let me be one of their contributors, and I have even landed a full time job. Then just the other day I was sitting in my room and something suddenly reminded me of one the places I had hated living and I stopped myself thinking about it, while telling myself " no you are trying to forget about that" and like a blinding light I thought to myself NO. 

I am not going to keep ripping pages out of my life. Everything I have been through deserves to be in my story. Things have made me unhappy and angry and sad, but the memories of my past should also be able to make me feel happy and I should be able to enjoy where I have been.

Maybe I should reach out to more people from my past and re-connect or maybe I should remove them from social media and just be happy that I got to experience them in one of my chapters, that were shared what we did when we did. Rather then watching their lives go on wishing I was still part of it. 

I am ready to start my Hardback and stop ripping apart the Paperback.

Rella 

Xx

The Next Chapter

After yet another time away from the world of the Internet I have returned. 
The past two weeks have been a crazy whirl wind of new experiences and excitement because on the 29th of September I moved from London to the Kent coast, into my very first flat with my boyfriend. 

Now I am no stranger to moving having now seven times in the past five years, but this one was particularly special as this time there are no house mates no shared kitchen no rush to be first in the bath room in the morning because it is just us to, and it is fantastic.

I remember when I was a kid I really wanted to move house, not because their was anything wrong with my childhood home but because I thought it would be exciting to choose a new room and paint it how I wanted and arrange my furniture in a new way. The idea of having a fresh space really excited me and I thought the process of moving looked fun as I couldn't quite fathom just how you pack up an entire house it just seemed impossible to me, I can now safely say I am somewhat of an expert in packing and moving. 

The thing is with this move I have ended up living in a place that I had never even considered moving to until August, and the idea just snow balled and when I came back form Scotland at the end of August within two weeks I had transferred my job over to Kent viewed about 8 flats and ended up signing some paper work, then I had two hectic weeks of packing up a room I had lived in for three years, say Goodbye to some utterly amazing friends from London and basically untangle myself from London's grasp and get ready to just slow down. 

My room in London

For once I am actually quite happy to be doing something that makes me more of an adult, having a flat makes me feel that I am actually making some progression in my life, I have moved away from my university, and left my student lifestyle behind. Honestly I feel so happy and content, I have the sea on my door step and I am feeling more positive then every about getting a decent job. The tides in my life are changing.

I look around me and I wonder how I managed to fit my whole life into one room, and so many things I have wanted to do for so long finally have a chance of happening. I have such a good feeling about this, and I look forward to being able to look back at my time in London with nostalgia and fond memories rather then remembering how stressful and depressing that city can be when you spend your days counting every penny to your name and realising you still don't have enough money.

This is what's at the end of my road!

This Chapter is going to be so very very good 

Rella

Xx

1838 Days of London

I always look forward to September because no matter what September always brings a change for me. It almost like September is my new year, to start fresh and redirect my life or push it forward to the next stage. 

When I was younger the school year always started in September, so I was either starting a new School or at least starting a new school year. I would get to put on my new uniform and pack up my new stationary and get ready to face what ever challenges I might come come up against. 

One of my most monumental Septembers was in 2009, the year I left my place of birth and moved to London. I grew up in Surrey, I got my education there, all my friends lived there and  my family home, the only home I had ever known. I had lived in the same house for 16 years, and earlier in the year I had to move out as my Mum moved to Scotland and I was in the middle of my final year of college, I decided to stay behind and moved in with an Aunt I really didn't know all too well. 

And it was my support group of all the people in Surrey that got me through. I didn't have my physical home any more, but the familiar streets were home, my friends were home, the trees that line every Surrey road was home. 

My wonderful friends who helped me out so much when my mum moved away

When I got my college A-level results I was sat in a cow shed logged onto a computer in  a makeshift internet cafe with my best friend, and I suddenly realised I would be moving away to London. Away from everything I had always known into something I had always wanted. I had achieved the most amazing thing I had ever done, I had got into university. I got myself through my GCSE's without too much support, I had dropped out of my first round of college and on my second attempt doing A-level my mum had up rooted the family, and yet I still managed to maintain my college work and it had lead to that moment, at 8 am in cowshed in Somerset. 

One of the hardest parts of moving was not having my parents to help prepare me to move. I had a friend who I had grown up with, he had lived across the road from me and our mum were best friends, and he had his mum too him out to buy things like plates and kitchen ware and new bedding, and I tagged along,, not really knowing what to do or where to start. My very best friend, who had been with my in the cow shed, did her best to include me in her uni prep but I started to realise how on my own I was. 

Don't get my wrong both my parents are amazingly supportive, but distance limits the actions they carry out. I feel in that one month of preparing to move to uni on my own, working out this maze of unknown territory of kitchen pan sets and storage solutions I became incredibly independent and have remained so ever since. 

I moved to London on September the 17th 2009. I packed everything of value into my Dad's car and he too me to Greenwich, he dropped me off, and he couldn't hang around long, he was only allowed to park for half and hour I think, and suddenly I was alone in this city,in a single room with my possessions in boxes for the second time in a year, with my friends dotted up and down the country and my family spread out as well, and I had not idea what the future had in store, in one year my life had totally changed, everything I knew was different now.

 

My lovely uni house mates in our first year

Turns out a lot of amazing things and opportunities. The past five years have been amazing. I have met some amazing people, and done some pretty impressive stuff and even got a degree and fell in love along the way, and still every September my life would take a new turn.

September 2010 

I moved in with friends into the worlds worst house in Lewisham, and got my first ever London based job

September 2011 

I moved into a shared flat with one of my old House mates and met my boyfriend 

September 2012 

My boyfriend moved in with me, and I went to my first ever wedding that just so happened to be my Best friends, and to to celebrate my year anniversary with my boyfriend, which was also marked my longest relationship ever

September 2013

 I quit my job in the start of the month and by the end I started a new one, and I started a College course

And here I am in September again, and I am facing the biggest change since my move to London. That is my moved out of London, today September 16th 2014 I submitted the final bits of paperwork for a flat in Kent. I have let everyone at work know I am leaving, told my Landlord in London I won't be signing a new lease and started getting things ready to leave. 

It is an end of an era, a great era, in five years a little patch of the world I knew nothing about became a new home, red buses line the streets instead of trees and some of the friends I held so close and drifted away and new ones have filled their gap, and the streets I call home have different names now. On the 29th of September I will walk out of this little flat in London and into a whole new Chapter of my life. It's scary  and its exciting, the sea will be on my door stop instead of the tube, and family once again within touching distance. 

I am excited, this next chapter 

Rella

Xx