Don't worry, I feel swine.

After feeling pretty lousy for a couple of days my doctor has now prescribed me as having swine flu.

Now, apart from feeling like a complete hypochondriac I just feel like a regular ill person feels: sore throat, achey, coughing and a changeable temperature. Not at all how I imagined someone with swine flu would feel. Although, now after research into the virus I have the exact symptoms you are supposed to have- mild.

However, it is still scary having something which could potentially turn nasty very quickly. The statistics are small but they are undeniably there.

I also fear passing it on, especially to my Dad who has already been exposed enough to catch it. Even if I get over it, who's to say the person I hand it to will as well?

As I've learned in the past your fate can change very suddenly, one minute you can be a happy, carefree girl then the next your whole family is in meltdown. Fate in the past has never shown to look after me or my family so how can I trust it this time, even with something so mild?

Rejection

An emo title there sticking with the blog stereotype. I had a job rejection today, actually not even a job rejection- a free work rejection. I had emailed a free magazine in Edinburgh asking them if they needed a helper for over the summer period and the editor was lovely and asked to see my CV which she really liked.She then asked to see my work so I sent her four of my favorite pieces. I then get a reply saying they don't need someone at the moment and don't have space.

I felt like I had got a low mark back from an essay all over again. She seemed keen, she liked my CV yet when I sent her my work she didn't want me.

I know I have to get used to this, keep my head up no matter what, keep faith in my writing.

'They really didn't have space' I tell myself over and over again. 

But that little nagging self confidence demon keeps muttering 'it's cos you're shit'

I really need to silence him. Any tips?

What they don't tell you about grief.

You'll quickly discover that I am someone going through grief. I lost my mum four years ago. 'Four years ago?' many, I imagine, think: 'Surely, she can't still be going through grief?'

But that is what they don't tell you about grief- losing an important figure in your life results in a lifetime of it. 

I remember hearing about my Mum's tumour and walking down the road to tell my Grandma: her mum. And my sister stopping me in the road,- on a thin pavement my Mum had spent years campaigning to be made bigger. In my memory the weather was grey, when actually it was during one of the hottest periods of the year. My sister told me: 'this will be with you for life, you know?'

And I didn't believe her.

But I do now. 

I don't miss my Mum everyday, it's not like I am constantly aching with pain. It's just my life is totally different from what it was before she died. I'm completely different.This new Katie goes through her life, she laughs, she cries, she still can't decide what to wear in the morning and does something stupid, embarrassing or immature daily. She doesn't on the outset seem to be anyone with any real problems. But she doesn't know if this is her. I don't know if the person writing this is me.

I have lost something so huge I don't know where I fit anymore. And that's loss, for me, that's grief.

It's about losing a piece of your jigsaw and knowing it will never come back. You have to build the puzzle without it.

I never know who I can express these emotions to. My friends are wonderful but none of them have gone through this amount of loss, I worry that if I speak of my Mum or how I still am struggling to cope they shall question my strength. I wish I could turn back the clock and speak more about how I was feeling in that time- that year after she left when everyone was looking out for me. But I was so busy trying to prove I could get over this in record speed, slot myself back into the life of a regular 19 year old girl that I didn't talk at all. And now I feel silenced by unwritten rules of grief- which are probably all in my head anyway.

My sister, my Dad and my Grandma have also, obviously, been through the same loss I have. But I don't feel I can talk to them either as I fear knocking down their tower of cards. When you're trying to get on with your day, trying so hard not to let emotion bring you down, you don't need someone voicing all those scary thoughts in their head, the same thoughts your trying to forget. And everytime I try to voice them it results in their tears.

The only thing worse for me than my own grief is witnessing theirs.

My First Blog (my first lie)

I have this constant stream of thoughts going through my head at all times. When I think it, it sounds good. When I write it down, I tend to think it looks stupid. But I have to write it down. Something has to force me to do this.
Eventually I want to be able to call myself a writer and not look down in shame when someone asks to read a piece of my work. I want to have the confidence to look at something I wrote, something off hand and be proud of it.
Having spent my last three years writing for marks- often spending days and nights up laboring over something which was then to be handed back to me with a mark so disappointing I always felt I shouldn't have bothered, it is hard for me now, freshly graduated, to go back to writing for fun: to write for me, not someone with a red pen.
So that's why I created this blog. My First Blog. Except that's a lie as it is my second. The last one I created because my lecturers told me I needed one to get ahead in this business. They were probably right. But that's not why I have subscribed to this fresh, shiny, new blog. No, I have done this for me. To begin writing all over again. For now, I won't tell anyone about it. I won't post my status on facebook as 'Katie has a new blog- read it now!' as then I will be putting too much pressure on myself to be perfect. 

It may only be me that ever reads this: the great wide world of the web seems to allow anonymity for a non-commercial blogger like myself.

If you do read it I do hope you enjoy it (and don't comment on my grammar!)