If your house was burning down…

If your house was burning down which of your favourite possessions would you save? Computer, books, music, gifts, jewellery, clothes, shoes? That little trinket that your best friend from school gave to you, the one you’d probably burn to death trying to find as you can’t remember exactly where you have put it? Tiddles the cat; who ran out of the cat flap the second the smoke started? Who is currently staring at you bemused, as you, coughing and spluttering, crawl around calling out his name. Did you know, he’s wondering why you are higher up on the food chain when you haven’t realised that the house is burning and that you should just get some cat food and get the hell out as he quite likes owning you and really can’t be bothered to exert the effort needed to train a new human.

It all depends on the kind of person you are as to what you would consider worth battling death for. What type of value something has, is it monetary or sentimental? Why save something that only has monetary value, you get to write a list for that and claim it on your house insurance, a lovely long list in which you can sorrowfully declare that the HD flat screen TV is now toast, along with the sofa, the oven, the washing machine, everything you own, and honest, you really did own all of that stuff.

But what if you want to save something sentimental? The trinket; the photograph of Gramps who is sadly long passed; the stuffed toy that you’ve had since you were one? Those are things that can’t actually be replaced, yes, you’ll always have the memories, but the actual things make those memories real, they become fragmented, these are the things that become part of who you are, even if you only bring them out on special occasions.

If your house was burning down which of your favourite possessions would you save? What if you wouldn’t save anything? Could you stand and watch everything you own burn? Could you even list everything in your house, in your life?

We live in a world where lists have become important, stupid lists, lists that mean nothing. But we also live in a world where lists have significance, the lists on memorials that mark the dead from the wars, the list for child abusers, registers at school. Can I sit and list even two things that I would take if my house was burning? At first I would have to say no, but on giving it closer consideration, I can list three things, but one of them isn’t as important as the others. If I was feeling fickle I would take my laptop, because I like my music, the insane amount I have on iTunes , despite the fact I never know exactly what I want to listen to. If I have the chance, some mystical ability, if my house was burning down I would take words from the blaze. Imagine the smell, the blaze, the flames licking and devouring everything, the emotions you would feel, imagine losing the ability to describe them.  In doing that, to be able to describe the experience, I would also have to remove myself from the burning building.

I don’t like lists, they compartmentalise. I don’t like ‘stuff’, we live in a consumer culture and I have been dragged straight in, let it burn and buy some more. I use lists. I list how I feel, what I have done with my day, what I need to buy from the shop, knowing that I’ll forget, I just don’t like them.

If my house had burnt down, if I had had the sense to save myself and the words, I would write one of those lists, I would write a shopping list, and the first two things on it would be a fire alarm and batteries.

Obsession (*Trig as mentions eating disorders)

Deadly Obsession

 

Hair pushed back? Check.

Bath running? Check.

Self-hatred running through the veins? Check.

One.

Two.

Three…

Vomit.

 

Society tells a woman that thin is beautiful. If you go in to any grocery store you will see shelves of magazines, and any aimed at women and teenagers are likely to have a picture of a slim model on the front, with the perfect face, the perfect pout, and of course, the perfect body. There used to be a time when curvy was beautiful or that intelligence mattered, but not anymore.

The pressure doesn’t even only apply to women. If you continue to look amongst the aforementioned shelves snuck between the magazines such as FHM you’ll find magazines like Men’s Health, with its chiselled male model screaming ‘hey guys, look like me and every woman in the world will want you! Buy this and you can do it!’

We live in a society obsessed with physical appearance. We live in a society where people are going to more and more extreme measures to  live up to the norm, for the chance of this supposed ‘perfection’, to make ourselves just that little bit more attractive to the opposite (or same) sex.  Plastic surgery, fad diets, unnecessary operations like gastric bands, mental illness. Oh, hold on, did I say mental illness?

Eating disorders. Not a life-style choice as some websites would have you believe but a bone fide, could kill you, mental illness. Of course people don’t go out of their way to be ‘mentally ill’, or to have an eating disorder, but it happens, and it can start with one of those fad diets or from having the perfect airbrushed bodies constantly shoved in your face. You just want to lose a few pounds…a few more pounds…a few more…the nagging in your head that it’s not enough, that you should eat less, that no one will love you until you are thin. People start to worry and it picks up its pace. ‘Ignore them, they’re just jealous, they want you to be fat like them, they saw the way that person was looking at you the other night, come on, don’t give up on me now!’

You stand on the scales 5 times a day, avoid eating, and count any calorie that has to pass your lips. Mantras enter your life ‘nothing is as good as thin feels’, ‘a moment on the lips is a life time on the hips’ or maybe just even ‘must lose weight. Must be loved’. You manage not to eat for days and then, oh sh*t, you crack, the contents of the fridge, the cupboard, a mad dash to KFC for a bargain bucket, you eat it all. Shame, disgust, the nagging is screaming, so angry, telling you to not just stand there, to do something. So you go upstairs, enter the bathroom, lock the door, push your hair out of your face, and turn on the taps. Sitting in from of the toilet the voice is cheering, giving you courage whilst taunting you at the same time, do it, do it, do it. Mouth open, fingers poised, and ram…

One.

Two.

Three…

Vomit.

You end up stuck in that cycle, that obsession, week after week after week after week. Your own little secret, your path to perfection, because you have to be perfect, you have to be loved. You don’t realise what everyone else around you does, that it is destroying you, as you crave and fight for perfection you are in fact walking the path to your own destruction. Even when you are on your death bed, hooked up to machines, as your body rots with you still alive, will you realise then? Will you understand that perfection isn’t in thinness, that society was wrong and lied to you? Will you regret it; wish that you had stepped away from the norm? If you are lucky you might, you might just fight back, but you might not, you could just be praying that you can lose that one more pound and reach your perfect weight.

Hi

This is just a quick post to say Hi!

I don’t really know what to say, umm, this place will mostly be an outlet for what’s inside my head, be it through rambling, or badly written prose/poetry 🙂 Firstly I’m going to post a shed load of my old creative stuff which will give more of an insight to me that I honestly can. I should warn you that some of the stuff may be triggering/depressing, but I’ll try to mark those as such the best I can, also I apologise in advance for the amount of stuff I’m going to put up today, I can promise it’ll all die down pretty quickly. I’m hoping having an outlet will mean that I write more 😀