Predicaments of a Fashion Lover: A Love Letter To Last Year

But after the Christmas hurrah, we start to get ready for the New Year and the parties to celebrate surviving another crazy year. 2016 sounds kind of out of this world, doesn’t it? I mean, the world was apparently ending in 2012 according to the Mayan’s. Yet here we are, 3 years later and still in tact.

This is a popular musing (and tweet) this time of year, but isn’t it crazy how much can happen in a year? How much you can change? It’s so clichéd, so funny of how quite frankly obvious this thought is, but damn a year makes a difference. It makes such a difference, as I know you now glancing back at your year are coming to the same conclusion.

‘HEY. I CAN DO WHAT THE FUCK I WANT WITH MY LIFE. IT’S MINE TO CREATE.’

This little post is about me looking back on Old Lou. She was very scared, very tired and a little bit damaged. She had a lot of unhappiness she trudged about with day after day, yet she couldn’t see how unhappy she was. She had a new world to explore and she did. I’m incredibly proud of Old Lou, the darling of my year as 18. She put up with a lot of sh*t and she came out the other side okay. She wasn’t perfect, she wasn’t happy but she started to grab life back after months in the dark.

She inked her skin, the words that struck into her heart as they were comfortingly delivered by one human to another in one of the most unlikeliest places you’d gain words of wisdom. These words sit in the crook of my elbow, proudly on show for anyone to see. STICK WITH WHAT YOU LOVE. I’m happy to say that’s exactly what I’ve done this past year. What may have seemed like madness to my parents, I’ve kept writing even if I have no income from it. With a little help from BIG MAGIC, the final piece of the puzzle has slotted itself in when it concerns creativity.

Old Lou couldn’t sit down and write, because that was opening up a can of worms she had kept closed and hidden for far too many months. Old Lou would run into Nostalgia and have a coffee or two, when she should have kept walking with her head down. She would sit around, an itch under her skin she couldn’t remove but obstinately shaking her head about doing anything about it.

Until one day the itch got too much. And at the start of 2015 Old Lou packed her bags and ran to London, randomly and suddenly. She blew her savings travelling the tube, getting off at stops she had heard of before with no plan to put into action. She walked around and around, Chelsea one day at The Good Life Eatery and then a creaky coffee shop in Shoreditch. She sat by the Thames in the freezing cold, wearing clothes shed never dare to at home and chatted to strangers as they passed or if they sat down. She would return to her cousins flat feeling at home. Old Lou was starting to slowly shed her skin and turn into Progress Lou, Happier Lou, Freedom Lou. She was starting to see the world was hers to take, no matter what worries had plagued her before. No longer was she listening to her catty schoolgirl comments, her ex’s doubts, her friends disbelieving laughter or her families hesitance. She was realising ‘HEY. I CAN DO WHAT THE FUCK I WANT WITH MY LIFE. IT’S MINE TO CREATE.’

So I look back on myself from a year ago with fondness and a fierce protectiveness. She had no idea how much would be changing for her. She didn’t even put that thought into her head as she made her way home from university for Christmas. And frankly, she never knew how awesome she was as a person; how fucking SMART she is, how quick witted and self assured she could be when she opened her mouth.

Because that’s what you are reader. That’s exactly what you are; smart and brave, funny and silly, a real thinking, breathing human being with so many possibilities. It might not seem like it now; you might be scoffing at my words because you don’t believe you can shed the skin you’re in. You might have got yourself into a rut without realising you’re 4 feet down from everyone else. That’s okay. We all have our moments we have no clue what we’re doing, or no idea when it will just stop hurting. When that ache will stop making itself more prominent in the cold and how our hands need something to grasp. We don’t know how dark life has been until someone flicks on a light and heaves us up from the floor. It’s coming. The light’s coming to you soon, I swear.

I’m a very big believer of marking progress. When I was a child, I loved receiving approval or words of encouragement like all children do. But I wouldn’t believe I was worth these words, because I never really saw myself as someone who could succeed, be at the top and get to be that girl. I was always self conscious of my laugh, how enthusiastic I could get and in the process, get so lost in a land of make believe I’d forget what I’d be saying or doing an then worry late at night over how weird I had been that day. Nothing defining in my behaviour, nothing worrying at all. Just a little girl who held insecurities, before she could even spell insecurity.

So now when I make progress, when I look back and think ‘this is happiness. This is me making a difference to myself’ I write it down to look back on; because a year is 365 days long and 365 days is a lot of hours. I could forget in a low moment how much better my mental health is, how I treat myself with a bit more kindness and how good I am the winter of 2015.

We don’t know how dark life has been until someone flicks on a light and heaves us up from the floor.

For whatever your life has in store for you this coming year, lets try fill 2016 with some good moments. And if you think things can’t really get better, know in comfort that your light switch is coming. Until then, make room for the changes you might be feeling. Let them stretch out and try walking, give them attention and love if you feel comfortable with the changes. If you aren’t, don’t feel afraid to squish them back down and chuck them out your bedroom window. You don’t have to be stuck with things you don’t want. You get to choose.

Next week I’ll have a post up on books, quotes, posts and thoughts that have helped me become more settled and let Old Lou get to a better place. I hope they’ll help you. And if you have a book that’s helped you, let me know about it! Leave a comment below or grab me on Twitter @LouiseRamsay_.

And finally, if I’m reading this in the winter of 2016 and things haven’t gone to plan, remember you made it through the winter of 2014. Remember that 18 year old you got through a lot of nasty things and came out the other side feeling like she’d been reborn. And remember to take a few moments to yourself. Get reading the books I know you want to reread, grab your camera or even just sit and listen to music. Remember sitting in your kitchen smiling because you hadn’t made it, not even close. But damn kid, you’re getting closer. I’m proud of you, no matter how cheesy it is to say.