Predicaments of a Fashion Lover: Our Stuff Matters

When I was in high school, I always thought of emotions as solids. They remained as they were, standing tall and unmoving. Like happiness. I grew up thinking happiness was a state of being that would remain with me. Maybe you thought so to, growing up happily ever after.

Emotions are not solids but liquids, they’re fluid. They move and change every day. We can’t hold onto an emotion, like happiness, because we have to experience other emotions like anger or sadness, in order to feel the value of happiness. The feeling of how lucky we feel a moment of complete undiluted happiness.

In order to explain my next train of thought, I have to tell you I’ve been reading BECOMING by Laura Jane Williams. And with that, I confess it’s been a while I’ve sat and read for long periods of time, but with Becoming I can’t stop reading. I have to put it down every once in a while because I don’t want to stop reading it. It feels precious, like every thought or emotion I’ve had since having my heart broken at 16 matters. I didn’t think it mattered. Because I was young. And then I felt it all again at 17 and 19, with the same boy, and it’s still the same heartbreak over and over again.

The thing about Becoming, is that I was finally told that being heartbroken mattered. That the period of healing mattered, and that it isn’t always two weeks and a vodka swig away.

And as I write this I haven’t finished, because I need to write everything I feel with this book because my lost is starting to feel a lot like my own becoming. (You can get Becoming here, on Amazon).

Emotions are fluid. They come and go. There’s nothing you can grapple on to, it simply flows and flows through your hands. But it matters. It all matters, even if this mattering only stays for a day, a week or even an hour. If you believe it matters, then it does. That’s it.

I couldn’t stop laughing when I realised this, the tears streamed down my face as I slowly went from cackles to quiet chuckles. It felt like a moment, because it was a moment. It still is a moment.

All of this stuff I carried with me suddenly became lighter, because it became of importance, of value. Like, I was no longer even carrying this stuff. It was a piece of me, like my bones and my heart, not a rucksack on my back.

I think we get caught up in thinking we both do matter, and don’t matter. It terms of social media, we want approval or to be seen through likes on a picture. And like, there’s nothing shameful about it. But we feel this shame. We feel we have to make ourselves smarter or cooler, when really we’re just existing like other people are existing and that’s all there is to it. There’s work and peoples lives and advertising, all penetrating our bubble but like. There’s more than that. There’s sounding wank on the internet because everyone is a cynic and looking out to make the first laugh, to get retweets and that’s funny. It is, it is but also there’s talking. And being honest, being open, having someone listen and reply to you. And you will sound wanky, even writing this might strike you as wanky but everyone gets wanky. If you cut out the part of you that goes on about it, you get to the other stuff. The deeper stuff. The important life stuff.

I don’t mind sounding like a wank, I’m a writer so it goes in the job description.

Because that stuff, the stuff that happens to you? That matters. It does. It comes together and it forms you, moves parts of you like liquid, rearranges stuff to form this new version of you. Don’t think it doesn’t matter because some people might not listen or understand.

I think we all deserve to be told our feelings matter, our experiences. It’s simply the degree in mattering that we should question. It should matter to us, to the ones we love and who love us in return. But it may not matter to others, to the strangers or acquaintances but that’s okay. As long as we believe it matters, then it does.

I think having my heart broken so young, and then so regularly by the same boy matters. It’s shaped me into who I am and how I see myself. And since this heartbreak happened during high school (I’m 20) then to a lot of people it didn’t matter. It was brushed under the carpet, even by me because I got sick of hearing myself. I got sick of trying to work it all out when I didn’t yet have the tools to understand.

So it’s Sunday and I’m in bed finishing off Becoming and I want you to read this as a reminder; your experiences, emotions and thoughts matter. They do. You may think they don’t, because at times the world (and the internet) can be a lonely place. But you’ve got to remember to OWN your stuff. If you believe it matters, OWN THE THING. Have confidence in it, because it’s important.

I am so glad I read this book, because I feel like I’ve finally came to understand my heartbreak matters. I knew, deep down, how much it had changed me. I was ashamed, because it was a high school romance two years ago. But it was also my first love. The first time my life became entwined with someone else’s. And I think I no longer hold guilt talking about this, because it was my experience and this is my space to talk about things I wish. I don’t have to want Him back to talk about it, because I don’t.

Our Stuff Matters

Emotions are tricky things.

I just want to work out my own Becoming.