The tiredness of
the day,
overwhelms me
while I lay,
curled up
in my bed,
trying to
open my eyes
just one second
longer of the day
until my eyes are
too heavy
and my body
too weak.
Until words have
no voice
and yawns
will speak.
Just until I
give up and let
sleep get its way,
letting it
slowly kill
time
making tomorrow
today.
Auteur: babettestolk
Scared, lost and insecure
I am sitting behind my laptop, in my kitchen, it is late. Well not really. Not the ‘Omg I have been up all night’ kind of late. It is a normal time to go to bed, if you have to be somewhere tomorrow. It is a time where it is possible to get those solid eight hours of sleep. So I am sitting here, looking at my reflection in the window as it is pitch-black outside. I see a seventeen year old girl. A girl with dreams and desires, a girl ‘ready’ for the world, a girl who knows what she wants. But at the same time, I see this seventeen year old girl. A little teenager, who has no idea about anything. A girl who wants believe that this world is a good place so bad, that she sometimes just closes her eyes for the bad things, like a little kid would do. Because if you can’t see it, it is not there right? I see this insecure, lost and scared girl. A girl who does not know what her place in this society is, let alone know what her place in this world is. A girl who does not want to think about existentialism and the universe, because she doesn’t know the answers to so many questions she has. Yet again, she closes her eyes, because perhaps then it isn’t that bad. If she doesn’t think about it, she doesn’t worry about it. I see this girl so easily pushed around and influenced by her surroundings. You just have to say one thing and she will believe you, because she trusts you. It is a naive girl, with I truly believe a good heart, but she just does not know what to do. She doesn’t know and she wonders if anyone ever really knows? I see this girl that tries to understand just a tiny little piece of this universe and her role in it, but isn’t able to and wonders is she will ever be able to. A girl who is trying to figure out who she is, because only then she can figure out who she wants to become. She sometimes thinks she knows herself, but she learns a new lesson about herself everyday and as exciting as that sounds, I also see a girl who is so tired of her own existence. So tired of all her worries that she just wants to close her eyes and sleep, because then, maybe, her worries will disappear. The girl knows that her worries aren’t real worries, she knows they mean nothing compared to the worries from other humans, but she does feel them. They do make her want to curl up in a corner. I see a girl that is so sensitive and emotional but sometimes masks it, because she hasn’t found a way to let out her emotions without feeling awkward. The longer I look into this window, the more the girl who knows who she is disappears and the more I realise that perhaps, there is only this scared, lost and insecure teenager.
And the longer I look, the more do I understand that seeing exactly that, is alright. Because this girl I am seeing is only seventeen and she isn’t supposed to know everything. She should learn everyday about herself and she should realise that even though her worries may be not as big as others, they still matter, because those worries are hers. She feels the emotions that come with these worries and she shouldn’t close her eyes and hope they will disappear. She should look them in the eye and start changing them, because then she will grow and maybe learn who she actually is, and who she wants to be.
I look into this window and see a reflection of myself and I see my big and scared eyes. I see that I want to be writer but question myself everyday if I am good enough and I see that I am lazy and that could do so much more, but I also see me. The insecure, wanting to be a writer, lazy, lost and scared teenager who has yet to learn so many things. But instead of pushing these lessons away, I should stop being afraid and start learning them.
So I turn my face and the white screen of my computer reflects on it. Time has passed, it still isn’t late. But it is time to go to bed and perhaps tomorrow, I will look into the window and see a slightly less scared, lost and insecure girl. Perhaps tomorrow.
Wrinkled and numb
I am sitting in my bathtub.
I’ve been here
for how long?
The water is
cold and filthy
and my skin is
wrinkled and numb
My head is heavy
even though,
I feel empty as my
soul
has fused with
the numbness of my skin.
My mind has parted
and drifted.
Left me completely numb,
as it drowns in my bathtub
In which I have been sitting
way too long.
Fallen leaves
A breeze walks
through the trees
it silently talks
and sees
how we move
and hear
how we try to prove
and fear.
The wind sees
and hears all
just with a breeze
until the leaves will
fall.
A little story.
His face had the shape of a moon, even the colour of it. He was extremely pale and it almost seemed like the grey colour you see when your eyes follow the bright moon surrounded by darkness at night. The green and yellow colour of his eyes were therefore extra noticeable. It was a remarkable eye colour, it had dots and dashes of yellow through the dark green canvas. His nose was pointy, as was his jaw. It was a strange combination of features, making a weird looking face. One could imagine that some would find him pretty, but he wasn’t the average good looking boy. She had brown hair cut short just below her ears. Her massive forehead was hidden by the bangs, falling over it. She however pushed them frequently to the right side so they wouldn’t annoy her. Her round cheeks were always red making them look like tiny apples on her face. Her big mouth was filled with straight teeth which she showed all the time as she was always giggling and smiling about something. Rose was likeable so it wasn’t weird that Rooth did. He never really said anything, he just looked at Rose silently and tried to come up with words to say. Rose was rather fascinated by Rooth but she did not know how to talk to him as he was always so silent. Her eyes were a hazel colour and it seemed as if they were always shimmering with joy. She was a quirky, well mouthed and kind girl. So it almost never happened that she didn’t know how to talk to someone. With Rooth however, she was clueless. Rose had so much energy all the time and never stopped talking, so she never noticed it if Rooth looked at her. He seemed to be a ghost. She did however, notice him. She had studied his face when she wasn’t busy with herself. When her energy had boiled down she caught herself looking at him. Trying to understand the person behind these remarkable eyes. She wanted to become friends with him, but that didn’t mean a lot, because she wanted to be friends with everyone. He wanted to be friends with her and that did mean a lot. Rooth didn’t have friends. He was too shy and too tired to talk to people, his energy level was so low that he just minded himself and even that was sometimes too much. But he wanted to get to know Rose. There was just something about her that no one else had. He knew that a lot of boys saw that too, but he also knew that Rose wouldn’t choose just a boy. Even though Rooth had no friends whatsoever and wasn’t the prettiest boy, he was confident, sometimes a bit arrogant even. He knew he was something special and that is why bothered to try with Rose. And thus it happened one day, she was alone, something that rarely happened. He sat down, sharing a table with her without realising it. ‘Your eyes are lovely.’ He didn’t react as no one ever really talked to him. ‘Rooth?’ Hearing his name from someone other than his family or a teacher made him jump a little and he lifted his head quickly. ‘Rose?’ It was weird to say the name, that his mind had said silently so many times, out loud. ‘Your eyes are lovely.’ His mouth tried to smile but he didn’t really know how so just lifted one side of his mouth. ‘Thank you.’ He wanted to say more but he didn’t. All his vocabulary seemed not enough to impress Rose. ‘So, are you going to the play?” “No.” It took a while before he remembered that he should ask if she would go. “Are you?” “Yes. Illa is making me.” “Illa?” “She is in our class. The blonde girl, almost white.” “Oh.” “Why aren’t you coming?” ” I just, plays aren’t really my thing.” “Well what is your thing?” “I like to read.” “Oh.” It was an awkward conversation and Rose was little annoyed that he did not put a lot of effort in the conversation, but Rooth did. He did all he thought he could. He just wasn’t very good at talking. Again, silence. Rose had no idea what she could ask him and Rooth had no idea what to say, which words to use. ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘What do you mean?” “After school.” “I want to study philosophy and psychology. You?” “I want to be a doctor.” “Why?” “I don’t know, it just seems wrong to do anything else than help people, do some good in this world.” Her eyes had widened, she looked serious and the passion in her eyes looked like the flames coming from her burning desire to help, do good. That was the kind of girl she was, she seemed flawless, always smiled, always kind. She had a good soul, but no one is ever perfect and she wasn’t. Firstly: her left arm was completely burned, at least the skin on it. The flesh had burning marks all over it and was still extremely sensitive. She had slight OCD. Her bangs needed to be pushed to the right side, she would otherwise freak out. She also had to be friends with everyone, everyone had to like her, she would go to great lengths to befriend them, even forgetting het other friends. There was one thing Rooth and Rose had in common. They had no real friends. Rooth had just no one around him and Rose had a lot of people around her but no one was really close to her. She had a lot of good friends, but no best one. She was lonely, but she never wanted to admit it.
I am a stressed mess
I am so stressed and it feels as if everything I am doing has no purpose whatsoever.
I am learning and learning and learning, everyday new lessons. I am studying and studying and studying and I am so sick of it. It feels as if everything I want to learn, everything I need to learn isn’t tought at school. I need to go on an adventure to learn the things I need. Maybe I have no idea, maybe I just need to focus and start working, but I do not understand why I should just accept the system I live in. Isn’t it good that I question if our system really works. Because it does not work for me. That I have to go to school everyday and learn things I don’t find valuable makes me miserable and I don’t think any system is good if it makes people miserable.
There is not one molecule in my body that is going to school because she wants to, because the things I am learning are just useless. It is so fucking old-fashioned that maths is more important than drama. I understand that you need to learn a base, but I have learned that base and I don’t see why it is obligatory. And frankly, it causes me to live an unhappy life.
I know that having maths isn’t the worst thing and I know that having an unhappy life because of maths is a bit overdone but it does feel that way. And yes children in Africa do not have my education and yes I am a very privilidged person, but that doesn’t mean that my problems hurt less. They should hurt less, because they are a lot smaller, but that is not how emotions work. I just want to start living my life the way I want it. I want to learn about poetry and books and go to theatres and learn about different cultures. Math isn’t going to help you furhter in life, but understanding emotions is.
It is probably just a phase I have to get through. Everything feels awful now, but maybe in a few months everything is fine again, I hope so.
I have just so much to do and it feels a bit too much sometimes. I just want to curl up into a corner and sleep for seven days straight, sleep until all the exams are over and I am feeling alright again. But that is not how life works. I need to get up and start doing things. Get up and learn maths and pass my theory test and my get my drivers license, because in the end I will be happy I did al those things and I will feel proud that I did all those things.
It is just this month, I need to get through this month. Pass al my tests, that is the goal. The grade does not matter, I just need to pass them. How hard can that be? I need to work, that is basically what I am trying to say. I need to fucking work and get my lazy ass of my bed.
It all feels a little overwhelming at the moment, but I need to learn how to deal with this. Because a lot more stress is going to come and I can’t have a mental breakdown everytime I have a lot to do. So instead of whining about the things I have to do, I have to see this as a lesson to be learned. I need to plan things a bit better and need to study a bit more.
For now: just pass the fucking tests. It really isn’t that hard. Focus on each subject one by one and eventually I’ll get that 6 I need. I just need to pass the year, that’s all.
Now, I am going to start studying and start learning some life lessons.
X
Babette Helena
How far would you go, to be beautiful?
Imagine you have found a person whose character matches yours completely, but he or she just looks like a potato, to clarify, he or she is hideous. Would you completely accept this person or would wish he or she had a different face? Nowadays appearance is extremely important in our society. But why is that the case? And what does being beautiful even mean?
A quality very pleasing to the eye, says the Cambridge dictionary, but pleasing isn’t very objective, so what is pleasing exactly? We encounter our beauty standards every day. In films, commercials, magazines and more. So we are confronted with the pressure to look like the models we see on a daily basis. Tall girls, with a flat stomach and long hair, that is the image our society shows. That is, sadly enough, what beauty is: unrealistic standards. But in the end beauty doesn’t really matter, you’re defined by your actions, right?
Not exactly. Good looking people have great advantages over the ugly. Take for example a look at salaries. According to research from Barry Harper of London Guildhall University is the pay penalty for unattractiveness 15% for men and 11% for women and overweight women earn even 5 % less than average. Not only do looks help in the job market, in both sexes,, they help in the marriage market. Handsome people are more confident, are helped faster and can even have a lighter sentence if they’re a criminal. So having a pretty face makes your life a lot easier, but how far would you go to achieve these beauty standards?
It starts very harmless with a little bit of make-up, but in a split-second you have had multiple facelifts, liposuctions and breast enlargements. Once you’ve stepped into the world of plastic surgery it is hard to get out. It is common human behaviour to want more. Rich people want more money and in this case, people want to get prettier and prettier through surgeries. And as well as women, men are also in this vicious circle. They take for example drugs to get an athlete’s torso and go to great lengths and huge costs to make themselves better looking.
It’s not only the western society that is obsessed with beauty, in Africa women put rings around their necks to be beautiful and in Asia they allow their to be bound to make them tiny. This sounds and is indeed dangerous, but so is plastic surgery. Before you decide to book an appointment with a plastic surgeon, it has to be clear how risky it is.
For some reason, people do not treat plastic surgery with the same caution and fear they would if it were another surgical procedure. A facelift can lead to difficulties opening your mouth and eyes and if that happens you most certainly do not have prettier face then before. But there is more, a facelift can also lead to a blood clot under the skin, which is extremely dangerous if left untreated. And a facelift isn’t the only dangerous surgery. Plastic surgery can cause nerve damages, infections and swollen skins looking like large blisters. And of course, you should not forget that every surgery has a risk of death, so is it really worth it to be beautiful if you can end up with huge health problems? Is being beautiful more important than your own health?
I believe that being comfortable in your own skin is very important. So changing your appearance to feel more confident is fine as long as you can still go outside without a lot of make-up. If you can still accept yourself in your own skin, then it is alright to wear make-up. I like things that are natural and I also like natural people. So if you would ask me if I would go to a plastic surgeon to be beautiful, I will say I’ll pass. I do not believe you should want to change yourself permanently. As long as you can go back to the natural version of yourself I support whatever it is you do with your face. The moment you can’t go back, is the moment I think you have taken one step to far. I also believe that the promotion of all these happy and skinny girls is very wrong and the media should stop deceiving the public that these beauty standards are realistic. In that way there are miserable teenagers trying to look like these models they see every day, not knowing it is impossible, since it is all they see. So for me, I’ll wear some mascara it I will be helped faster, but do these few minutes really matter that much that I want to lift my face? No, I don’t think so. Confidence is very important and before anyone goes to a plastic surgeon, I would advise they will go to a psychologist first. Maybe they will learn to love themselves, before they start cutting their face open.
Aware
Be aware,
aware that I’m here
right beside you
as I always am.
Stay here, look
next to you.
You’ll see me.
My comforting hands.
They’ll catch you
if you fall down.
Down in the darkness
where we all are.
Please be aware
Please don’t fall.
A true masterpiece called La La Land
I don’t know what took me so long to write this review. But here it is, my love for La La land.
La La land is a film we all have heard about. Everyone seems to think it is a true masterpiece and I don’t think anything is more true than that! So for all of the people who haven’t seen La la land, or don’t like it, here is yet another review of this truly magnificent film!
The storyline itself is not extremely special or sophisticated. It is about a struggling actress and a struggling jazz musician who fall in love in Los Angeles. There is nothing special about that, yet Damien Chazelle, the writer of La La Land, has somehow created something very beautiful; let me explain!
It is the world you step in that makes this film so intriguing! You see two people fall in love and you enter their world filled with passion for each other. La La land shows this world in such an interesting way that it almost feels like you are in this world yourself. The best example is the scene in the planetarium. The two characters haven’t kissed yet and they drive to a planetarium as a response to the failing of a film they were watching. As soon as they enter this planetarium, light music begins and slowly the scene starts to become unrealistic. The characters are suddenly flying around, dancing in the sky and you see and even feel a glimpse of their love for each other. You seem them entering their own world, their own bubble so filled with love that is has become unrealistic. It feels to them like they are floating, like they are living in this unrealistic world and as viewer you join them in it
That however, is not the only thing that makes this film magical. The film also shows the struggle of being an artist and having to choose between love and a career so well. The characters are both struggling with their creative career and they both want to give up at a certain point. The film displays the backbreaking work you have to do if you want to succeed in a creative profession. It shows the difficult choices you sometimes have to make in life and it shows that this is just a part of life.
Apart from these two things there is, of course, the music. The lovely, jazzy music that makes the film, the film it is. Although it is a musical, it most certainly does not feel like one. The music is a part of the film, it is not like a regular musical where people just get up and start to sing. It is the profession of one of the main characters and is therefore quite important. The producers of La La land have gotten it completely right with the music: it isn’t too much, it isn’t too little, it isn’t too happy and it isn’t too sad. Just like the rest of the film. It isn’t too cliché, it isn’t too sad and it isn’t too predictable. As I said, the makers of this film have gotten it completely right.
I think the reason why I am so attracted to this film is that it is that world I want to live in. My dream is to become a writer, so seeing people struggle yet succeeding in this world where I want to succeed is so lovely. This film really spoke to my heart when it comes to career paths and it made me want to follow my dream even more.
So, all in all, go watch La La land if you haven’t and decide for yourself. I believe it is a true masterpiece and the makers a true artists. It has the perfect amount of everything: love, music, struggle and happiness. I was extremely intrigued by this film and therefore most definitely recommend it!
Choosing who I am
I have currently easter vacation. Is that what people in America call springbreak? For me it is easter vacation. Two weeks of ‘freedom’. I have been needing this freedom a lot this year. school sucks, we all say that from time to time, but for me it is just that I am done with it. I don’t like the subjects I am been tought, the things that I like aren’t big subjects in class and are just quickly run through and I can’t find any motivation to go back to that place, every single day. I have seen it. I just can’t handle school anymore and the lack of motivation sure does not help. Where did my motivation go anyway? I feel like I have become this lazy person, who just sits on her couch watching series on netflix. The person I hate so much. I want to be doing hundreds of things, want to be busy, constantly busy. Instead I am clicking on next episode twenty times a day. Maybe it is because I am suffering a little. I am feeling spaced out and it could be that I have a light form of depersonalisation, but that shouldn’t bring me down this much. I just want to do so many things, why am I not doing them. Take for example today: I wanted to write a lot, read a lot, maybe even do some schoolwork. Instead of doing that I just watch netflix series the whole day. I hate being so unproductive, I hate this state I am in. I have been in for the last six months. And when is it going to pass? Should I just wait untill something motivates me again? Why is this so hard anyway? Why don’t I get up and start doing things? If you think logically about it, it is really a simple thing. I just get up and start doing things. I have a enough energy, I slept like eleven hours. But that is the thing, emotions are the opposite of logical thinking. There is no reason why you’re not feeling it today, you just aren’t and that is alright. For a short amount of time, because some time you have to start doing things. There are things every person has to do. So do I. Eventually I get up and start doing things, but when I’m done, I still do not feel productive, because I have still left these up untill the last moment. So now, instead of complaining of how I am not doing things, I am going to write down, what I am going to do.
I am going to get up early. (Not too early, I mean it is still vacation after all). I am going to put on sports clothes and going to run at least four kilometres. Then I am going to shower and start reading. I will make the calls I need to make, even the one to my driversschool to plan my theory test of which I am extremely afraid to plan. Tomorrow is the day I am going to get some shit done. And it is alright to relax as well. I can still watch one episode of a series, but not five. Not the whole day. I want to be the productive and energetic girl again. Not this lazy, tired, moody one. It is time that I choose who I want to be and it is time I am going to be who I want to be. It starts this evening. Going to bed at a resonable time. I am so ready to be different. Are you?
X
Babette Helena
Babette Helena 