I always get excited about the clocks going forward - no more dark evenings, the start of warm weather... For the past six months I've been finishing work and travelling home in the darkness, which I really dislike. However, the clocks going forward will forever hold another meaning to me now.
At this time exactly a year ago, I was in a dark place to say the least. Amongst all of the taxing second-year university work and the pressure that I was under to complete my assignments, I'd been faced with another, more long-term choice to make - to continue with my life in the way that it had been to save hurting someone else, or to make myself happy and give myself a new lease of hope.
Initially, I despised myself for even considering putting myself first. I couldn't bear the thought of hurting someone after all that we'd been through together. There was one huge problem, unfortunately - as much as I cared about them, I just couldn't reciprocate the feelings that they had for me any more. I tried my best to bury the thoughts that I was having but eventually, they burst from my chest and my world came crashing down onto me. They wanted to know why I was being so distant and the words were almost forced from my mouth. I was dreading the reaction that I was going to get and boy, oh boy did I get it...
The next few days were something of a nightmare. I held a dinner party at my house with a few friends the day after our initial talk and whilst they laughed and joked away, I suppressed my emotions and tried to join in. It was tough, pretending to be happy when I was far from it; however, I think I just managed to pull it off. Hey, I'd been doing it for the past few months so why should it have been any different then?
Then came the day of the clock changing. I'd had a long, tiring day at work and to make matters worse, I managed to screw up my day through a lack of concentration. As I left with my eyes to the floor and my heart dragging along behind them, a friend of mine noticed my sadness. They tried to get it out of me but I refused to talk. I got home and locked myself away in my bedroom, far from the troubling day that I'd had. I just wanted to shrink up into a small pile of dust and prayed that nobody would notice.
Then, a ray of sunshine shone into the blackness. "I've finished work... I'll be with you in about 15 minutes!" It was my friend that noticed my sorrow earlier on that day. I smiled to myself in the knowledge that someone was on my side throughout my troublesome time.
They arrived in almost no time at all - yet somehow, an hour had passed in between.
"What's the time?" I asked, fumbling in my pocket for my phone. I pulled it out and gasped.
"2am?! I swear it was 12.45am only a moment ago! Oh, wait... of course! The clocks went forward, haha!"
After a brief chuckle about the time change, we talked. We talked some more. We started to laugh and joke a little. Eventually we got on to the topic that I'd been dreading talking about. I froze momentarily before I gently let the thoughts escape from my lips. After listening intently to me for a few minutes as I spoke, my friend said one thing to me that struck a chord deep in my heart:
"You should never base a relationship on how long you've been together. If things aren't right, for any reason, you have to be fair on not only your partner, but yourself. Leading someone into false hope isn't the way to go."
It was as if a door had been unlocked before me. False hope... After months of turmoil, I had finally made my decision. I had the key to the door - now, I just had to open it...
I stayed with my friend all night, discussing my feelings and working things out. Before we knew it, the sun rose and it was already 7am. We said our farewells, rubbing our bleary eyes, then went home. I fell asleep as soon as I got into my bed and was completely zoned out for the rest of the day, having to wake up just three hours later for work.
This year, I'm spending my day a little differently and thankfully, without a worry in my heart. I will be forever thankful for that person who dug me from the dirt when I thought I could dig no lower. The decision that I made that night was, quite frankly, one of the best that I've made in my life so far.
A year on, I'm as happy as can be. I can't wait to see what the next year holds! :) x
"I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it." - Carl Sandburg
Saturday, 24 March 2012
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
Colour B4 - Top notch!
It goes without saying that I am a hair dye junkie.
My hair colour has always been more of an fashion statement to me than anything else. Like the seasons, it changes several times over the course of one year. Over the past four years, I've been chocolate brown, bleach blonde, fiery red, not mentioning all of the colours in between. Of course, along with these tints have come not only raving successes but horrific failures.
Around this time last year, my hair was as bright as a light bulb. People had mixed opinions on it, as they always do, but I loved it. I look back on the time when I was blonde and I smile because many great things happened in that period: bathing in the sunshine, chilling with friends in front of the Wii, the start of a thrilling relationship...
A few months after this, however, I decided that I wanted to go on a journey back to my natural hair colour. I'd decided that four years of almost constant hair dying couldn't be very healthy and that giving my tired locks a break would do them more good than harm. So, I went out and got myself a fairly light shade of brown and plastered it on. Part of me regretted it instantly. I'd become so used to seeing my blonde locks tumbling over my shoulders that even seeing the lightest shade of brown looked drastically different. I came to love it eventually. However, that pesky blonde buried underneath wasn't finished yet. After a few weeks I may as well have not bothered dying it at all - bleach can be a bugger to cover up, as I'm sure all the peroxide ladies out there know very well!
Almost an inch of regrowth later, I decided to take the brown plunge again. Much to my horror, my 'Light Frosted Brown' was not light or frosted at all. On my journey back to nature, I'd basically ended up back where I started four years ago - chocolate brown. Argh! As much as people said it suited me, I was not happy. Then we end up in January. I'm bored of my hair, my regrowth is astonishing, and I want a change. I'd always had a secret desire to go red, and thought that this was the perfect time to do so... and I did! For two months now, I have been a fiery red, which I have loved having. However, I have quickly become bored of it. Maybe I'm just not alternative enough to have an unnatural hair colour...!
So, back to my original topic after that HUGE trail-off. I really wanted blonde hair again, but with such bright red hair, it was going to be a mission to get it the way I wanted it... until I discovered Colour B4!
Basically, Colour B4 is like a colour stripper, but it doesn't contain damaging bleaches or ammonia so it doesn't further damage hair. It works by targeting the artificial colour molecules in hair and shrinks them so they can be simply washed away - it's more or less a reversal of the dying process. Clever, huh?
I felt a little sceptical about it at first, but I'm so glad I did it. My hair came out a dark honey blonde! I'm just utterly amazed that this worked so well. If only I'd known about it when I first messed up about 6 months ago!
x
My hair colour has always been more of an fashion statement to me than anything else. Like the seasons, it changes several times over the course of one year. Over the past four years, I've been chocolate brown, bleach blonde, fiery red, not mentioning all of the colours in between. Of course, along with these tints have come not only raving successes but horrific failures.
Around this time last year, my hair was as bright as a light bulb. People had mixed opinions on it, as they always do, but I loved it. I look back on the time when I was blonde and I smile because many great things happened in that period: bathing in the sunshine, chilling with friends in front of the Wii, the start of a thrilling relationship...
A few months after this, however, I decided that I wanted to go on a journey back to my natural hair colour. I'd decided that four years of almost constant hair dying couldn't be very healthy and that giving my tired locks a break would do them more good than harm. So, I went out and got myself a fairly light shade of brown and plastered it on. Part of me regretted it instantly. I'd become so used to seeing my blonde locks tumbling over my shoulders that even seeing the lightest shade of brown looked drastically different. I came to love it eventually. However, that pesky blonde buried underneath wasn't finished yet. After a few weeks I may as well have not bothered dying it at all - bleach can be a bugger to cover up, as I'm sure all the peroxide ladies out there know very well!
Almost an inch of regrowth later, I decided to take the brown plunge again. Much to my horror, my 'Light Frosted Brown' was not light or frosted at all. On my journey back to nature, I'd basically ended up back where I started four years ago - chocolate brown. Argh! As much as people said it suited me, I was not happy. Then we end up in January. I'm bored of my hair, my regrowth is astonishing, and I want a change. I'd always had a secret desire to go red, and thought that this was the perfect time to do so... and I did! For two months now, I have been a fiery red, which I have loved having. However, I have quickly become bored of it. Maybe I'm just not alternative enough to have an unnatural hair colour...!
So, back to my original topic after that HUGE trail-off. I really wanted blonde hair again, but with such bright red hair, it was going to be a mission to get it the way I wanted it... until I discovered Colour B4!
Basically, Colour B4 is like a colour stripper, but it doesn't contain damaging bleaches or ammonia so it doesn't further damage hair. It works by targeting the artificial colour molecules in hair and shrinks them so they can be simply washed away - it's more or less a reversal of the dying process. Clever, huh?
I felt a little sceptical about it at first, but I'm so glad I did it. My hair came out a dark honey blonde! I'm just utterly amazed that this worked so well. If only I'd known about it when I first messed up about 6 months ago!
x