Sunday 12 August 2012

Quote of the Week #76

Alice’s end of the daisy chain kept falling apart. She glanced at Marie’s end. It draped across her lap, seeming to go on forever. Marie’s long fingers seemed lightning quick as she pierced the stalks. Alice’s end was measly in comparison. But Marie was older than her, and so self-assured and confident and so kind to her. And it was her kindness that made her beautiful, because nice people are usually the prettiest, as Marie had said to her once. Or pretty people are usually the nicest. Anyway. Marie was amazing. It was a wonder she would let Alice near her at all.

Bró + Ron - Alice.

Friday 10 August 2012

Making A Debut



I am a member of a superteam. The superteam is called Bró + Ron.

It was all my idea, I'd like to say.

Brónagh is my very fashionable friend who writes Glamour + Grunge. I can barely dress myself on a good day. We write, style and direct fashion shoots under the name Bró + Ron. Rather, I write, she styles, and we both direct.

We've been working on our first shoot since the start of June. It is called The Reluctant Debutantes. Cause we're making our debut, yeah? Clever. Anyway.

It's the first time I've ever done anything like this. Fashion confuses me. But I liked the idea of basing outfits around characters and stories, which is what we've done here. The Reluctant Debutantes are seven young ladies in an alternate Kilkenny, with the marriage market of a hundred years ago. They're not that happy about it either.

It goes online tomorrow at BroandRon.tumblr.com, and I really hope you check it out, and that you like it. We had great fun, from planning and plotting, to writing and styling, and the shoot days were like parties, the best parties I've ever been to. Just eight girls going around the park wearing crazy clothes! And we're already planning the next one...

The Reluctant Debutantes - Saturday 11th August 2012. By Bró + Ron. 

Oh! Forgot to say. I'm Ron.

Ronaele Roscuro

Monday 6 August 2012

Oh Dear Diary, We Fell Apart

They say every teenage girl, or person, even, should keep a diary or journal. A place to record your feelings and secrets, and let out your frustrations.

I started keeping a diary before my thirteenth birthday, and ended (so far) just after my fifteenth. I filled up two ring binded Paperchase notebooks. Those rings would become bended and twisted from being shoved in my schoolbag every day. Scrawls of red, pink, blue, black ink that changed colour with the yellow pages of my first notebook.

All my adolescent angst and turmoil was spent during my First and Second years of secondary school, when I was thirteen and fourteen. Some of that has been recorded here, if you're willing to look or have been around long enough. Those diaries were filled with the usual stuff, like 'why won't anyone be my friend? I can't be that unbearable' and 'I HATE THEM ALL THOSE SELFISH BITCHES'. I'm not quoting directly or anything, that's just the gist. Then there was more personal stuff, like 'I thought I was supposed to be smart, so why am I so bad at everything at school?' I wasn't that bad, really. Just terrible at maths, but the next year I would go from Honours to Ordinary, so happy ending there. But lots of people, a few with letters and initials after their names, had told me when I was in primary school that I was really clever, and then I didn't feel clever anymore. I didn't know what to think.

So there I was, pouring all my problems out into my diary, fulfilling the stereotype. People say that's a great way to look at your problems, out there on the page instead of all muddled up in your head. But after a while, I started to realise the opposite - as I wrote them down, my problems left my mind, and in doing so entered the real world. I could not deny them anymore, for they existed. It made them all the more terrifying and unsolvable, and made me all the more unhappier. I didn't like it.

I didn't mean to stop writing my diary, it was completely unintentional. During the Christmas holidays of my Third Year in school, a month after I turned fifteen, my school opened for about a week for girls doing exams to come in and study for a few hours a day. I went in and each day I would spend the bulk of my time studying and about an hour writing in my diary, but the diary-writing time grew day by day. I'd gotten news of a play I was going to be involved in, and I was so excited, but I had a plan. I wasn't going to just write it in my diary, I would print out the email I'd gotten and paste it in, for posterity! So each day I would hint at it, and agonise over leaving my friends, and become unbelievably excited.

I never stuck it in.

I'm glad I got over my angst back when I was younger, and that it didn't stick around. Of course I'm still worried and angry about things now, but only sometimes, and I know how to deal with it. I know that I have power. And people to talk to. Those days I only had friends outside of school, and while they're great and everything, they're not really that much use to you on a daily basis. (I DON'T MEAN THAT I LOVE YOU)  What I needed was friends in school, and for whatever reason, my own... I don't know what it was, or maybe I don't want to know, but I didn't have them. At the start of Fourth Year, which I finished back in June, I thought 'Okay, I don't need people anymore... but it'd be cool to have them.' I didn't need friends, I just wanted them. And they were there.

I think.

Those diaries are now in a box in the shed, which I refer to as the Archives in my head. Whenever I read them, which isn't very often, I feel sad. But that's only natural.

And sometimes I still want to write my feelings down, or what's happening, down on paper, where I can scrawl, and it only belongs to me. But I don't want to get back into the habit again. I want to leave it behind.