The Break Up Blog

Another fun part of adulting - Failed relationships!!! I was recently ‘involved’ with someone for the best part of five months. It didn’t end traumatically, my heart wasn’t shattered into a billion pieces and I wasn’t a hopeless mess – it was more just a bit of a shame, and it all came to a very amicable and mature end (first time for everything I suppose). 

My two (now ex) housemates, also had break ups in the time we lived together, and I thought it would be interesting to draw comparisons on how people deal with break ups differently. Bearing in mind the three break ups themselves were very different – one was the end to a 5 year relationship, the other an on / off 2-and-a-bit year relationship, and mine, the nearly-five-months-wasn’t-really-official ‘relationship’. 

Living with someone means you get the pleasure of being witness to every tear, tantrum and grimy detail of how people cope. 

Spoiler alert – there was a lot of wine involved in all three of our recovery periods!

 

The nearly-five-months-wasn’t-really-official ‘relationship’

- Don’t shave your legs for well over a month

- Drink daily

- Hold off from getting tinder because you know it is both a waste of data and also life

- Download tinder

- Get messages like this

- Go on tinder date on steak and blow job day 

- Give the guy steak and get his hopes up

- Dont give him a blow job

- Laugh at guy you didn’t give blow job to with your friends

- Get your sister pissed and make her download tinder

- Tinder swipe for your sister

- Consider other dating apps but then remember how many times you were offered money to do porn on OK cupid that time you downloaded it for 24 hours

- Go on nights out and spend too much money on drinks and forget about the £150 gas and electric bill you haven’t paid for 2 and a half months

- Panic over gas and electric bill

- Realise you have distracted yourself from break up by causing yourself anxiety about gas and electric bill

It worked for me!

The five year relationship 

- Initially cope shockingly well and baffle everyone around you

- Milk it a bit at work so you get to go home half way through the day and watch ex on the beach

- Stalk ex boyfriend intensely on every form of social media

- Consider career as private detective because you’re so fucking good at stalking ex boyfriend on social media

- Download tinder

- Go on Tinder date with minor celeb

- Document Tinder date with minor celeb on social media and make sure privacy settings are set to public, in hope ex boyfriend will see

- Dump minor celeb from Tinder

- Go on literally 1000 dates

- Make sure a decent proportion of these 1000 men are from work

- Give zero fucks when the men from work find out you've been dating all of them

- Dump all 1000 men and feel like fucking super woman 

- Snog a guy in front of someone who you know likes you, just for lols

- Get extremely drunk

- Go home extremely drunk and run a bath

- Get in bath

- Vomit all over self in bath

- Snapchat vommy bath to friends

- Fuck everything off and move to South America

Definitely worked for her

The on / off 2-and-a-bit year relationship

- Immediately get drunk

- Cry loudly

- Call ex whilst drunk and crying loudly

- Accidentally sit on housemates cat and almost break its neck

- Argue loudly with housemate

- Cry even more loudly

- Call mum whilst crying loudly

- Be fine the next day and immediately download tinder

- Tinder at every spare possible second

- Go on tinder date and fall in instant love

- Profess new found love to anyone that will listen

- Get bored after 2 days

- Go to gay bar 

- Get extremely drunk

- Fall in instant love with the first person you see

- Get bored after half an hour and find someone else

- Meet up with ex as ‘friends’

- Twice

- Get back together with ex

I suppose that worked for him too?

Break ups suck, and so does dating at times. I can’t explain how close I am to giving up all together and just getting several more cats. Will keep the blog updated with any more colourful dates I may go on, Tinder Tales part 3 coming soon! I also downloaded Bumble, was thinking when I have some stories together of doing a ‘Bumble Fumbles’ post? No? Ok, I’ll work on the title… I suppose I should be grateful really, I mean if I was in a successful functioning relationship what the fuck would I write about?! How dull!

Happy adulating peeps!

 

Quitting The Cigs

So, hand in hand with my terrible adulting and general bad decisions, I have been a smoker for two years now and I am quite severely asthmatic. Clever I know. 

In the spirit of improving my adulting, and also not dying, I have decided / I have no choice but to give up smoking.

This is how I feel when I think about actually doing it.

But unfortunately, having my one millionth chest infection since I started smoking those 2 years ago (also who the eff starts smoking at 20 years old?!) and my 4th trip to hospital in that time has left me with little choice. 

This isn't fun 

Neither are these 

Neither is this 

AND NEITHER IS THIS 

No I was not injecting heroin, that's an arterial blood gas test. It's how they get a good indication of your blood oxygen levels. Where they take BLOOD from your WRIST. They have to stab through MUSCLE to get to your ARTERY. I'd rather have 10 asthma attacks than have that done again. OUCHHHHHH.

Apparently, because I'm an irresponsible, ignorant child, it has taken me the 4th trip to hospital to realise that my chest is too weak to keep smoking. The first 3 times I was like 'Meeeeeh no big deal, it's just a shed load of drugs, 8 steroids a day for a week, that's completely normal for a 22 year old. I'll just lay off the cigs for 3 days and then I'll be fine!'. But it's pretty terrifying being 22 years old and just standing up being enough to completely take your breath away.

I've mentioned my backwards logic before.I freak out about the tiniest things, like when I run out of soap or the supermarket is out of my brand of pasta sauce, I'll tell the whole world how angry I am about it and go on about it furiously for days on end - but when massive life altering things happen, I tend to either deal with them really well or do a total ostrich and bury my head in the sand and pretend it's not happening (which kind of makes it look like I'm dealing with it well to everyone else). With the hospital trips I just did the ostrich and convinced myself that because I was still alive it wasn't a big deal, maybe uploaded a light hearted post taking the mick out of myself on Facebook, but actually it's not funny. To get serious and a bit grim for a second, realistically I could have died any of those 4 times. And that's bloody terrifying. So, no more cigs for me. 

AND IM FUCKING FURIOUS ABOUT IT. 

I'm having a complete toddler tantrum. My sister and my dad and a handful of my cousins are also asthmatic, AND THEY CAN ALL SMOKE AND THEY ARE FINE AND THEY ALL HAD WORSE ASTHMA THAN ME. LIFE IS SO UNFAIR AND IM SO ANGRY. But my life's actually quite good and I have really nice friends and family and I don't really want to die. So I have to stop. DAMN YOU WONDERFUL FRIENDS AND FAMILY.

I have no real technique for quitting yet, as the last four days have been smoke free purely because I can barely breathe in oxygen at the moment, never mind tar, but I know as soon as I'm better the first thing I will want to do is chain smoke 20 cigarettes and have a bottle of wine. I am worried I'm going to replace smoking with even more drinking. But I'm going to really try not to, and give it a proper go and bring you all along with me on my journey, maybe help some others in my position. Here's to being a better and healthier adult!

I had planned on doing a ton of blogs while I've been off work about cooking and budgeting on beauty products and bits of that nature but as you can tell, I've been a little preoccupied by finding somewhere to live and not dying. I PROMISE I HAVE ANOTHER TINDER BLOG IN THE PIPELINE, hold tight people.

Thanks for all the well wishes and happy, happy adulting peeps x

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How To Deal With Being A Nervous Wreck

^^^^ ME^^^^

I am an incredibly, incredibly anxious person. I'm basically the personification of Courage the Cowardly Dog. If you don't experience anxiety, or even know what it is, the best way I can describe it is it's the same feeling you get when someone tells you really bad news, and I don't mean 'there's no chocolate left', I mean like 'Your parents have just been eaten by snakes' kind of bad news. That weird sensation when your heart skips 3 beats and it feels like your stomach has fallen out of your arse. Kind of like you're going to projectile vomit and have a heart attack simultaneously. Well I basically live my life like this. I know, I know, I'm a total catch, form a queue fellas. Not being able to decide what to have for lunch makes me anxious, when my cat isn't home by 10pm I am completely convinced she's been eaten by foxes, I'm scared of flying, I'm scared of lifts, I am always terrified that when I'm going up stairs I'm going to trip and break my face open. Experiencing anxiety when you're going through a transition in your life, like a break up or a move or a new job is completely normal - experiencing anxiety when everything is going really well and you're just anxious about what is going to go wrong next is basically mental. So I'm going to work on this and maybe help other people who are nervous wrecks like me get over it too.

Don't get me wrong here - I'm generally a pretty chirpy person, like I'm not medicated for my anxiety, I'm not depressed and there are definitely people who experience much higher levels of anxiety than me! But it's a pretty shitty way to live your life when you just worry about everything all the time. A life lived in fear is a life half lived after all. And actually, at the moment I think my anxiety levels are pretty justified. I mean I'm pretty much at my peak of shitty adulting. I'm moving out of the house I've lived in for three years at the weekend, I (still) haven't started packing yet, I have nowhere to live and no savings for a deposit so I've had to take two weeks off work to live with my Mummy, I have to find a flat under £800000 per month that will let me keep my cat and is near a station that isn't inhabited by arse holes, and to top it all off I've just had super noodles for dinner. Plus I've paid about a billion pounds of bills this month, AND one of my closest friends at work left today. Sob :(

So I usually deal with anxiety with three things - WINE, CAKE, and TOBACCO.

Drinking through the anxiety seems like the easiest and best solution to me. And to be honest it totally works in the short term. I tend to drink till I cant feel any emotion, be it anxiety or shame. And I eat all my feelings - happiness, sadness, excitement, hunger, tiredness as well as anxiety. Smoking is a bad idea in general and doesn't help anything especially not anxiety, but I like it so whatevs. Smoking weed probably does actually help, but I cant afford that shit.

Unfortunately all my coping mechanisms are flawed. Drinking makes you hungover, and being hungover makes you anxious. This is because of all the weird chemical and biological imbalances going on in your body and your brain, and your system trying to get it all back to normal. And the drinking it's self can also go one of two ways - it is a mood enhancer after all, I mean, if you have a couple of drinks and put on some cheery tunes and have a little anti anxiety party in your room, you'll probably feel a bit better and numb that nagging knot in your stomach for a few hours. BUT you could also end up in a blubbering ball of snot and tears, calling all your friends asking why they don't love you and texting your ex boyfriends that you don't care they're engaged and have kids, you want them back. It's a risky game in its self and the end result is always the hangover anyway. For this reason I would not recommend drinking as a coping mechanism. (says the chick with the 650ml Heineken in hand - preach)

And yes, eating a chocolate bar or a big fricking bowl of ice-cream, or three cheese toasties is going to release some delightful endorphins in your brain and make you feel AWESOME for an hour or two. But then you get the sugar crash, the feeling that you have furry teeth and you need to shower because you're getting the cheese sweats, and eventually you'll also get cellulite too and that shit makes no one happy. 

So here are some ways to cope better than I do when you're feeling a bit nervous or anxious. Healthy food is going to make you feel way better than that cake. Get some greens and some fruit in that face. Make a fruit smoothie, and eat an avocado with a spoon and pretend its ice-cream. You'll still get the endorphin release, but it will last longer, and you wont feel shit afterwards, you'll feel clean and healthy and full of energy.

Distract yourself - not with wine. Organise a day out with your besties (NO BOOZE), read a book, go for a walk, call your mum, pamper yourself a bit. You will have to face up to whatever is making you anxious at some point, but distracting yourself for a couple hours doing something nice and relaxing and fun can only help. Plus when you've removed yourself from the unresolvable pit of doom you'd gotten yourself into by completely over-thinking everything, when you go back to the problem later it doesn't seem so bad.  

Do some exercise. I personally hate exercise, but I've heard it helps. Plus if it is something you do enjoy, it first of all counts a distraction and secondly it releases more of those lovely endorphins. And although you get a burst of adrenaline and energy straight afterwards and you're wide awake, after a couple hours you'll probably feel pretty exhausted and slip straight into a lovely deep sleep. Feeling anxious can keep your brain moving at a million miles an hour and make it pretty difficult to switch off and go to sleep.

Some things I plan on experimenting with to control my anxiety (and also my general out-of-control levels of anger) are yoga and meditation. If I'm being honest, I think its complete bullshit, but people who I respect and trust (who aren't total hippies for the record) have recommended it to me and said it would help. So I'll write a couple of posts on my experiences and although I'm definitely a skeptic now, who knows, maybe I'll rediscover myself! Stay tuned peeps.

Oh and if anyone in London knows of anywhere I could live that would be GREAAAAAAT.

Happy adulting x

Sexy Pittas

So as it is the last week before payday - I am obviously broke. Broke to the point I had to withdraw the last bit of money left in my account so my phone bill doesn't come out and leave me foodless. So no more pret for lunch this week. Instead I did a little ASDA haul and have been putting together my own delicious lunches. 

The preparation element of making lunches to take to work is the main thing that puts me off because well - I'm really fucking lazy. So instead what I did was take all the bits to work and assemble it at lunch time. That gives me more time in the evenings to watch youtube videos and write stupid blogs 👍🏻

So for lunches this week I will be having pitta breads with various meat and salad fillings - all you need is:

-Wholemeal Pittas - £50p

-Salad of your choice, I chose...

Packet of 6 tomatoes - 80p

RIPE Avocado. It's like fucking Russian roulette you never actually know if its ripe until its too late and you've cut the bastard open - £1

Bag of lettuce - £1

Half cucumber - 30p

-Cheese, I went for the cheap £1 brie. Winning

-MEAT - I splashed out on half a rotisserie chicken which was £3 and it lasted two days, but you can get ham for like a quid.

-French salad dressing £1 - MUCH better than mayo or salad cream, trust

If you have an apetite like mine these need to be pretty frigging hearty or you're just going to be starving, so thats why I got quite a lot of fillings, but you can do this for much cheaper than I did. But I'm a pig, so everything on my list was obviously completely necessary. 

So that's a week's worth of lunches for just over £8. That's what I normally spend daily! And God damn, these are gooooooood. I hate bland food, and this is not bland - its the french dressing that really takes it from a 6 to a 10. Plus it's filling, and its healthy. Except the brie but whatevs, cheese is my religion, it's worth the clogged arteries. 

Another amazing and super cheap work lunch idea is pasta. A lot of people don't seem to be aware of this, but you can cook pasta in a microwave. Put the pasta in a bowl, cover it in boiling water from the kettle and stick it in the MW for 10-12 mins, drain, pop the sauce of your choice on top, stir and pop back in the microwave for 30 seconds to a minute. BOOM. A big bag of pasta in ASDA is 99p, and I resent spending more than a quid on pasta sauce. That will last at least 3 meals, more if you have smaller portions than me, so that's at least 3 days worth of lunches for 2 fricking quid. Genius. 

This week I've cleaned my room and made my own lunch for 3 days in a row  - I make that about a million adult points for me. High five! Unfortunately I probably need some adult points deducted for hitting a solid 7 on the hangover scale today. We had work do last night and I took full advantage of the free wine, thinking I was being really super well behaved and grown up I only had one in the pub afterwards and came straight home. I then wondered at 11pm why I was throwing up my super noodles after my super grown up behavior and failed to remember I polished off at least 6 glasses of free wine before the pub. Oopsie. Cathy if you're reading this you can't be cross because I came to work and don't pretend you knew I was hungover because you totally did not. (Cathy's my boss hehe)

Let me know your super ideas for work lunches, because I always need foodspiration, now I'm off to enjoy my hair of the dog and watch TOWIE. #Life

Happy adulting x

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How Do I Hangover

Because life is generally a bigger bitch than Regina George, it seems all the best things in this world eventually have a detrimental effect on you. Sadly, there really is too much of a good thing, I mean...

Food makes you fat

Sex gets you pregnant

The sun burns your skin

Shopping makes you poor

Too much sleep makes you even more tired (which I never have and never will understand)

And finally, alcohol makes you hungover

I mainly cope with my miserable failure at being a grown up in two ways  - eating my feelings, and drinking until I forget my problems. And one of the greatest pleasures of adult life is a big, fat fucking drink. A freezing cold, bitter, crisp gin and tonic with freshly squeezed tangy lime on a boiling hot summers day, a glass of full flavored, delicious red wine with your roast beef, a fucking Jager bomb on a night out because you need to get shitfaced quicker, whatever the occasion, alcohol is wonderful. It calms people down on stressful days, it gives people the confidence they need to talk to that cute guy or girl, it helps the less attractive get laid. But of course with that wonder comes the hangover.

Today is Sunday, which by association means I am hungover. Generally my hangovers either involve a lot of puking, or a lot of 'whyyyyyyyy, WHYYYYY DID I DO THAT' *burys head in hands*. I think I've experienced pretty much every type of hangover there is, so I thought I would share with you my findings on how best to deal with each different type of hangover.

The Still Pissed Hangover

If you wake up still drunk, you're probably going to be feeling pretty fucking good. You will still be able to laugh about the fact you kissed your ex boyfriends best mate, and you puked up your McDonald's in the hallway on your way in. The world will still be a beautiful, wobbly, wonderful place. Embrace this time, as you are a mere few hours away from feeling like you're going to DIE. If you drank enough to still feel drunk in the morning, you're in for one hellllllllll of a hangover. My advice would be maximize your damage control in this still drunk time. Down water. Down all the water you can get your hands on, put your head underneath the tap if it saves time. Get some food in you to soak up whatever is left in your system, and DO NOT GO BACK TO SLEEP. You will wake up feeling a bajillion times worse. You need to ride this shit out, and besides there is not time to sleep because you will be too busy drinking water. Re hydrate like a MF or its going to feel like your brain is going to fall out of your nose every time you move later.

The Vomit Apocalypse Hangover

This is unfortunately my most frequent hangover. I literally have no advice for this hangover. All you want to do is die, and it kind of feels like you are going to. Again get that water in you, as even though you will throw it back up pretty much immediately, it dilutes the stomach bile taste. Yummy, I know. Also, whatever you do, do not take painkillers until you know you're done with the vomming. This piece of advice comes from personal experience, throwing up half digested paracetamol tastes like chewing on a battery. Also, stay well, well away from any food or drink you like. Having chocolate milk in reverse is kind of off putting, like off putting for life. It came out of my nose. And finally, if you throw up more than like 10 times, you probably have alcohol poisoning and should go to Hospital or something.

The 'My Head is Going To Explode' Hangover

Waking up with a killer head ache is the worst. Pop some pills, down that water and stay still in a dark room until you stop feeling like someone is inside your head, trying to smash their way out with a hammer. Once the pain has dimmed down enough for you to move, have something to eat, it helps. Once that headache is gone and you're re hydrated you're over the worst. Unfortunately for me, this kind of hangover also makes me puke. Yay.

The 'I Need To Eat Everything Immediately Hangover'

Just do it. Eat it all. Order a Dominoes, and when the person at the end of the phone asks what you want, say 'Everything'. You'll want something savory, all of the crisps and the cheese and the carbs, and then the next second you'll want ice cream and chocolate and Haribo and all the sweets. It's OK, just do it. You can go for a run tomorrow. And it is also completely acceptable to have two take aways in one day when you feel like this. I have to say though, even though all you want is bacon and grease and carbs and junk, and it will feel amazing when you're shoving it all in your face, some veg would actually make you feel way better way quicker. Maybe throw something green into the mix when you're done with that KFC.

The 'I've Embarrassed Myself So Badly, I Need To Move To China' Hangover

I have been there. If you are reading this and you knew me in college, or anytime of my life since the age of about 15 actually, my God, you know I have been there. More times than I care to, or in some cases can remember. It happens. We all pee in phone boxes when we are too drunk to try and figure out where the nearest toilet is. We all snog wrong-ens when we have our beer goggles on. Sometimes people even wake up next to said wrong-ens. Not me though, I've definitely never done that, Mum. Promise. No matter how bad it seems, people will eventually forget, and life will go on. I am speaking so much from experience here! Sadly for me that means anyone who's reading this that knows me, will now be re-living and probably leaving comments about all the things I've done. Cheers guys. 

The 'Oh I Don't Actually Feel That Bad' Hangover

Never happened to me. Fuck you people.

My body is completely intolerant to alcohol, in that I'll be drunk after two drinks (which earned me the catchy nickname 2 beers Bailey in college) and my hangover will always be utterly retched. I never learn though, just last night I had a little party for one before I went to meet my friends which involved 90s gangster rap and a bottle of prosecco, which I'm sure is to blame for the state in now. It seems no one ever learns, which is again solid evidence that alcohol is fucking great. People universally agree its worth the suffering. 

I would like to end with some wise words from Big Bailey - my sister Petra. She once said to me that you wake up the morning after a night out, and two things will cross your mind..

'Thank God I'm alive' and 'Thank God I'm alone'

And hey, one out of two ain't bad.

Happy adulting x

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