A Little About Me **EDIT**

So, generally, the reason I come on here is to write when I’m all fired up about something. I find it’s a good place to bitch without really worrying about offending people, because, hey, if I offend the internet, what is honestly going to happen? You’re gonna virtually slap me in the face or something?

For some reason though, since I moved to Belgium, I’ve not really gotten fired up about much. I mean, sure, there are some pretty annoying things (Belgians are generally far less polite than English people, and this is something unexpectedly difficult to adjust to) but nothing is inspiring a good rant.

So on that note, I thought I’d take time to actually say a little about myself instead. I realised that I don’t talk about my life…. at all really. This diary was just getting bloated with opinions and hot air so here goes.

This is baby me:

But you probably guessed that, being my profile picture and all.

So here’s me now:

This is the most recent photo I could find of me. Unfortunately, I’m in a coffeeshop in Amsterdam, so I’m maybe a LITTLE high…

This is Mat:

He’s my boyfriend, we’ve been together almost 4 years now.

Technically, we met in a rock club, but we sort of knew each other before that. We both had the same cricle of friends but had never hung out. Before that day, I would have sworn that I had never spoken to him before, but Mat tells a different story. The first time we spoke, I walked past him in the local student’s union. He tried to chat me up and I completely blanked him. I blanked him because I was wearing just jeans and a pink bra at the time (a story for another day) and so many guys were trying to chat me up based on the sluttiness of my outfit. I still don’t remember this happening, but since there was no one else there in a bright pink bra, I’ve gotta believe him on this one.

So the actual night we met, my friend Jenny had taken me out to the club, hoping to set me up with one of her friends. He was this scary tall blonde guy with spikey hair and a spikey face. I was seriously not interested, but he decided he was definitely interested and proceeded to sneak up on me and BITE ME?! Without me giving the slightest bit of encouragement, he would just manage to find me, and chomp on me. Truly unpleasant. I spent most of the night running into different rooms of the club trying to avoid him as he just didn’t take no for an answer.

During one bout of running away, I ran into Mat. I vaguely recognized his face and said "I know you! Save me from this horrible guy! Pretend you’re with me!". Mat was only too happy to oblige. And the rest is history.

This is Mat and my sister Kate. Kate is more awesome than anyone in the world ever. AND SHE’S VISITING SOOOON! WOOOO!

 

That lovely backdrop you’re admiring is the town I live in, Antwerp, Belgium. It’s nice, there’s good food, nice buildings and I love my job. I work as an assistant designer on denim products for Wrangler. If you live in America, you will know Wrangler as a cheap shitty brand that retails in Walmart and does cheesy campaigns like "Booty Up", but here in Europe, it’s a much nicer brand with a much higher price point. We design beautiful things, and if you ever have the urge to see Wrangler at it’s finest, look no further than Europe.

This is Kate and I in a hunting shop in Scotland. I don’t think I remember laughing as much as we did that day when we were "crazy" enough to put deerstalkers on…. SIDEWAYS.

This here is my little studio duplex apartment. It’s small, but lovely. I love that everything is painted white, the wooden stairs and the very old wooden beam that crosses the room (you can see it on the right hand side of the photo).

And Mat, stood in our kitchen bit. That’s not a microwave, that’s our oven. Once it set on fire. Again, another story for another day.

This is up the stairs to our bedroom. Another gorgeous wooden beam crosses the ceiling. I love those things.

And now my collection. I spent almost a year designing and making these six outfits, and they got me the job I have today. Guess who loves denim?

And some of the illustrations to go along with it…

 

But artsy fartsy drawings aren’t all I do. I also enjoy drawing comics, though it’s rare, because they take a lot more time than you think. This is an excerpt from a comic I did featuring my Dad, Kate and me. Dad is the red octopus, I’m the starfish and Kate is the purple…thing.

Dad is insane at scrabble.

I did try to post one last thing here, a piece of writing I did for Mat one Christmas, but it kept cutting it off hal

fway through no matter how many times I went back and edited the entry, so we shall have to save that for another day.

**EDIT** After some help from the OD techy guys, you can now note the entry and have the pleasure of reading Writing From The Road. It’s sort of about how Mat and I met and what it’s like being with him now.

 

Writing from the Road

One of the things that occurred to me frequently whilst on the path was how long I had been walking. Sometimes, it felt like it had been years, that my pace was trudging, begrudging. Other times, I could remember the tentative beginnings as if they happened yesterday. Time on the path always felt out of perspective.

However, only from my current perspective on the path can I see something I didn’t notice at the time I passed it. A while back, the path had grown wide, but the trees above me had grown thicker, sapping light from the way forward. Now that I try hard to recall, I remember seeing another path through the trees to my right. It was narrower than mine, and seemed to swerve and dodge and wobble on its course. As I travelled, it went almost parallel to my own, but had wandered off in a dazed line, into a darker part of the forest.

I thought nothing of it, I barely even noticed it at the time, but like I said, perspective is funny here.

After my path had both widened and darkened, it seemed to continue like that for longer than I cared. I remember it wasn’t pitch blackness, but more a dingy shadowed area, the scenery feeling temporary and misplaced. I didn’t really recognise any of the trees and I had stumbled across some confusing forks and crossroads along the way.

It was in this dingy era that for the second time I spied the wobbly path, edging nearer to my own. This time, the path joined mine for all but the briefest of moments. Where they came together, I stopped and looked down that winding road into the darkness from where it came. I could see nothing but black. This path had come from a strange part of the forest, somewhere I had not been and wouldn’t dare to travel. The path was cobbled in places, and just dust in others. But somehow it didn’t seem dangerous. Nonetheless, at the time, I merely glanced down that rickety lane and carried on. It is only now I remember every detail.

The road I was travelling seemed to get lighter again, and with it came my own huge sense of relief. The airy new brightness of the forest seemed to make me stand up taller, take deep breaths and smell the gorgeous pine scent of the forest around me. And then I sensed another smell, something richer. I could smell fruits, tangy and dark, along with a floral smell, almost that of talc but in some way… warmer.
My pulse quickened at this scent, it was a beautiful mix of textures in the air, shivering their way towards me. I walked faster, drawn to this scent that was exciting and new. As the trees thinned out further, I noticed the path had widened again. But this time it wasn’t a natural area that had been well trodden, but a merging of another path onto my own.  As I neared the backwards fork, I turned my head to see where this path had come from. Looking back, it shouldn’t have surprised me, but that wobbly half cobbled path that had leapt nimbly alongside my own had finally joined mine.

There was a sense of discovery and companionship in my finding of the lane. It was then that I recalled the previous meetings in more vivid detail. Thinking of these parallel tracks meeting after those unnoticed earlier encounters made it seem fateful that they had met. I was struck with a sense of wonder and laughed aloud when I wondered how I had never taken such a good look at the path so close to my own.

As I continued down a path which felt stronger and somehow bouncier, I felt lucky. This path that had joined my own was something that, overall, had improved my journey.

Occasionally I fell over one of its cobbles, sometimes there would be a strip of grass down the centre, as if something had trodden either side of the path many times before but never down the centre. At these times I would walk on the left, what I thought of as “my side”.
I remember other times the path would be so narrow that I would forget that I had a side to walk on at all, but other times trees would sprout in the middle, ugly and forbidding. I was always happy when the trees disappeared.

My path has been long and I expect the journey won’t be over for sometime, as I’m writing to you from the road now. Although the road is my way forward, it is now also my companion, and my friend. The road knows me just as well as I know it. I don’t need a map to follow its path and I don’t need heavy duty boots to endure the journey. All I need is that other path running right alongside my own, keeping me company, keeping me going.

Rose