So... hi!

I go by Rata and this is my journal! I'm 17 and am half Scottish and half Romanian. I won't bore you with the usual stuff like 'my hobbies are' or 'my favourite music is', I think it's much more fun to discover a persons tastes and passions through their writing.

I started this journal to express my thoughts and hopefully connect with people who might relate to my words. I guess in a way it's selfish, as I want to use this journal as a means to be heard, rather than to have people be heard.

This project is a sort-of continuation of my former project, which was an exploration of my thoughts, feelings and experiences through the lens of different versions of myself. I wanted to end the forest project because I felt constrainted by a self-imposed expectation to have the story have an ending.

I came to realise that there is no ending, as it is an exploration of my life and its faults. The only way for it to have an end is for me to become faultless, which I am very far from. So, I think a much less imposing way for me to express and make sense of my feelings would be through a journal. Albeit, I might return to poetry later in life, when I have become more mature.

Anyways, I want to continue with yapping about my day (im not sure if this is too much for one entry sorry :/ ). I actually had a really productive day! It's my first day back home after staying at my parents place for a month and I had so much I wanted to get done. I worked on my sewing project and played a lot of guitar. I also saw my grandmother and her dog, that was really sweet.

My parents are staying over at my place for a week and it's honestly been really stressing me out, they're very argumentative and they like to impose themselves upon my being. I'm trying my best to not fall back into the mental spiral I've been experiencing this past month, but it's difficult, especially with the hundred other things I have to worry about. I'm going to see a few friends over this week to try to get my mind off the loneliness and exams and deadlines and work and uni applications and my future and whatever else there is, so I hope that goes well :)

I feel very weird writing these things, honestly I find it very strange to not talk about myself in a non-negative light. I think I've kind of realised that while it is artistically useful to have the self-hatred I have, it is also counter-productive. I started deeply hating myself again at around the start of October and it culminated in me becoming so caught up in my selfishness I began to act even more selfishly, culimating in me hurting those who were close to me and cared for me.

It's sort of like when you worry about procrastinating so much it makes you procrastinate even more. I hated myself so much that I could only focus on that self-hatred and it made me blind to the rest of my emotions and being. My gratitude turned into spite, my joy turned into nostalgia and my love turned into expectation. One of my goals for this journal is to explore my self-hatred and try to move past it, so that instead of moping in a self-made hole, I can instead become someone who is worthy of happiness.

Okay, enough for today!! Thanks for reading <3