It’s been a month and a half since I’ve posted. So much has happened, but I don’t really have time for an update just yet. This week has been a little rough on most of the people I know. Couples or not, Valentine’s Day comes with a lot of extra pressure.

It leaves a lot of us feeling a little drained or sad. I know I do. One of my favorite coping mechanisms is to make mixtapes that reflect my feelings or make me feel a bit better.

This one is a bit of the past month and a half. (There’s a bit of pop.)

Hope the holiday didn’t drag you lot down too much.

♥ katkatkat

Today is the last day of the year!

It’s probably been the most difficult, most tumultuous, most exciting, and most productive year of my life. The past couple of months have been about the end of many things. It’s been really rough. I’m not at all where I’d want to be, though people around me  have been praising me for the “great strides” I’ve been making.

I don’t really feel it.

Christmas hit me like a ton of bricks, and I’ve been in a really familiar place since then.

Truth is, I think I’ve really been hiding out from something.

 

It’s something I’ve been afraid of for a long time– Five years maybe?

But the impending New Year has given it a sense of urgency that doesn’t completely make sense to me.

I’ve tried to prepare for it. I’ve sat by the sidelines and watched people I love jumping in.

 

 

When I look into my future, it’s not that it doesn’t look bright.

 I don’t see anything. Just this terrifying, all-consuming nothingness.

 It’s really hard to get out of bed in the morning if that’s all you see on the other side of that door.

 I felt really sorry for myself.

It wasn’t fair.

I’d been through a lot, things were really difficult for me and I didn’t get anything from it! Meanwhile douchebags around the world were getting married, having babies, being successful and immensely popular, rolling around in money like motherfucking Scrooge McDuck.

Where was MY happy ending? Why was all of this happening to ME? Why couldn’t I have the things that I wanted?

I was pretty bratty about the whole thing.

It generally made me miserable.

It made the people around me miserable, too.

I lost the longest relationship I’ve ever been in, and then the love of my life,  one of my closest friends (three different people, fyi), my dream job, and contact with people who I really looked up to.

Which of course just meant I felt even more sorry for myself.

Recently I’d gotten really low. I stopped getting out of bed. I slept all day and stayed up all night.

I felt dead inside.

I was at the end of my rope, and really starting to feel hopeless.

I texted a friend of mine really late one night, in tears, my text reading, “I wish I was dead.”

And then it hit me.

No, I don’t.

My fear of the future has gotten me to this place, and by giving into it– I’ve lost SO MUCH.

Yes, that’s terrible but– why am I still  doing this to myself?

Why am I approaching my depression from the perspective of a victim?

Why am I focusing on the things I’ve lost, the people that have “wronged” me, and not my own future and happiness?

Why am I asking myself what to do about my depression instead of asking what I can do to make myself happy?

Because I’ve been afraid to let go.

I’m afraid it won’t get any better.

It’s okay to be afraid, as long as you don’t let it keep you from moving forward.

In 2013, that’s all I want to do.

Even if sometimes you’re not sure what’s out there.

 

It may not always be easy to stop feeling sorry for yourself, get up and go–but you’re the only one who can make you happy.

I hope you have a happy New Year!

 

 

If this New Years has you feeling like I was, please don’t hesitate to call one of the following hotlines. There’s always hope.

08457 90 90 90 Samaritans (UK)    1-800-273-8255 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline  (US)

One of my own personal Christmas traditions is to make a wishlist way too late for anyone I actually know to buy anything for me and post it up on the internets to share with all my friends and family.

I used to get a lot of shit from some people I knew.

No.

Every single one of my wishlists over the years can be broken down into three basic parts.

First, we have the Reasonably-Priced-Items-That-I-Will-Use-Every-Day-Forever.

Angelic Pretty Trick Cat button set ¥1,050/£7.72, Angelic Pretty Marshmallow Dot Eco Tote ¥2,310/£16.97, Drop Dead Salem Iphone Case £15, Drop Dead Sweet Knees leggings £25, Deceptions Tentacle Gauge Earrings $25/£15.87, Galaxxxy Sexy Cat-chan Sweater$45/£27.85

Secondly, the Sort-Of-Exorbitant-Gifts-That-End-Up-In-A-Long-Forgotten-Corner.

Angelic Pretty The Magic Angel Boston Bag ¥10,290/£75.60, Cute Lou Bat Blouse €95/£79.54, Black Milk Revenge Of The Burned Velvet Maxi £77.16, Jeffrey Campbell Zidler Hi Boots $264.95/£163.96, Betsy Johnson Too Too Parfum $62/£38.37, Yummy Cupcake Plush £48

These items are dangerous. They have a lot of appeal– but I can’t ACTUALLY afford them. This instills the desire even more, and may lead to splurge buying as a result of ridiculous glamourous fantasy scenarios where I’ve told myself I need them to live/breathe/be happy. (I blame tumblr.)

Oh god. Not this bitch again.

….I may sometimes have the same amount of money it takes to buy them. (You know, because it’s meant for things like bills, and groceries, and living.) What’s worse, because they’re “high-end” items, the usually end up not fitting, being incredibly uncomfortable or completely usesless, and thusly– used a lot less.

Or I’ll try to force myself to use them.

That doesn’t usually last long.

Last, there’s the Astronomically-Ridiculous-Items-That-Make-Me-Make-A-High-Pitched-Whining-Noise-Similar-To-A-Sad-Dog.

Angelic Pretty Fluffy Kitten Cape ¥20790/£152.75, Vivienne Westwood Armor Ring £185, Baby The Stars Shine Bright Mellow Chiffon Blouse ¥13440/£98.75, KTZ Cow Boots £560, Iphone 5 £529, Angelic Pretty Picture Book Dress ¥24,990/£183.61, A REAL UNICORN £££?????

I try not to look at these around people.

Chances are I won’t be getting any of these things– I’m probably better off, but a girl can dream. Here’s hoping you all get what you want for the holidays! ♥

 

Merry Happy, everyone! ♥♥♥♥

 

-Katkatkat!

[Much love to Allie of Hyperbole and a Half]

November was rough. On the bright side, Halloween this year was DEFINITELY better than last year. That’s not really that hard to do, but it was nice.

I have spent the last month, alone, on an emotional roller-coaster.

…Well, it’s more like an emotional hole.

Do you remember that scene in Homeward Bound where the dogs are trapped in that muddy hole beneath railroad ties and it’s too slippery to get out and it’s really sad and dramatic?

That’s where I was.

At the bottom of that hole was my bed, and sometimes my laptop.

(Usually whining to my close friends who unfortunately lived on the other side of the ocean DAILY. They helped me deal a lot with the initial pain of my situation, and how I felt about myself, but nobody really seemed to be able to help dig me out of this hold I’d dug for myself all the way across the Atlantic.)

Sometimes I would get out. Sometimes I would have excited bouts of creativity and energy and manically run around trying to catch up on the coursework I missed.

It wouldn’t last very long.

I got sick a lot. I had a hard time getting out of bed. I had a hard time sleeping. I got the flu. I got tonsillitis (AGAIN). I injured my hip implausibly (standing) thanks to an invisible physical disability I have.

The people around me stopped wanting to listen to me.

I don’t have very many close friends in this country, that’s not to say I don’t have any friends… I just don’t feel particularly close to a lot of the people I know. A lot of them have their own lives and I don’t really feel like I fit. I don’t feel comfortable most of the time. My support network is small, and weak, with many holes in it.

This has really been one of my big issues since I moved here. I didn’t have much in common with my course mates as I’m 6 years older than most of them, American, and couldn’t seem to find any real common ground with them.

I know many lovely, awesome people, but when I socialized with them, I often felt left out of conversation or lonely, or I sat back and watched as everyone had a great time doing something I wasn’t particularly interested in– and I felt sorry for myself, which just shut everyone else out and made everything worse.

It made me feel like a massive jerk.

I sank back down and I stopped trying to force myself out.

I cried.

A lot.

Every day.

All the time.

I stopped wanting to go out or do anything, I ceased to function effectively as a person and eventually I stopped feeling guilty about it.

I also stopped feeling like a loser for not being out at a pub somewhere with a bunch of people who don’t really seem to care whether or not I’m there.

Other than still being really ill, I stopped feeling bad about it. In fact, being away from people was really comforting.

I started to think a lot about why I was here.

What had I wanted when I came here?

Oh yeah.

I came to England to study and escape an emotionally abusive relationship and a dead-end job, make new friends and hopefully live this awesome glamorous dream life in London.

Most of that didn’t really happen. I sorta just helped royally fuck up my personal and professional and academic life now because someone treated me like shit a few years ago and I’ve never managed to move past it– and then I beat myself up about it for a long time. I spent so much time looking back and being afraid that I couldn’t handle much of anything.

I started to think about this a lot.

I eventually wanted to stop thinking about this, and started wanting to do things again.

I started to remember things I liked and wanted to do before I stopped wanting to do things ever again.

An overseas friend reminded me that even though I was in a rut, I had specific goals.

It was crazy how suddenly this insurmountable pile of things that was wrong with my life was just a list of things I could tick off at the end of the day. This lifted the weight from my chest, and instead of feeling bad– I started looking at life in a more practical sense.

Life was suddenly column a or column b. Things that helped me, or things that didn’t. Things that I could change, and things that I couldn’t. Suddenly… life started feeling more possible.

Eventually? I stopped crying.

Not to say that I can’t cry, or don’t cry at all, or things aren’t hard, or even that much better, but I don’t feel the need to mourn my life anymore– and I refuse to beat myself up about any of it. I don’t want to do that anymore.

I’ve spent a lot of time this past year trying to pick myself back up. I bought Gala Darling‘s Love & Sequins, and her Radical Self Love Bootcamp. I bought The 4 Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz and actively tried to follow the teachings in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. None of these I ever really finished. I didn’t have a real motivator to keep it up, and I still don’t.

Just being introspective doesn’t solve my problems, and I’m not sure it solves anyone else’s. I have so many amazing things I have left that I still want to do, including finishing my course. Which is why I’m chronicling everything here.

Things have started to ease up a little bit, I’ve begun taking care of myself, getting organized, and actively seeking out people I already know who I’d like to be closer to– and  I’m putting myself out there to connect with people. I’m putting the phone down. I’m in the moment. I’m open t o new experiences and new friends.

…Mostly on the internet.

Well, it’s something.

-Katkatkat!

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Halloween last year was a pretty big disappointment. Not just like; “This party is lame,” or “this parade is full of drunk naked old people and I’m not having any fun,” or “I don’t have any plans,” or “I got a rock,” but soul-destroying-ly, spirit-crushing-ly, don’t-get-out-of-bed-for-three-days awful.

It was particularly awful because Halloween is my favorite fucking holiday.

While I won’t share the events because this is a public blog, I will admit that I have never really recovered from it.

I have struggled for an entire year with a deep depression, and a gnawing sense of loneliness that I couldn’t ever really shake– even when I surrounded myself with other people, or hid under the covers of my boyfriend’s bed for days on end.

I have given into melodrama and selfishness. I stopped taking care of myself. I have really hurt people I care about. Sometimes I’d struggle up out of it for a few months, but it’d all break right down again. I am not a strong person, but I am definitely resilient.

I’ve learned that people are complicated creatures that you cannot and should not dismiss or demonize for one aspect of their personality, being cool is not as important as I feel like it is, feelings are usually just thoughts, thoughts aren’t facts most of the time, I really need to really respect my limits, and to take care of myself, and not take it so personally when the people closest to me disappoint me.

Boy, people will disappoint you.

People can also be really awesome sometimes.

You have to forgive them for being human, even if it hurts a bit. You also have to forgive yourself for the same thing.

Even if it hurts a bit.

Anyway, it’s been a year of melodrama and crappy situations and crying over things that matter and crying over things that haven’t. I wouldn’t say I’m in a particularly good place right now, but I have so many side-projects I have pushed to the side, so much of me I’ve left behind because it took effort and I was too tired and too sad.

I’m still tired and sad.

I don’t think I’m ever going to stop being tired.

I’m more tired of feeling like I have nothing to show for it. I’d like to start posting here more, since I actually spend money on this crap once a month.

I want to stop feeling like this.

I don’t know what this post is, since I don’t actually have anything new to show you yet. A statement of intent, maybe? A vague, self-interested ramble?

I want to start posting once or twice every other week. Give myself something to stive for. Don’t know who for. Maybe just me. Part portfolio, part chronicle-of-my-never-ending-search-for-the-thing-that-makes-me-stop-feeling-so-damn-empty-all-of-the-time.

I move house on Saturday– and next week will officially mark the anniversary of the day I sort-of broke.

Oh yeah, and Halloween.

I’d like to have a different experience this year, please.

-Katkatkat

Sorry for the lack of posting! I’ve just been busy busy busy!

At the beginning of July, I began an internship at Holloway-Smith Noir.

Alice and Sophie are really down to earth, and lovely people to work for. Interning here has really changed my life in ways I didn’t expect. I feel more confident in my own work, and frankly I do feel I’ve learned quite a bit more than my past two years at uni.

I’ve mostly been doing a lot of beading on bespoke costumes designed by Alice. When I close my eyes at night, I see Swarovski crystals, and I couldn’t be happier.

I should be asleep, but I thought I would post up some images of things I have helped with, made, or beaded. (In case you don’t follow me on Instagram!)

In the meantime, do check out the web shop. My favorites are the mermaid pasties and the conjoined peacock pasties. ;D

Also they’ve got a Tumblr and a Facebook Page if you’re curious. ♥

Also, I’m 26 now! Yay!!!

It all started with a bat-themed capelet from the Japanese brand, Antique Beast. I have been lusting after it for quite some time, but the original comes to about £82 before customs fees and taxes. Seeing as I live on about £50 a week, it doesn’t really seem like that would ever really be possible.

My friend Fran reminded me that there was a meetup at the V&A for the exhibit Kitty and the Bulldog: Lolita fashion and the influence of Britain, which “explores the way in which British fashion – notably Victoriana, Punk and Gothic – has influenced the development of Japan’s ‘Lolita’ style, a cult fashion movement whose defining feature has been its preoccupation with cuteness, or ‘kawaii’.” (more…)

A shirt I dyed hand-painted for my boyfriend to celebrate our year anniversary.

This was really really fun, and he seems to like it! I hope to eventually get a shot of him wearing it.

My month in five images. Click the images for sources.