One Year On | "The present changes the past. Looking back, you do not find what you left behind"

Dear Ex Boyfriend, 

 I can't believe it's been a year already. It feels as though it was only yesterday you looked me in the eye and told me we were done. I thought my life was over but what I didn't realise at the time, the day you left me was the day my life really started. What I really want to say is thank you! Don't worry. I'm not gonna go all Christina on you and sing Fighter, although it explains this all pretty bloody well. Thank you for letting me go. Thank you for breaking my heart. Thank you for making me realise what it is to be truly loved (clue: it wasn't from you). Thank you for giving me the motivation to become a better person. Thank you for making me realise I am worth more. Thank you. 

Losing the life you had built for yourself and so desperately wanted all at once is enough to send even the strongest people into a downward spiral. I spent too long beating myself up for feeling bad when I should have been reminding myself I was entitled to feel that way. Heartbreak is such an incredibly intense emotion, it completely breaks you but IT'S OKAY, time really does heal all wounds. I couldn't be any happier right now. In a year, I've had a brilliant holiday in Cyprus with my best friend whom I became closer to on the back of the break up, got a new job where I absolutely love my colleagues, spending 2 months in 2 beautiful countries with absolute strangers, got back in contact with old friends. I've discovered more about myself in the last 12 months than in the 21 years previous. The cloud from the effects of a toxic relationship is finally lifting. People often ask if I regret being with him, I don't. It's all experience and after all I've gained much more than I've lost. I'm probably repeating myself as usual but you really do have to go through the bad times to appreciate the good ones. If you asked me this time last year if I thought I would be in this position right now, I'd have told you no. I'll be honest, I don't even recognise the person I was last September. I've grown and changed dramatically in my perspective on life and on myself.

The best part of it all is the fact I've been able to speak to others who have been through something similar to me. This is exactly WHY I write about this. I want to be the person that you feel like you can come to. I won't judge you, I will listen and I will try to help.  I cannot think of anything worse than knowing someone is feeling the way I did. It's so easy to feel like you want to give up, but don't. You have so many people that love and care for you even if it doesn't feel that way in this very moment. You're beautiful, you're kind, you are unique.
If I can help anyone by talking to them about my own experience and how it's gotten better for me, then what happened was worth it. Being in this situation has made me realise how incredible my family and friends are. I was by myself but I was never alone. 

Can't believe I'm saying this but I'm actually glad everything happened the way it did. I'm so damn proud of who I have become and what has been accomplished since then. I'm on top of the world and I refuse to let anything or anyone bring me down.

Things change, and sometimes, it's definitely for the better.

Springtime | "The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money."

I bet you didn't think I could be doing much more with my life than working non stop and buying things for my house, did you? Here is a little peek into my life for the last month.

I've just created a Facebook page for 'Note To Charley' so go ahead, click this link and like the page.

McBUSTED @ LG Arena, Birmingham
3rd May 2014

For weeks, this was the thing I was looking forward to the most. Meeting up with my favourite girls and dancing to our favourite band (plus 2/3 of Busted). I wouldn't have met any of them without McFLY so seeing them with anyone else would just be wrong. I love the fact that a band can bring so many people together. Tour time is my favourite.
First off, we met up with some McFriends for lunch and a catch up, then waltzed back to the hotel that Abby and Amber were staying in to have a few drinks and a chat. The support acts were pretty rubbish at the gig so we skipped them and made our way in on the cool air shuttle from the airport to LG Arena. Megan had booked the tickets and we had great seats so there was no rush to be there. It turned out that the seats were so great that they were only a few feet away from the B Stage. Awesome, right?
Even though there were fewer McFLY songs than I would have liked, it was great to reminisce my childhood with Busted. I know I'm not the only one, but I really do hope that McFLY come back as themselves and let McBUSTED go out on a high, rather than pushing away the die hard fans that got them where they are now.
The best part of the whole night was getting to experience it all with my best friends, and I wouldn't have changed it for anything. Not even a kiss from Dougie Poynter...

Katy Perry @ LG Arena, Birmingham

14th May 2014

 Okay, so I've never been a huge 'recent' Katy Perry fan. She's released the odd recent song that I've liked but I always preferred her older songs. Danny managed to get us tickets on Tickets For Troops, which is a great website that gives free tickets to people in the military. We queued from 3pm so I could get Danny as near to the front as possible (he's a little bit in love with KP) and we ended up right on the barrier. The photos you see above aren't even zoomed in. She started with her popular single, Roar, in which she arrived in a prism (shock...) and began what became the best concert I'd been to in my life.
The whole concert was split into sections; Prismatic, Egyptian, Cat-oure, Acoustic, Throwback, Hyper Neon, Encore and each of these required another gorgeous costume. Honestly, the Acoustic section was the most incredible thing I've ever seen. She came to the front of the stage and performed a few songs up close with the crowd. By The Grace Of God is the most beautiful song I've heard for a long time and completely relates to me so when she sang it, a few tears may have fallen out of my eyes. If you've not heard it before, please go and listen to it. Infact, let me help you. Click here and you'll be transported to the beautiful sounds of KP. It was the first time I'd ever seen the super confident Katy Perry look vulnerable and dare I say it, human. We put celebrities on pedestals and sometimes, I think that we can easily forget that they are real people, just like us. Katy's new single, Birthday, was the second to last song she performed and being the wonderful person she is, revolved the whole song around a competition winner who's birthday it was that night. Talk about the best birthday present ever, right?
All in all, I would 10/10 recommend you go and see her if you get the chance to.

Red Arrows Arrival @ RAF Scampton, Lincolnshire

8th June 2014

Sunday bought out the plane geek in me. Somehow I got wind that Red Arrows would be arriving at RAF Scampton around 6pm and being someone that has never seen them before, really wanted to go. Danny, being the lovely person that he is, gave up his evening and drove there to take me to see them land. We found somewhere to park and walked across a field to the end of the runway. There were a few people there already with their children, getting all excited to see a national treasure. Luckily for us, the Red Arrows did a little display before they landed and I don't think I've ever been so awestruck in my life. A few of the pilots waved to their admirers on the ground as they flew over our heads, ready to land. This experience has just made me so excited to be attended the RAF Waddington Air Show in July (which my family are coming to visit for... even more exciting!).

So there you have it. A little look into the not very interesting but hectic life of Charley. It may not be a lot but it's mine. I have so much to look forward to in the coming months and feel so lucky to be in the position that I am now. Maybe I don't have everything I ever wished for, but I have everything that I have ever needed and that's the important thing. For the first time in a long time, I can finally say that I am happy with where I am in my life. If there were one thing I could change, it would be that my family were closer, but I have the joy of them coming to see me for a weekend soon.

Note To Charley: Don't take your family for granted. Spend as much time with them as you can. You'll miss them far more than you ever expected to. 

Growing Up | "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."

Growing up is never easy, no matter who you are or what sort of life you have. If you say you had it easy, I will say you're lying. It's crazy to think that I've been alive for 21 years and every year there has been one thing or another that stopped me in my tracks. Childhood is where we learn the basics of the life we are heading into and we spend the majority of the first 10 years of our life being force fed information on things we really don't understand. All we want to do is pretend to be planes or draw on walls. We don't care about how to join up letters or how Moses parted the sea. It's so important to be told that it's okay to make mistakes and that it is an essential part of growing up. Learning from mistakes when you're younger can only give you more time to develop and remind yourself that what you did didn't work out. 

Primary school for me was just 7 years of having religion shoved down my throat. That's the problem with going to a catholic primary school, I suppose. We aren't given the space and opportunity to have our own opinion. From such a young age we are being encouraged to think about our futures and we shouldn't be. Childhood is for innocence and being silly - not for deciding you want to be an accountant. I'm in my second decade of life and I don't even know what I want to do yet. 

I was one of the early developers in my class in school and that made it really difficult. Being the oldest sibling, I had no-one to talk to about what I was going through. I didn't know what was happening with my body and it confused me. People would make fun of me because I wore a bra and I was taller than most people in my class (unfortunately I stopped growing that year and I'm stuck at 5'2). Instead of playing with my 'friends' in the playground, I would sit in the reception with the women and draw pictures because going outside, not knowing what people would say was terrifying. I was only 10 years old and there was already people telling me what I looked like was 'wrong for a girl'. It was upsetting. What kind of person would tell an impressionable young girl that having meat on her bones is wrong? We don't all look like Barbie, and nor should we.

I couldn't shake what people had said to me for a long time. Self esteem was something I was hardly aware of and already I had none. I wore baggy clothes to hide my breasts, a jacket to hide my arms and I would be dead before I was seen in a skirt. I put on weight and even though I hated how big I had become, but I would keep comfort eating. It was a vicious circle. Sad because fat, eat because sad, sad because fat. 

Going into secondary school, I was nervous about what was ahead of me. I made sure I had the biggest uniform and looking back now I realise it made me look bigger than I was - not a good move guys. I was ginger, had braces and was fat. Not exactly the best way to start a new school, I guess. The nicknames soon began. There was tin teeth, boing boing, carrot top… They say that sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. They were wrong. They hurt. 

Moving into the higher years of secondary school, it became apparent that something was wrong with me. I was making myself sick so I didn't have to go to school, I felt empty and regretfully, started self harming. Fortunately, I was aware that I needed help. I started going to a counsellor and she helped me a bit, but I felt extremely patronised by her and decided that it wasn't for me. Trying my best to get on with life, I knuckled down and got good grades in my GCSE's. The feelings of emptiness and worthlessness never went away, I just managed them. Sometimes it seems like it is impossible to put them to the back of your mind, but I promise you, it will get easier.

Something that really affected me in college was a set of 'awards' given out at the end of our time there. Luckily enough I found out that I had won 'biggest attention seeker' voted for by all my year. I never thought people could be so cruel. Needless to say, I didn't attend the ceremony and have barely spoken to any of them since. 

School wasn't all that bad though. I had some amazing experiences and I wouldn't change them for the world. Learning a new language, meeting some amazing people, getting to go to a different country, writing songs that people would then cover and performing numerous plays and pantomimes (I actually got to be the female lead once and it made me feel incredible. I never thought I was good enough until that day). Experiencing bullying and depression in school has only made me into a stronger person today and as much as I would have liked to have enjoyed my time at school, I cannot thank it enough for the lessons it has taught me. 

The working world is much more mature environment although there is aspects that feel like you're still in the school playground. Earning your own money and accepting a responsibility is the one of the first steps you take being a proper 'grown up', unless you went to uni which I refused to do, but I'll pick up on the topic of uni another time… I've worked since I was 17. A year was spent in McDonalds which was actually great fun and then moved to Wetherspoon. You learn a lot working in a pub, meeting so many different people and all with different stories to tell. I hope that when I am old and grey, I'll be the one with the stories. I am still pretty new to this stage of my life, so I don't have too much to say on the matter but I am the happiest I've been in a long time. 

We come into life as a blank canvas and everything we experience is written in our skin. The bruises and scars we accumulate over the years are just signs that we had a tough time and we got through it. We are strong. YOU are strong. 

I really don't want this blog to come across as self centred and all about me. You are not alone in what you have gone through. My thoughts writing this were that if people saw that I had gone through rubbish, they would feel more comfortable talking to me about it if they thought they had no-one.  Please, please, PLEASE, if you feel the way I (and many others) have, do NOT hesitate to contact me. My facebook and twitter are at the top of this page.