Longer more thoughtful and probably more poetic post to follow but seriously coming to Glasgow and leaving my then shit of a life for five months was the best thing that has ever happened to me. Its been such a long time since I woke up every day with a spark in my heart, an urgent curiosty and a deep hunger for life. I have never felt so ready for anything. TO BE YELLOW.

Okay, I’m thinking of buying a bike when I get home and I have literally no idea where to even start. I would only be using it for weekend cruises and maybe some short commutes. I am really kind of a clumsy nerd and will need a lot of practice but I just want something that is comfortable to ride, efficient and affordable. Bike people, please help a sista out!

help me build a fort and then kiss me in it. jeez, is that too much to ask?

i’ve got all this independence and jeez it feels so nice but someday soon i wouldn’t mind falling in love to some good folk songs in the summer

Everything up until now has been leading to this and I am not disappointed, lonely or fearful like I most often am. Everything that has held me back for so long seems to have just dissolved. I have never felt more strong, starry eyed or firmly planted on the ground in my entire life.

realizing that if you stick to your budget you’ll still have enough money for a spring weekend in Paris and an extended weekend in either Barcelona, somewhere in Greece, or Sicily for a relaxing “beach week” before heading back to the MD. HOW DID MY LIFE GET SO AWESOME SO FAST?

I’m almost a month into my trip. You’d think I’d be homesick but all I really miss is Daiya.  

I had the first session of my life drawing class today and it was really challenging but also rewarding. My professor is confident that with practice everyone in the class will be able to draw the human form with at least some level of accuracy and honestly I think it will be pretty amazing to feel comfortable attempting to draw people I like eventually. I guess we shall see! All I know is that studying at the Glasgow School of Art feels like an opportunity of a lifetime and even if I wandered for an hour in the freezing cold lost trying to find it and my drawing sucks I’m still very happy to be there!

Sometimes I completely forget that I am a product of like years upon years of abuse and sometimes it’s 1 o’clock in the morning and I am running through a timeline of utter shit in my head and wondering how I ever managed to learn how to function as a mostly normal human being.

I think I’m finally in a safe position and space to make true judgements about my life back home. No longer influenced by perpetual loneliness, a need to feel accepted and a tendency to accept people treating me like shit and/or being shitty individuals. I think I can finally unpack, analyze and make realistic decisions about what I already know for the future. I’m never going to put myself in a position of having to feel shitty about my body, my sexuality, my ethics or my gender again, especially when that position is amongst “friends”. I’m never going to wriggle in discomfort and silence through another horribly offensive joke and I’m going to stop feeling like I owe certain people compassion and understanding who have afforded zero of that to me. I know one day I’ll feel ready to come home but for now I am so happy to have time to learn, edit and grow.

Only so many days to flee from the possible awfulness
and to make your life great if you want that.

I want to graduate college. I want to adopt a pup who doesn’t mind taking car rides with me, exploring woodsy places and cuddling. If they don’t like any of these things and just spend 100% of the time going through my trash I will still love them and thank god for their company. I want to get a job that is sufficiently engaging and pays my bills while I start a little vegan donut business. I want to spend the earliest mornings kneading and forming dough and mixing glazes. I want to spend my afternoons talking quietly with customers, advocating for veganism and dreaming up the next step of my project. When all the work is done, I want to retreat to my cosy apartment with wood floors and large windows. Oh and true love and all that with a bearded individual who wants to share this life with me might be nice too.

Guys, let me tell you one of my simultaneously best and most embarrassing memories. When I was twelve years old, my grandparents took me to New York City for the first time and they know one of the administrators at NYU so we got to stay in a dorm there. The whole weekend I imagined what it would like to be a college student and felt just ~*so cool*~  but I also felt really insecure and bad about myself because I was awkward and twelve and surrounded by hipsters (although hipster was a term I didn’t yet understand). Anyway, I went to a foot locker and my grandparents bought me a pair of black and red converses which *~weren’t available in maryland~* and when I was in the store a The Used video played and the people working there were really nice to me and I had never felt so cool in my entire life.

When I was ten years old and had no idea what being passionate about anything really entailed my dad told me “You have more passion in your tiny pinky finger than most people will experience in their entire lives” and I swear to god that has been boosting my self estem for ten years now.

When I was sixteen I told my dad that I was in love and that I didn’t understand why it felt like I felt so much more than everyone else and he told me “Nina, we are just a different kind of bird” and four years later this has never been more apparent.