I don't know about other countries but the legal age for people to start having sex in the UK is sixteen; however many people tend to have sex a few years prior to turning sixteen. I am eighteen which means that I am two years older than the legal age to have sex, however, unlike what seems to be like most people my age, I am still a virgin. I do feel slightly embarrassed by this, especially as I also haven't been that intimate with anyone and the fact that I was in a long-term relationship with someone else. I mean, me and my ex did do one or two things (which I don't need to talk about on here) but we never went as far as having sex with one another, which in today's society might be considered as quite unusual to say the least.
Above I mentioned that I was in a long-term relationship last year, however we didn't have sex with each other. We had both said (before we were together) that we would want to lose our virginity to someone who we really loved and cared about and not by having a one-night stand with someone (which there is absolutely nothing wrong with, it's just not something that I, personally, would do). However, the problem was that he admitted to me that he wasn't ready to have sex, which is fine, but I, at the time, thought that I was. Despite this, when we did the stuff that we did do together, that, and maybe one or two other things, did highlight to me that I also wasn't ready to have sex. And that's okay because sex isn't something that any of us have to rush into or feel pressured into doing and I feel that it should be something that is done because we want to do it and something that should only happen when the time is right.
I guess that one of the things that helped highlight to me that I wasn't ready to have sex was the fact that I didn't feel 100% comfortable with undressing/being undressed in front of my ex-partner. At first I thought this was because I hate the way my body looks anyway and that the problem was more to do with me and my thoughts than my ex-partner. But as time went on I did begin to wonder to myself why I still felt uncomfortable being naked in front of him, and realised that it wasn't completely due to my own body issues.
Even when it came to doing things with him (or doing bits if you're a Love Island fan), I wasn't always entirely comfortable with what was going on. I mean, I did want it to happen and it wasn't as if he was pressuring me into doing anything. He would always make sure that I wanted to do whatever it was that we were doing before we actually did anything, and each time I said that I did because I did want it to happen because he was my boyfriend and I wanted to be intimate with him. But for some reason, that is still slightly unknown to me, I didn't always feel comfortable with what was going on. It wasn't as if I didn't want it to happen, because I did, but because I didn't (and still don't) feel confident in the way that my body looks, I didn't particularly enjoy the idea of someone being next to me and being able to see me in ways that no one else had ever seen me before. I guess it was the first time that I had been intimate in any way with someone before (as it was for him) so I guess that might have had something to do with me not fully feeling comfortable with either being semi-naked or completely naked in front of someone else. But surely if I loved that person and did want to do that stuff with them, then shouldn't I have felt comfortable with it all? Clearly not.
I don't think I'm that desperate to have sex or to lose my virginity. I'm not particularly a religious person (as you will learn in one of my posts that should go out in the next few weeks) and don't believe the view of not having sex before marriage. I do think that you should have sex with the person that you love and not just do it for the sake of doing it. But in this day and age it's almost a laughable offence if you get to a certain age and still haven't lost your virginity. But is being a virgin at eighteen all that bad? Not really.
The thing is, I do want to get losing my virginity out of the way to an extent because I've always been given the impression that it is only acceptable up to a certain age where you can get away with telling someone that you're still a virgin. Like, I can hardly imagine myself in my twenties and having to tell my boyfriend (if there will be one in the future) that I'm still a virgin; whereas he's slept with many women and might find it either a bit weird or might somehow find himself under a bit more pressure (correct me if I'm wrong) if he finds out that I'm losing my virginity to him. I do kind of see that as embarrassing but I wouldn't want to lie to him about it (or anyone else for that matter) as the truth does always come out and I wouldn't want to portray myself as something that I'm not; or as having done stuff that I haven't actually done. But I also know that I shouldn't, in any way, try and rush into this because it's not something that should be rushed and is something that will happen in its own time.
I guess that I always thought that I would have lost my virginity before now, that I wouldn't have to be slightly embarrassed as to say that I had my first boyfriend at seventeen, that I wouldn't have to say that I had my first kiss at seventeen, or that I had my first intimate experience at seventeen. But all of these things are still acceptable to have happened for the first time at seventeen and I personally don't think that anyone should feel pressured into doing anything that they don't particularly feel comfortable in doing, no matter how old they are; even if they have already had sex or have done anything else, these things should only be done when both people consent to it happening.
So in answer to my question 'is it okay to still be a virgin?', yes, it is absolutely okay for me and anyone else to still be a virgin at this age (or at any age for that matter). I think that virginity should be something that we should learn to not be embarrassed or ashamed about and instead should be embraced as something that doesn't need to be lost in a hurry and having sex should be done as and when you are ready to do it and don't have any doubts or worries whatsoever. And even if you have already lost your virginity, whenever you do have sex you shouldn't do it because your partner is pressuring you into it and should only do it because the two of you feel that it's right and that you both want to do it. You also shouldn't feel any pressure from others to either lose your virginity or to have sex with someone as it's YOUR decision and is a decision that YOU should make by yourself, and that you're not just doing it because other people are telling you to.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post and I hope that it has possibly helped any one of you who may also be in the same situation as me. If you have any questions that are related to this post or anything else that you want to ask me then please don't hesitate to do so. All of my contact details are in the contacts tab at the top of this page.
Again, thank you so much for reading this post,
Love Beth xx
Sunday 29 July 2018
Sunday 22 July 2018
My First Ever House Move
As someone who had spent most of her life having parents who were still together and had been living in the same house for her whole life, it's safe to say that when my parents began the proceedings for their divorce, it was only inevitable that the family home would also be sold. Even though we eventually (as you will understand once you've read the rest of this post) moved house, the whole experience was quite stressful, and all I had to do was pack a few of my things into boxes and then turn up at my new house after school on moving day. I can only imagine the real stress that my Mum was under when she was trying to find a home for her, me, and my brothers to move into; as well as having to deal with her divorcing my Dad and getting him to move his things out of my old house. As this was one of the most stressful things that I have ever had to deal with (as well as happening at an already stressful time in my life) I thought that I would tell you all about my experience with my first ever house move (as per the title of this post).
It all started at the start of last year around February/March time. My parents had been split up since November 2014 and my Mum sat me and my brother down because she wanted to talk to us. That's when she mentioned that the house was being sold. The house that had been my home for my entire life. The house that held so many memories. Granted, not all of these memories were entirely good and looking back all I can ever really remember happening there was birthdays, Christmas's, BBQs, and my Mum and Dad constantly arguing and screaming at each other 24/7. That combined with the fact that my old house was completely in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest corner shop being two or three miles away and all of my friends living at least seven miles away (if I was lucky), meant that I didn't mind too much at first over my parents decision to sell the family 'home'. I mean, if it meant a fresh start and a chance to be closer to my friends then who was I to try and persuade them otherwise?
The house was then put on the market within a few weeks of us finding out that it was being sold and within two months an offer had been made and accepted. At this point my mum was still looking at houses for us to move into and even though I knew it would take a while for the sale to be completed, it looked as though we might have ended up without anywhere to stay. I mean, obviously we had family we could stay with but at the same time my Uncle had sold his house and hadn't found anywhere to live, leaving the only other option to move in with my Nan and Grandad, who only have a two bedroom house that is quite small and probably wouldn't accommodate seven people and three houses worth of things. However, my mum was able to find somewhere for us to live and had an offer accepted on a house.
Now, at this point you might be thinking, 'why are you telling us all this if that's where it ends?' Well, it doesn't end there, and that's only part of the story.
My Mum's offer on a house may have been accepted but life was never going to be easy as far as we were concerned. The people who were buying our house were starting to mess us around a bit by asking questions. Buyers are entitled to do this (obviously) because they want to make sure that they aren't wasting their own time by buying a house that they're going to then end up not enjoying living in. But the problem with these questions was the fact that there were certain questions that they kept on asking over and over again, which did become quite annoying (even I got annoyed, which is very easily done, but I wasn't even involved with having to answer any questions or with the whole buying/selling process) and seemed to be taking their time in terms of deciding whether or not they were actually going to buy the house (baring in mind at this point they had already come to view it at least twice). It did become very annoying and considering their offer had been accepted around June/July at the time, they did seem to be taking their time in deciding whether or not they wanted to buy the house. But this wasn't the only trouble we were having.
I can't remember exactly when this happened, but some time after August the sale on the house we were meant to be buying fell through and we were in immediate panic, especially as we had already gone past the original date for the sale on our house to be completed and for us to move out and the new people to move in. My mum then had the struggle of trying to find another house that we could all move in to, preferably almost straight away as we had the worry of not knowing when the people buying our house were going to move in and we didn't all want to try and fit into my Nan and Grandad's house as it wouldn't really be fair on them to have all of us living with them and basically taking over their relatively easy and quiet life.
After constantly being on RightMove 24/7, my Mum was eventually able to find a house that was a good size for all of us, affordable, and in a good location. Even though it was great that her offer was also accepted on this one, we were still unsure of when the people buying our house were going to move in and by now it was around October/November time, so technically they should have moved in around two months prior to this.
Anyway, the same sort of things that I've already mentioned continued to happen until December, when my Mum gave the people moving into our old house an ultimatum, leading to them moving in around the middle of December. This seems all well and good, except for the fact that we were given pretty much less than 24 hours notice of having to move all of our stuff out and into our new house so that the new people could move in. As we had been messed around for almost four months this was pretty annoying, only being made up by for the fact that we were going to be moving to a much better area that had a little bit more life to it than where I previously lived.
Moving day did seem a bit stressful and I wasn't even that much involved with it. All I'd had to do was make sure that all of my things were packed away and that I remembered to go to my new house after school and not my old one. Sounds simple doesn't it? Well, yeah, that bit was but other things happened that made it more complicated. For example, the people who were meant to be moving into my house text my dad at some point that afternoon saying they would be there in half an hour - at which point only half of our stuff had been moved to our new house and my mum was still trying to pack a load of stuff into boxes, only when the new people turned up it turned out they had literally only gone there to pick up the keys. THE KEYS! I was fuming and I wasn't even there! They had literally driven for around FOUR HOURS just to pick up the sodding keys and to say that they were moving in on Monday, AFTER making us all stress out even more into thinking that we would have to be out of our old house pretty quick so that they could move in. In the end my Mum made them go to a pub a couple of miles away so that she could finish packing everything and get out of our old house.
I guess this experience wasn't the best in terms of moving, especially as I thought I'd lost a few pretty important things in the move (some A-Level folders and some jewellery - which have all now been found by the way) and has definitely put me off wanting to move out of here and into my own place any time soon. But I guess that that will inevitably happen one day, so I can only hope that when that does happen that I am prepared for anything and everything that could possibly go wrong.
Thank you for reading and I'd love to know your moving experiences in the comments below. I'll see you all next week for a new post!
(P.S. I hope that my experience with moving out hasn't put anyone else off moving house because it is all worth it in the end if it means being in a house that you love.)
Love Beth xx
It all started at the start of last year around February/March time. My parents had been split up since November 2014 and my Mum sat me and my brother down because she wanted to talk to us. That's when she mentioned that the house was being sold. The house that had been my home for my entire life. The house that held so many memories. Granted, not all of these memories were entirely good and looking back all I can ever really remember happening there was birthdays, Christmas's, BBQs, and my Mum and Dad constantly arguing and screaming at each other 24/7. That combined with the fact that my old house was completely in the middle of nowhere, with the nearest corner shop being two or three miles away and all of my friends living at least seven miles away (if I was lucky), meant that I didn't mind too much at first over my parents decision to sell the family 'home'. I mean, if it meant a fresh start and a chance to be closer to my friends then who was I to try and persuade them otherwise?
The house was then put on the market within a few weeks of us finding out that it was being sold and within two months an offer had been made and accepted. At this point my mum was still looking at houses for us to move into and even though I knew it would take a while for the sale to be completed, it looked as though we might have ended up without anywhere to stay. I mean, obviously we had family we could stay with but at the same time my Uncle had sold his house and hadn't found anywhere to live, leaving the only other option to move in with my Nan and Grandad, who only have a two bedroom house that is quite small and probably wouldn't accommodate seven people and three houses worth of things. However, my mum was able to find somewhere for us to live and had an offer accepted on a house.
Now, at this point you might be thinking, 'why are you telling us all this if that's where it ends?' Well, it doesn't end there, and that's only part of the story.
My Mum's offer on a house may have been accepted but life was never going to be easy as far as we were concerned. The people who were buying our house were starting to mess us around a bit by asking questions. Buyers are entitled to do this (obviously) because they want to make sure that they aren't wasting their own time by buying a house that they're going to then end up not enjoying living in. But the problem with these questions was the fact that there were certain questions that they kept on asking over and over again, which did become quite annoying (even I got annoyed, which is very easily done, but I wasn't even involved with having to answer any questions or with the whole buying/selling process) and seemed to be taking their time in terms of deciding whether or not they were actually going to buy the house (baring in mind at this point they had already come to view it at least twice). It did become very annoying and considering their offer had been accepted around June/July at the time, they did seem to be taking their time in deciding whether or not they wanted to buy the house. But this wasn't the only trouble we were having.
I can't remember exactly when this happened, but some time after August the sale on the house we were meant to be buying fell through and we were in immediate panic, especially as we had already gone past the original date for the sale on our house to be completed and for us to move out and the new people to move in. My mum then had the struggle of trying to find another house that we could all move in to, preferably almost straight away as we had the worry of not knowing when the people buying our house were going to move in and we didn't all want to try and fit into my Nan and Grandad's house as it wouldn't really be fair on them to have all of us living with them and basically taking over their relatively easy and quiet life.
After constantly being on RightMove 24/7, my Mum was eventually able to find a house that was a good size for all of us, affordable, and in a good location. Even though it was great that her offer was also accepted on this one, we were still unsure of when the people buying our house were going to move in and by now it was around October/November time, so technically they should have moved in around two months prior to this.
Anyway, the same sort of things that I've already mentioned continued to happen until December, when my Mum gave the people moving into our old house an ultimatum, leading to them moving in around the middle of December. This seems all well and good, except for the fact that we were given pretty much less than 24 hours notice of having to move all of our stuff out and into our new house so that the new people could move in. As we had been messed around for almost four months this was pretty annoying, only being made up by for the fact that we were going to be moving to a much better area that had a little bit more life to it than where I previously lived.
Moving day did seem a bit stressful and I wasn't even that much involved with it. All I'd had to do was make sure that all of my things were packed away and that I remembered to go to my new house after school and not my old one. Sounds simple doesn't it? Well, yeah, that bit was but other things happened that made it more complicated. For example, the people who were meant to be moving into my house text my dad at some point that afternoon saying they would be there in half an hour - at which point only half of our stuff had been moved to our new house and my mum was still trying to pack a load of stuff into boxes, only when the new people turned up it turned out they had literally only gone there to pick up the keys. THE KEYS! I was fuming and I wasn't even there! They had literally driven for around FOUR HOURS just to pick up the sodding keys and to say that they were moving in on Monday, AFTER making us all stress out even more into thinking that we would have to be out of our old house pretty quick so that they could move in. In the end my Mum made them go to a pub a couple of miles away so that she could finish packing everything and get out of our old house.
I guess this experience wasn't the best in terms of moving, especially as I thought I'd lost a few pretty important things in the move (some A-Level folders and some jewellery - which have all now been found by the way) and has definitely put me off wanting to move out of here and into my own place any time soon. But I guess that that will inevitably happen one day, so I can only hope that when that does happen that I am prepared for anything and everything that could possibly go wrong.
Thank you for reading and I'd love to know your moving experiences in the comments below. I'll see you all next week for a new post!
(P.S. I hope that my experience with moving out hasn't put anyone else off moving house because it is all worth it in the end if it means being in a house that you love.)
Love Beth xx
Sunday 15 July 2018
Emotional Abuse: My Experience
Relationships are a great thing. You get to be with someone who you get on with really well, fall in love with them, talk about the future you're going to have together, and then hopefully get to live out that future together. This sounds great and all but this is the fairytale side to relationships. The one that we all grew up with. We were all so fazed by this fairytale that we genuinely believed that this is how our lives were going to turn out; that we would find our prince and live happily ever after. However the reality is far from this, and it's all well and good saying that you just have to kiss a few frogs before you find your prince, but is this really the case? Is there actually a prince out there or is that another fairytale idea that we have been led to believe? Because if that is real then how come many of us have to deal with the reality of physical and emotional abuse on a day-to-day basis? I was emotionally abused by my last partner and today I want to tell my story...
I'm not going to reveal his name on here for the sake of his privacy and the fact that this blog is fairly anonymous, so for the sake of those factors he's going to be known as Sam.
When I first met Sam he did seem like a genuinely nice guy. He wasn't a player or a fuckboy like the guys who I had previously involved myself with, he was the complete opposite to that. I guess this was one of the reasons why I grew to like him so much (and eventually love him) because I thought that he wouldn't mess around with my emotions like the others had done and that he would actually treat me the way that I was meant to be treated, but how wrong I was.
It started out really well at first. He was attentive to me and when he first admitted to liking me I was completely shocked as I hadn't seen it coming, and they do say that the love that you never see coming is the greatest love of all. We did start talking to one another, having previously just been friends, but we never told anyone what was going on because it was a bit difficult as we were in the same friendship group. Even though I did really like him, when Sam did ask me out I was a bit hesitant at first because we were such good friends and I didn't want anything to change this, so I guess in this respect I probably shouldn't have agreed to being his girlfriend as I didn't want to lose someone who I was once able to call one of my best friends, but I let my heart take over from the morals of my head and suddenly I was his girlfriend.
It was great at first. We kept it a secret from everyone for the first few days until we felt ready to tell them and I was genuinely happy with him. I started feeling like I could tell him anything and could trust him not to tell anyone, and he felt the same way about me. He was someone to talk to all day every day about anything and everything. At first he would even bother to tell me if he wouldn't be able to talk to me that much that day if he was busy with work or out somewhere and that he would try to talk to me as much as possible. But that didn't last very long. In fact I think that the first three and a half months of our relationship was the only good time that we had and after that it was just a downward spiral of things that eventually escalated so quickly that I had to end it.
I guess that throughout the relationship he did treat me well and I was the happiest that I have ever been with him. However, there were a lot of downs as well as ups throughout our time together, one of which being the emotional abuse that I endured. Thinking back on it, this abuse had started from practically the start of our relationship but was done in a way that I never noticed at first. He would be constantly pointing out all of the things that I already knew were wrong with me (physical and mental) and even pointed out things that I had never really considered before he mentioned them, which eventually led to me becoming so self-conscious (which I still am) that I hated being around people because I knew that they would be looking at me and judging me for the same things that Sam had already pointed out. He also never apologised for anything that he did or said and I was the one who apologised because I was always made to feel like it was my fault. He would tell people either my secrets or tell people things that were meant to be just between us even though I had told him that I didn't want anyone to know our business, but apparently my opinion didn't matter and he had to tell people these things because it was the right thing to do. Another thing that he did was to look through my texts and who I had been messaging. I remember on one occasion he literally took my phone from my hands and started going through my texts and any other apps that I used to talk to people on to see who I had been messaging and what I had been saying to them. But this wasn't the only time any of this happened, it all happened on multiple occasions throughout the 'relationship'.
What I have described might not seem like emotional abuse to a lot of people and it might seem over-exaggerated but I was made to feel so small and at times that I didn't even exist, as well as at times being told that I couldn't go out or that I couldn't do something on some days because it would apparently interfere with something that I was meant to be doing with Sam the day after, even though it wouldn't. He made me feel like I was an inconvenience for a lot of things, even down to where I lived which wasn't my fault because at the time I was only 16/17 so had no say over where I had lived for the majority of my life. He made me feel so insecure and that I wasn't worth anyone's time or energy to the point where I thought that I would never be good for anyone else and that because we'd talked about marriage and kids and our future together that he would be the only person that I would be with. Even though he made me feel so worthless, I felt that I couldn't break up with him because if I did then I was losing the future that we had planned and that if I did break up with him then that future would be gone and would be something that I would never have with anyone and that I'd end up growing old with no one around me and would die lonely.
When things did finally hit me about how none of this was okay and the fact that he had also pointed out that there were things that were wrong with our relationship (claiming a lot of them were down to me) I knew that the best way forward and to try and escape how I was feeling was to break up with Sam. He'd even made me feel bad about wanting to go to university because apparently we'd just grow apart and would never be able to see one another, even though the uni I want to go to is less than an hour away from where the two of us live, he can drive and we would both be able to get a train to see one another, even if it was a matter of meeting in the middle. I didn't see why I should be with someone who made me feel that I had to stay at home and not pursue what I really wanted to do just so that I could still be with them.
Breaking up with Sam was probably one of the best things that I could have possibly done as it meant that I was no longer in this toxic relationship that was making me feel the worst I have ever felt. Of course I loved Sam and it actually broke my heart when we broke up because he was my first boyfriend and hence the first person that I had ever been in love with. The only regret at the time was that I not only lost a boyfriend, but a bestfriend, and that our friendship had suffered greatly and never recovered after that break up. However due to how I've seen him act around people in the past few months and particularly over the past couple of weeks, I have grown to be quite grateful that we no longer have any sort of relationship with one another as he acts like this really nice and decent person in front of people but in reality he is a really horrible person and I am glad that quite a lot of people have now realised this so that they are no longer involved with him.
So how can you spot the signs of if your partner is being emotionally abusive towards you?
There is a UK based website called relate which gives you all kinds of relationship help and guidance, as well as offering free online counselling to give you someone to talk to. Their emotional abuse page breaks down the different varieties of emotional abuse, gives advice on understanding if you are being abused or not and has listed a few helplines that you could call if you feel that that is the necessary and right thing to do. Their online counsellor chat is free, instant, anonymous, and private and confidential, as well as providing you with a trained counsellor that can offer you any kind of help that you might need.
Thank you for reading my story and I hope that it has helped to alert you to the fact that relationships aren't necessarily just physically abusive as they can also be emotionally abusive. If you have been affected by my story or know someone who is currently in an emotionally abusive relationship but is too scared to do anything about it then please don't hesitate to try and find help. I know that my experience was definitely not as abusive as what others may go through which is why it is important for people to recognise the signs as being in an emotionally abusive relationship can really affect you and the relationships you later get into. My relationship ended towards the end of last year and I am still unable to trust anyone else and don't feel good enough or confident in myself to be able to go out and meet new people, or to even start dating someone because I'm afraid that the same thing is going to happen again. Please don't hesitate to get in touch with me either. I'm always available to talk to any one of you about anything and everything and want to help you in any way that I can. All of my contact details are in the contacts tab at the top of this page.
Thanks for reading, and remember that you are never alone in all of this.
Love Beth xx
I'm not going to reveal his name on here for the sake of his privacy and the fact that this blog is fairly anonymous, so for the sake of those factors he's going to be known as Sam.
When I first met Sam he did seem like a genuinely nice guy. He wasn't a player or a fuckboy like the guys who I had previously involved myself with, he was the complete opposite to that. I guess this was one of the reasons why I grew to like him so much (and eventually love him) because I thought that he wouldn't mess around with my emotions like the others had done and that he would actually treat me the way that I was meant to be treated, but how wrong I was.
It started out really well at first. He was attentive to me and when he first admitted to liking me I was completely shocked as I hadn't seen it coming, and they do say that the love that you never see coming is the greatest love of all. We did start talking to one another, having previously just been friends, but we never told anyone what was going on because it was a bit difficult as we were in the same friendship group. Even though I did really like him, when Sam did ask me out I was a bit hesitant at first because we were such good friends and I didn't want anything to change this, so I guess in this respect I probably shouldn't have agreed to being his girlfriend as I didn't want to lose someone who I was once able to call one of my best friends, but I let my heart take over from the morals of my head and suddenly I was his girlfriend.
It was great at first. We kept it a secret from everyone for the first few days until we felt ready to tell them and I was genuinely happy with him. I started feeling like I could tell him anything and could trust him not to tell anyone, and he felt the same way about me. He was someone to talk to all day every day about anything and everything. At first he would even bother to tell me if he wouldn't be able to talk to me that much that day if he was busy with work or out somewhere and that he would try to talk to me as much as possible. But that didn't last very long. In fact I think that the first three and a half months of our relationship was the only good time that we had and after that it was just a downward spiral of things that eventually escalated so quickly that I had to end it.
I guess that throughout the relationship he did treat me well and I was the happiest that I have ever been with him. However, there were a lot of downs as well as ups throughout our time together, one of which being the emotional abuse that I endured. Thinking back on it, this abuse had started from practically the start of our relationship but was done in a way that I never noticed at first. He would be constantly pointing out all of the things that I already knew were wrong with me (physical and mental) and even pointed out things that I had never really considered before he mentioned them, which eventually led to me becoming so self-conscious (which I still am) that I hated being around people because I knew that they would be looking at me and judging me for the same things that Sam had already pointed out. He also never apologised for anything that he did or said and I was the one who apologised because I was always made to feel like it was my fault. He would tell people either my secrets or tell people things that were meant to be just between us even though I had told him that I didn't want anyone to know our business, but apparently my opinion didn't matter and he had to tell people these things because it was the right thing to do. Another thing that he did was to look through my texts and who I had been messaging. I remember on one occasion he literally took my phone from my hands and started going through my texts and any other apps that I used to talk to people on to see who I had been messaging and what I had been saying to them. But this wasn't the only time any of this happened, it all happened on multiple occasions throughout the 'relationship'.
What I have described might not seem like emotional abuse to a lot of people and it might seem over-exaggerated but I was made to feel so small and at times that I didn't even exist, as well as at times being told that I couldn't go out or that I couldn't do something on some days because it would apparently interfere with something that I was meant to be doing with Sam the day after, even though it wouldn't. He made me feel like I was an inconvenience for a lot of things, even down to where I lived which wasn't my fault because at the time I was only 16/17 so had no say over where I had lived for the majority of my life. He made me feel so insecure and that I wasn't worth anyone's time or energy to the point where I thought that I would never be good for anyone else and that because we'd talked about marriage and kids and our future together that he would be the only person that I would be with. Even though he made me feel so worthless, I felt that I couldn't break up with him because if I did then I was losing the future that we had planned and that if I did break up with him then that future would be gone and would be something that I would never have with anyone and that I'd end up growing old with no one around me and would die lonely.
When things did finally hit me about how none of this was okay and the fact that he had also pointed out that there were things that were wrong with our relationship (claiming a lot of them were down to me) I knew that the best way forward and to try and escape how I was feeling was to break up with Sam. He'd even made me feel bad about wanting to go to university because apparently we'd just grow apart and would never be able to see one another, even though the uni I want to go to is less than an hour away from where the two of us live, he can drive and we would both be able to get a train to see one another, even if it was a matter of meeting in the middle. I didn't see why I should be with someone who made me feel that I had to stay at home and not pursue what I really wanted to do just so that I could still be with them.
Breaking up with Sam was probably one of the best things that I could have possibly done as it meant that I was no longer in this toxic relationship that was making me feel the worst I have ever felt. Of course I loved Sam and it actually broke my heart when we broke up because he was my first boyfriend and hence the first person that I had ever been in love with. The only regret at the time was that I not only lost a boyfriend, but a bestfriend, and that our friendship had suffered greatly and never recovered after that break up. However due to how I've seen him act around people in the past few months and particularly over the past couple of weeks, I have grown to be quite grateful that we no longer have any sort of relationship with one another as he acts like this really nice and decent person in front of people but in reality he is a really horrible person and I am glad that quite a lot of people have now realised this so that they are no longer involved with him.
So how can you spot the signs of if your partner is being emotionally abusive towards you?
There is a UK based website called relate which gives you all kinds of relationship help and guidance, as well as offering free online counselling to give you someone to talk to. Their emotional abuse page breaks down the different varieties of emotional abuse, gives advice on understanding if you are being abused or not and has listed a few helplines that you could call if you feel that that is the necessary and right thing to do. Their online counsellor chat is free, instant, anonymous, and private and confidential, as well as providing you with a trained counsellor that can offer you any kind of help that you might need.
Thank you for reading my story and I hope that it has helped to alert you to the fact that relationships aren't necessarily just physically abusive as they can also be emotionally abusive. If you have been affected by my story or know someone who is currently in an emotionally abusive relationship but is too scared to do anything about it then please don't hesitate to try and find help. I know that my experience was definitely not as abusive as what others may go through which is why it is important for people to recognise the signs as being in an emotionally abusive relationship can really affect you and the relationships you later get into. My relationship ended towards the end of last year and I am still unable to trust anyone else and don't feel good enough or confident in myself to be able to go out and meet new people, or to even start dating someone because I'm afraid that the same thing is going to happen again. Please don't hesitate to get in touch with me either. I'm always available to talk to any one of you about anything and everything and want to help you in any way that I can. All of my contact details are in the contacts tab at the top of this page.
Thanks for reading, and remember that you are never alone in all of this.
Love Beth xx
Sunday 8 July 2018
The NHS at 70
As many of you will know, this week the NHS turned 70 years old. In this blog post I want to take a bit of time to reflect on the amazing work that the NHS does for those of us living in the UK and to give you a very brief overview of the history of this fantastic organisation; as well as what it has done for me, my family and friends.
In 1948 the government introduced a short cartoon named 'your very good health', which was done to explain to people at the time what the National Health Service was and how it would benefit them. The idea was that it would be 'free at the point of delivery' which means that you don't have to pay for any treatment you might receive at the time that you get it, and instead pay through the taxes that you pay through your National Insurance. It also meant that health services that were separate at the time, including hospitals, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, opticians, and dentists were brought together under one Act to provide one effective and low-cost service. This was beneficial to many as it meant that no one had to worry about not being able to afford healthcare to the point where some were avoiding going to hospital or to see a doctor so that they didn't have to pay with money that they didn't have. The birth of the NHS was a major milestone in British healthcare and through its course has been a part of some pretty major breakthroughs; such as mass vaccinations, organ transplants, IVF, keyhole surgery, cancer treatment, and advances in genetics and gene therapies to name just a few.
So how has the NHS helped me?
Well, the NHS has helped me in a variety of different ways since birth. When I was born I had a number of different things that were wrong with me (the majority of which I'm not really too clear on). One thing that was probably the least important of these was that I had quite severe jaundice (which is quite common in newborn babies), which meant that I had to be put in an incubator with a special light in order to try and get rid of it. I also know that I was starved of oxygen when I was born, which is also another reason why I had to be put in an incubator, and it meant that my parents weren't able to have any contact with me for several days, as well as there being some uncertainty about whether I would survive the second that I was born. So for keeping me alive and now being a healthy 18 year old, I would like to say a massive thank you to the NHS staff that played such an important role in all of that.
Something else that the NHS helped me with was to help in preventing me from developing skin cancer. As anyone who has moles on their skin will know it is important to keep a close eye on them and if anything changes about them, such as their size, shape or colour, it is important to go to your GP and get it checked out. One day when I was about seven or eight my mum had noticed that a mole on my leg had started changing colour from brown to black so took me to see my GP so that he could look at it. He immediately referred me to my local hospital for some further checks, who then sent me on to another hospital who would be able to do the operation that was needed so these cancer cells couldn't spread or become more serious. Due to the early detectment of this and the fast response from the doctors and nurses, they were able to prevent anything serious from happening, and for that I would like to thank all of the NHS staff for what they did.
They also really helped me when I burned my hand after accidentally pouring boiling water straight from a kettle onto my hand when I was making a cup of tea. I had been refusing to go and get it checked out for several days because I do have a fear of hospitals and I was worried that they might have to do a scan or something that would show up something else that I didn't realise I had. However when I did eventually take myself to A&E, a nurse saw me after no more than two minutes of me waiting and I was out of A&E after about 20 minutes of the nurse sorting out my hand. After that I had to go back to my GP every other day to get my dressing changed and so that the nurse could check that the wound hadn't got infected (which luckily it didn't). The healing took just over a month and I'm still left with a few scars on my hand, but I would just like to say thank you to the nurses that treated me. I would also recommend going straight to A&E if you have a burn because my hand might not have got as bad as it did if I'd have gone to A&E straight away instead of waiting until I was forced to go by one of my teachers when they saw my hand (you will thank me for it later).
I would also like to thank the NHS for everything they have done in the past for my family and friends. Whether that's for keeping my friend alive when she was born a month before her due-date and her oesophagus hadn't formed properly, for the blood transfusions given to my mum in order to keep her alive, or for continuously giving treatment to my Gran (who is currently in hospital) and making sure that she (and all other patients) are treated with care and compassion.
I know that there is currently some doubt about what the future holds for the NHS, but I can only hope that that future is a brighter one and not one where the NHS is just a distant memory. I will be forever grateful to the NHS for all of the amazing work that it has done and continues to do. It doesn't matter what line of work anyone does who works for the NHS, whether they're a top surgeon, a nurse or a cleaner, just know that the work that you are doing is absolutely amazing and I don't think that you always receive the credit that you deserve. So keep working hard and doing what you're doing and here's to another 70 years of the NHS!
Love Beth xx
Sunday 1 July 2018
My A-Level Experience
As many of you may or may not know, I have recently left school, which means that I have completely finished A-Levels (hooray!). The experience was certainly different to anything that I have ever experienced before and I found that I was hit with many ups and downs throughout the last two years. Due to my very difficult but interesting experience with sixth form and A-Levels, I thought that I would share with you my thoughts on A-Levels, which I hope helps anyone currently in year 12 going into year 13 or anyone who is just about to start their A-Level journey.
The three subjects I chose to do at A-Level were psychology, history, and health and social care. Both psychology and history were the reformed A-Levels (the ones that you do for two years and have your exams at the end of the two years) and health and social care was a legacy A-Level (the old A-Levels where you take an exam(s) at the end of year 12 (AS-Level) and then the other exams at the end of year 13 (A-Level). I'm fairly certain that my year were the last year that could do any of the legacy A-Levels so any of you that are either currently in year 12 or going into sixth form won't be taking these. This is good and bad in many ways. It's good because in year 12 I found that I didn't particularly take A-Levels as seriously as I should have done, especially as I had an exam at the end of that year. However it's also bad as it means that you now have to take all of your exams at the end of year 13 which does create a lot of pressure on you, especially when it comes to trying to remember things that you learnt two years ago.
I feel like only the people who are either currently doing A-Levels or have finished them in the past couple of years are the only people who truly understand how difficult and stressful they are. There is no easy A-Level, they are all difficult in their own way. Let's take the subjects that I was taking as an example. The one that is probably portrayed as the easiest out of all of them would be health and social care, however this A-Level is particularly difficult as it involves quite a lot of coursework (eight per year, so sixteen in total, and we only had two weeks to do each one) and the year 13 exam was on anatomy and physiology which even those in my class who had taken biology found difficult.
Psychology and history were both difficult in their own rights. Psychology was difficult because not only did it involve 100% exam and no coursework, but it also involved biology and a bit of maths. It's easy for some people to say that the maths is alright because it's only statistics, which wasn't that bad when I did it at maths GCSE, but the statistics in psychology do take quite a while to get your head around and is something that I'm still struggling to understand. Even though a lot of psychology is quite interesting, it's very difficult to learn all of the different studies and ones that support and refute them. History is also very difficult because even though there is a lot of information to learn, as long as you know the key facts and can fit these facts into the different themes then you should be alright. However, the most important thing that you need to be able to do well in history is to be good at the evaluation side of things, which involves explaining why something is or isn't important in terms of the question. It might sound simple on paper (or on screen) but believe me when I say that it isn't.
When it comes to where I went to study A-Levels I'm kind of glad I chose to stay at my secondary school because the sixth form there is quite small which means that it is easier to interact with the teachers on a more personal level. I'm not necessarily saying that at those sixth forms or colleges that are bigger or are specifically just for sixth formers don't offer the same amount of one-on-one interaction with students and teachers, but from an outsiders point of view I found it much easier to interact with my teachers in a class of between 10 and 15 students than I would have done in a class of 30. However, I would just like to point out that I would only bother staying on at your secondary school if some of your friends are also staying there because if they're not then everyone else already have their own groups that you might find a little bit more difficult to try and fit into if you've already been at school with these people for five years. If this is the case then you might be better off starting off fresh somewhere else where everyone should be in the same position as you and you might also find it easier to find a new group of friends to hang out with, as well as still having your old friends from school. But this advice comes from what I have observed from different people and isn't always the same case for everyone, so the best advice that I could really give you is to go wherever you feel the most comfortable, and having friends there is only a part of the whole of the sixth form experience.
I found with sixth form that you don't necessarily keep all of the same friends that you left school with but you also make friends with people that a few months previously you never thought you would be friends with in a million years. I've seen people fall out and I've seen people make up. I've seen people fall in love and I've also seen them break up (including myself). I've witnessed so many different things in the past two years and yeah its been tough, and I have cried and I have broken down on many occasions. I've thought about giving up, yet I've always somehow found the courage to carry on. It was an experience that I'll never forget, but now I'm about to start a new chapter in my life.
I hope that this post has somehow helped with any current or soon-to-be sixth formers and hope that it hasn't put you off doing A-Levels at all. I know I'm yet to find out my results but if I can get through two years of what I often referred to as hell, then so can you. If any of you reading this have any questions about any of the A-Levels that you're taking (preferably the same ones as I did but if there's any others then I'll try to answer them the best that I can) or about sixth form in general then please don't hesitate to either comment below or get in contact with me. All of my contact details are on the contacts tab at the top of this page and I'll try to get back to you ASAP.
Thanks for reading!
Love Beth xx
I feel like only the people who are either currently doing A-Levels or have finished them in the past couple of years are the only people who truly understand how difficult and stressful they are. There is no easy A-Level, they are all difficult in their own way. Let's take the subjects that I was taking as an example. The one that is probably portrayed as the easiest out of all of them would be health and social care, however this A-Level is particularly difficult as it involves quite a lot of coursework (eight per year, so sixteen in total, and we only had two weeks to do each one) and the year 13 exam was on anatomy and physiology which even those in my class who had taken biology found difficult.
Psychology and history were both difficult in their own rights. Psychology was difficult because not only did it involve 100% exam and no coursework, but it also involved biology and a bit of maths. It's easy for some people to say that the maths is alright because it's only statistics, which wasn't that bad when I did it at maths GCSE, but the statistics in psychology do take quite a while to get your head around and is something that I'm still struggling to understand. Even though a lot of psychology is quite interesting, it's very difficult to learn all of the different studies and ones that support and refute them. History is also very difficult because even though there is a lot of information to learn, as long as you know the key facts and can fit these facts into the different themes then you should be alright. However, the most important thing that you need to be able to do well in history is to be good at the evaluation side of things, which involves explaining why something is or isn't important in terms of the question. It might sound simple on paper (or on screen) but believe me when I say that it isn't.
When it comes to where I went to study A-Levels I'm kind of glad I chose to stay at my secondary school because the sixth form there is quite small which means that it is easier to interact with the teachers on a more personal level. I'm not necessarily saying that at those sixth forms or colleges that are bigger or are specifically just for sixth formers don't offer the same amount of one-on-one interaction with students and teachers, but from an outsiders point of view I found it much easier to interact with my teachers in a class of between 10 and 15 students than I would have done in a class of 30. However, I would just like to point out that I would only bother staying on at your secondary school if some of your friends are also staying there because if they're not then everyone else already have their own groups that you might find a little bit more difficult to try and fit into if you've already been at school with these people for five years. If this is the case then you might be better off starting off fresh somewhere else where everyone should be in the same position as you and you might also find it easier to find a new group of friends to hang out with, as well as still having your old friends from school. But this advice comes from what I have observed from different people and isn't always the same case for everyone, so the best advice that I could really give you is to go wherever you feel the most comfortable, and having friends there is only a part of the whole of the sixth form experience.
I found with sixth form that you don't necessarily keep all of the same friends that you left school with but you also make friends with people that a few months previously you never thought you would be friends with in a million years. I've seen people fall out and I've seen people make up. I've seen people fall in love and I've also seen them break up (including myself). I've witnessed so many different things in the past two years and yeah its been tough, and I have cried and I have broken down on many occasions. I've thought about giving up, yet I've always somehow found the courage to carry on. It was an experience that I'll never forget, but now I'm about to start a new chapter in my life.
I hope that this post has somehow helped with any current or soon-to-be sixth formers and hope that it hasn't put you off doing A-Levels at all. I know I'm yet to find out my results but if I can get through two years of what I often referred to as hell, then so can you. If any of you reading this have any questions about any of the A-Levels that you're taking (preferably the same ones as I did but if there's any others then I'll try to answer them the best that I can) or about sixth form in general then please don't hesitate to either comment below or get in contact with me. All of my contact details are on the contacts tab at the top of this page and I'll try to get back to you ASAP.
Thanks for reading!
Love Beth xx
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