just alisha things

I’ve loved writing for as long as I can remember. It’s so cliché and predictable of me to say that but it’s the genuine truth. As a child I’d write stories for teachers as gifts, I wrote award winning poetry (2004, I’ll never shut up about this) and kept a diary that stored all the juicy details of my extremely mundane, very unlived life. For a kid that was so creative, it might come as a disappointment to some to say that now, fast forward a decade or so later, that I think I am unequivocally boring. Which leads me to my first blog post subject – what went wrong?

I’ll go back to the start. Along with many others, at primary school I was treated like I was some sort of child prodigy; good at everything academic (sport is a different matter, we’ll save that subject for another day), confident and probably too mature for my age. I had top grades and lots of friends, but realistically, with the right environment, this isn’t out of the ordinary whatsoever for a child to achieve. However, at that age, you don’t know that – so I grew up in my own bubble of getting my stories framed and put on the classroom wall and beating kids that were much older than me in times tables competitions. What I don’t think is spoken about often enough is the way you come crashing back down to earth when you move up to secondary school. Suddenly you’re in the top sets with all the other kids that also grew up in that protected you’re-so-smart bubble, the ones who were also part of gifted and talented programs and got awards for outstanding schoolwork. It’s unnerving and causes a major shift in the belief of your own abilities when all of a sudden, you fall into the middle of the pack, and it doesn’t end there.

In fact, this is secondary school in a nutshell. You pretty much spend the whole five years in competition with other students, and I went to a school where over achieving was rewarded. I will never forget getting an A in one of my English Literature exams (it was Of Mice and Men, what a throwback), and for someone who loved English and wanted to succeed in it, I was very chuffed with that grade. However, apparently an A that is just nipping into the A grade bracket isn’t good enough, and I was told I had to resit for a “more secure A grade”. So I did, begrudgingly, and I got a B. I also got a B in my first Maths GCSE, but because it wasn’t an A I had to resit four times, where I achieved the exact same mark every time. In my final GCSE’s, I got a C in French and was told by my teachers they were resubmitting it for a remark as it should have been a B grade. I ended up getting a D. So, my point is, I went through a period of time where my best wasn’t good enough even though I was content with it. It was like my ability was being stretched and stretched so that I could be another impressive statistic for my school to boast. It only really occurred to me recently that this had a profound effect on me and my confidence, and instilled a fear into me that’s hindered me for the rest of my life – the fear of being mediocre. The thought that if you’re not the best of the bunch, then what’s the point? School made me believe that if I wasn’t the crème de la crème then I’d get left behind, something that has stuck with me ever since and made me hesitant to explore my potential.

Then you’re off to college and university, and if you thought high school was bad for competition, university is another level. You start off by never speaking in tutorials because the thought of being wrong is utterly mortifying. Then you write your first essay and everything you thought you knew about your subject is out the window. I was always somewhere in the middle with my grades; not bad but not amazing. You feel more and more average as the years go on and the geniuses on your course emerge. I did English at degree level, and while I had a good time, I found myself falling completely out of love with the creativity I had stored somewhere deep within me. Throughout my life it got pushed deeper and deeper down until I was completely out of touch with it – I was a blank piece of paper itching to be filled but never really knew how to do so. And I think that’s a good word to describe my imagination since – blank. I’ve read two books since I graduated in July 2019, ‘Normal People‘ by Sally Rooney and ‘Everything I Know About Love’ by Dolly Alderton. I know – I read these to feel part of the conversation, again, I couldn’t bare the thought of missing out on books that everyone was raving about. I was more concerned about “falling behind” in this imaginary race where I’m limping to the finish line, rather than actually reading for pleasure.

So why am I rambling about why I’ve felt inadequate and uninspired since my early teens? Well, I want to put it out into the universe, just in case anybody else feels the same. Even if nobody reads this, I feel better for having it out there. Every year I go through the motions of wanting to write again, pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, and to no avail. There’s been several factors that have made me procrastinate this to no end. The fear of it being a mediocre blog or it not being the best writing I’ll ever do in my life is one of them. But upon reflection, I am coming to realise that it isn’t fair of me to put this much pressure on myself, or I’ll never do the things I enjoy. It’s okay to fail, it’s okay to not be the best at everything – and that’s taken me a long time to make my peace with.

So with this newfound self belief and a brand spanking new laptop, I’m finally conquering my fear of being average and embracing it with my very own blog – no matter how unremarkable and run of the mill it may be.