I don’t do big, in any sense with the exception of hair and hats, oh and my lips. Those appear to be getting bigger and bigger and that’s only half a joke. Otherwise, I prefer the smaller things, too tight jeans, blazers that almost don’t fit and t-shirts that tuck in and don’t bellow but most of all, I prefer tiny jewellery. Miniature pendants that sit nicely in size with my freckles, barely there gold mini rings and so on. The sorts of pieces you can sleep and shower in, the necklaces that look nice in nothing but a bra at a boy’s house or rings small enough to be appropriate within a bikini at the beach. Jewellery has a habit of melding to my body, in that once its on, there it stays for a good few days. I live alone and tiny chains are hard to close on my own. Certain pieces of jewellery are stamps of an entire era of my life. There is the necklace I received in Copenhagen and wore for 2 solid months last summer, or the only real gold ring I have that I wore everyday for an entire year and then lost on the same day I broke up with a boy I didn’t love. That’s why I prefer small jewellery; it sits close to your soul or so I like to think. And if you wear something everyday around your neck or finger, inevitably it will have a memory or two attached to it. So when these two teeny tiny black pendant necklaces arrived in an adorable little box a few weeks ago, I immediately threw them around my neck. And as I type this, they are still there, somewhat tangled within the chaos of my bad hair day, but there all the same. And in the time I’ve had these pendants chained around my neck, I’ve pulled myself from rock bottom to smugly empowered. Perhaps it sounds dramatic, but the last few weeks have been an incredible life lesson for me. A lesson I needed to relearn ; a personal echo I needed to hear so I could return to myself. From the beginning of this year to just recently, I surrended and dedicated too much time to a man and it made me silently, restlessly unhappy. I was so overcome with anxiety, I forgot things like eating and work was mostly a haze I got through everyday. Perhaps you can remember how thin I got for a while and I was tired all the time. This all culminated in Rome when some of my oldest friends sat me down, I cried and they were brutal in their honesty. And while this time of growth was initiated by my real life friends, it concludes with you, my internet friends. I have held all of your comments, your tweets, emails and snapchats close to my heart as I clutched at the threads of myself. I opened up and you were there. Every time I felt low, another email would appear or just a tiny tweet and they were a huge solace and they accumulated into a strength I forgot I had. The sense of friendship we have fostered here is by far the most beautiful thing to be born from this blog. And quite like these necklaces circled around my neck, I’ve kept you all close too, confiding my every emotion as I cycle through another clumsy lesson. And cyclical it will always be, because I’ll fall again and make a dozen more foolish mistakes. I’m too reckless and too curious to play it safe. But in the words of Florence Welch, ‘I’m going to be free and I’m going to be fine’ because I’m strong and I have you on my side. And I want to thank you from the very bottom of my very strange heart. And also, by giving one of you a tiny present I wish I could give all of you. Mejuri have kindly offered me another tiny black pendant to send to one of you beautiful ladies. I hope you enter, it such a pretty piece that I hope you will wear through a magical spring into a wild summer. And just like the necklace, I hope you carry my foolish lessons through into your own life. Keep them around your neck and hopefully my stupidities will make you a tiny bit wiser. I guess we should all hold our mistakes in the same way we wear our jewellery, close to our skin. They are infinitely more defining than our successes. And I feel strong in admitting mine to all of you here. There is freedom to be found in your fuck ups, even the worst, horribly humbling ones. Keep that in mind too. I love you.
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