Fuck you, Chuck Palahnuik

I was in my room, tidying out some of my old college/leaving cert./second class notes earlier today. So naturally I got all emotionally entangled in the crumpled bits of paper that make up my past. My past is full of paper – failed attempts at writing novels, piss-poor poetry and most of all, diaries. Countless diaries. Shitty two euro notebooks and thick, gorgeous Paperblanks. Tacky pads from the mid-2000s with cartoon sheep on them, written in daily in glittery — albeit smudged — gel pen. A lifetime-lite poured onto pages. So much boredom. So much angst. So many experiences crammed into ten years of pages. Yet still with the distinct feeling that something was about to get better– that the people splashed across the pages would be the ones to make the difference. A near-constant stream of boys whisked me across a flurry of pages. They came, they went, they were obsessed over for reams and reams of gilt-edged paper. Friends, too, came and went across these diaries – friends who seemed wonderful at the time, yet retrospect had me perched cross-legged on my bed, shaking my head at fifteen year old Áine. Self-harmers, extreme dieters and manipulative bitches. This makes my past sound extremely negative – it’s not. It certainly wasn’t at the time, either. My adventures across time and space — space being mostly Stephen’s Green and Clane — sent me, occasionally battered, to who I am today.
One thing I’ve always obsessed over my whole life has been the idea of the marks people leave on my life. I did it in the last paragraph without even thinking — my adventures with others made me who I am. It reminds me of that Chuck Palahnuik (I won’t lie, I have copypasted that name. My spelling is atrocious.) quote:

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.”

Chuck, my dear, I loved Fight Club (well, I loved the movie) but I call bullshit. This idea is something I’ve thought about a lot – okay, I make faces like my ex-boyfriend and talk with the rapid-fire intensity of my best friend, but at my core, I am the combined efforts of me. My struggles, my feelings, my mistakes, my vomit-stained party dresses. No one else has much to do with it – other people are completely, wholly, hugely important — but they aren’t me.
Yet we affect one another. I am not the combined effort of everyone, but my own efforts in relation to other people. It’s cause and effect. My reactions to other people are what shape me. Everyone I have ever met is an ink stain on my diary – one that I’ve tried to rub out or edited into a smiley face, or a heart. You get me?

Probably not. This all makes sense in the fever of my sun-addled, pretentious Literature student brain. You see, you know what the magical part is? Everyone I’ve ever met is an inkblot. Yet I’ve been an inkblot for so many others, despite not even realizing it. We’re all ghosts, haunting one another.You find people’s leftovers and that’s how they leave their marks. A history essay, a forgotten DVD, a lighter. That sort of thing. They leave their marks through the weird feeling in your chest when you find a letter from them. Maybe we’re not the combined efforts of everyone we’ve ever known, but we’re certainly the efforts of ourselves trying to scrub people away. The thing is, I serve that purpose for other people. It's far too easy when you're pretentious and literary (two things I'd just love to be, of course) to assume you're the only person who wells up when you find a mix CD from 2010. Look at Sylvia Plath. Do you think she thought about Ted Hughes finding a forgotten pair of knickers or wondering if, just at the that moment, she was thinking about him? Probably not. She was too busy being a poetry writing, self-obsessed hun. We wreck and make other people's lives too, which is something I, personally, had forgotten about until recently.

I'm spread over time and space. Bits of me pervade the lives of anyone I've ever met in the most forgotten ways. I dated a guy once and I'm pretty sure I left a history essay on his USB key. A boy I dated for two years has my copy of a Neil Gaiman novel (if you're reading this, I want it back!) and I owe a girl I went to primary school with seven euro from when I bought a potted plant in Cobh, age eight. I left a sock in Mayo and my ID card in Portobello. Ooh, this is crying out for a "I left my heart in San Francisco" reference. There we go.

So, in short - I am not the combined efforts of everyone I've ever known, dammit. Having looked at ten years worth of writing, I am cause and effect. I am bruised. I am torn up and made again by me: other people are catalysts for what I do for myself. Also, diarying is unhealthy and makes me think too much.
This all came off a bit Sarah Jessica Parker voice over in the end of an episode of Sex and The City. Sorry…not sorry.

How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran: book review.

I'll be blunt: not many things keep me up until 3am, stifling giggles under my duvet. David is one of those things. Black Books and Flight of The Conchords are two others, and now How To Be A Woman, a memoir slash rant slash advice book by Caitlin Moran, who writes for The Times is a third. It was recommended to me by both my mum and Kate, so I was pretty stoked when I find it amongst my presents on Christmas Day.

I never considered myself a "feminist" per se, merely someone who considered equality to be a good thing and with a passionate, slightly weird love for the poetry of Adrienne Rich. However, a few chapters into this book, Moran invites me to stand up on a chair and shout "I AM A FEMINIST!" over and over. Much of the book is concerned with feminism, what it is, how it's doing and, well, how to get by "patriarchal bullshit"!

First things first: this book is completely and utterly mental. It's not for the faint hearted. The first chapter deals with early teenage madness: periods, masturbation (lots of masturbation, good lord), feeling fat and, er, having stones thrown at you. The book's chapters have a pattern: anecdote from Moran's life followed by rants and a few little life lessons on, well, how to be a woman. It goes from Caitlin at 13, flying through bras, boys , jobs and lapdancing. We learn about her long haired, horrible boyfriends, her failed attempts at clothes, how she feels about role models (Jordan...well, let's just say that I wouldn't recommend she read chapter 14.) as well as covering serious stuff like love, childrearing and abortion.

The book took my breath away in parts - I found myself giggling nervously over the undeniable TRUTH of some parts, feeling slightly ill at the thoughts of other parts and, more often than not, nodding in agreement, akin to scrolling through a "shit girls do" Twitter account.Granted, from "I get married!" on, I found myself nodding with agreement less - particularly with the abortion chapter, which is really not for the faint-hearted. I, for one, had to scan read it very very quickly for fear of throwing up or bursting into tears.

This emotional roller coaster of writing just proves that it's fantastically written. It's hilarious, thought-provoking and even the motherhood bits are made interesting. I'm definitely going to be recommending this far and wide, particularly to guys - just to see how they react!

4/5 :)