So Much Has Changed!

 Hello everyone,

Lately I've been in such a reflective mood, which to be perfectly honest usually makes me so sad but this time all the thoughts have put the biggest smile on my face, and really been appreciating everything and everyone I have in my life. I think this is mainly due to the fact that we're in May. MAY!!!!! I swear the new year was just last week, I cannot get over how fast this year is already going but so much has happened and I have so many exciting things planned that I'm just having too much fun. I have so much to talk about that this post is probably going to be really rambly so I'll break it into sub-sections and just hope you all keep up. 

Friendship is something I take very seriously and as odd as it sounds I've spend years choosing out the right friends for me and I can honestly say for the first time in a very long while that I am 100% happy with my small, but solid, circle! This time last year I considered my 'best friend' to be a girl who I spent a lot of time with in college and we left we decided to go out for her birthday and since then we would go out clubbing or just be getting drunk. Don't get me wrong I've got some amazing memories with her that I will always look back on because I was having fun but I came to the realisation a few months ago that she wasn't doing me any good as a friend. We would talk everyday without fail, which was pretty draining as she would only ever talk about herself unlesss I had some gosssip, but it was all just too much for me which sounds incredibly selfish but I like friends to actually ask about my life without wanting all the seedy details. I had a massive argument with her in January time, she done something that she had given me such grief about so she became a massive hypocrit but she was expecting me to be fine with the choice she made (it was a really dumb choice, but because I had already been through it I didn't want her to get hurt) and ever since then our friendship has been somewhat questionable. The final straw with this 'friend' was when I went out with a group of friends and I had a faaaar better time with them because it wasn't a night filled with drama, just fun and laughter. Thankfully it's been a pretty easy friend-split as no arguments has happened or no bitching on social medias, that usually happens with a lot of girls, we simply just fizzled out.

It's not all sad though as in the past year I've made the most incredible friend, I honestly have so much love for my chummy that people think we're borderline lesbians..I can assure you we're not, we're just extremely close and for some strange reason she actually enjoys spending time with the oddball that is myself! She had only started working with me last April and it took us until about July/September to have a real conversation, she had assumed that I wouldn't like her but also recongnised me from school as I was a year above her, I knew I wanted to have this girl as a friend when we had a thrilling conversation about wands and we just blossomed from there. In Febuary we booked up to go to Disneyland together, which was such a big step for us as we hadn't really spent a lot of time with eachother outside of work, and as Disney is something that was both on our bucket lists it kind of made sense we go together. This time in 4 months our little weekend away in Paris would have been and gone but so many new memories will be made that we'll look back on when we're old ladies talking about our past..yes chummy, I'm expecting that to be a thing. In the past year we've had so many good days out and shared the experience of seeing Adele together, along with my longest best friend (more on him later). The only month that I haven't planned on doing anything with her is November, we have a pretty full and exciting year!! It's funny to think that I can't imagine not being friends with my chummy and we only met just over a year ago. 

On to my longest friend. He has been there for me through such sh*t it's unreal and I honestly adore him in a non-romantic way, even though after a few too many tequilas one of our friends made us have an awarkward conversation with eachother as I had confessed I had a bit of a crush on him in the past but it wouldn't work, thankfully we had a little chat and drew a line under it. I'd love to say I couldn't imagine my life without him but sadly we fell out for roughly a year during college, all because of my idiot of an ex. The ex in question was one of the biggest mistakes, obviously it's all I wanted at the time so I was too blind to see that he was a controlling, manipulative boy. Long story short the ex threatened to 'kick the sh*t' out of my best friend so understandbly he had to get away from that. Safe to say the relationship went downhill very fast after that and I ended that as quick as I could. Rebuilding my friendship was hard but the struggle was so worth it because we're closer than ever! 

Love has always been a tough subject for me, I'm basically the ugly duckling. Growing up I was always the girl who befriended the guys for my female friends to try and get into a relationship with, I was never the girl, just the friend who always seemed to be there. Now I like to think I've blossomed into a more human like person with some good qualities that a romantic interest may like. As I'm writing this I feel like I should retitle this section into 'sexual quests' or 'romatic failures' as I've only ever been in love twice, I've said 'i love you' to a few people and complete strangers in nightclubs but I've never truly meant it. The first guy I really fell in love was someone I used to work with and I was obsessed with him ever since we met and then he turned out to be a secret sweetie so I fell even harder. It's strange to say that I felt the feeling of love because he was my top crush for a solid 3 years and then we started dating..plot twist!! Never in my wildest dreams did I think he would find me remotley attractive let alone become my boyfriend. This may sound odd to a few people but he's the guy who really dug me out of my shell as if he, of all people, could like me then christ I can't be as half bad as I imagined. We weren't a thing for very long at all - we dated, became official, met the parents and broke up all within just short of two months. But he was always the guy on my brain. Some of you could possibly know all my feelings about him if you read my 'Boys on the Brain' post (click here to catch up). Sadly we don't speak anymore which kills me a little bit but after our last conversation where we had a little heart to heart I'm fine with that because I know there's no hard feelings there and even now when I see or hear his name I get a little smile because honestly without him I wouldn't have the confidence to think it was even possible that a guy could like me, so thank you to my ex for unkowingly helping me bring on new adventures.

After we broke up I took a good 3-4 months feeling sad about the whole ordeal, he wasn't my first break up but he was definately the hardest, but then I felt like I needed to get back out there as I was feeling lonely and just wanted some male attention. I started going clubbing a lot more, 2 or 3 times a week if I could, just to meet guys and that's when I realised that with a drink in me I can walk up to boys and have a pretty good flirting game..leading to my success in pulling guys at clubs. Not exactly I'm proud of but I loved the idea of kissing guys you had just met and then not even knowing their names (weird, right?). In the space of about 6 months I had a few sexual encoutners, I would say love interests but we all know what was happening, until November. 16th November everything changed. I was flying off to Lanzarote for a bit of winter sun on the 19th so my friends and I decided we would go for big night out as I had to be away from them for 2 weeks, it was honestly an amazing night influenced by probably far too much alcohol! At one point the club was pretty dead and there was just my friends and a group of guys on the dancefloor, I'm suprised I remember the night so clearly if I'm honest, but I kept noticing some of the guys looking over so naturally I assume they was after my big boobed friends..after a few more drinks I decided to just go over and dance with them, one of my friends followed then next thing I knew I was lip-locked with the guy I would choose out of the group..win for Shannon! He asked for my name but obviously couldn't hear me so asked me to right out my name instead..he then pointed out he was on his contacts so could I put my number down, only the lucky ones get my real number or I type in any random digits. A few hours after he had left the club he text me saying his name and it was nice to meet me. Little did I know that he would turn out to be the lovliest guy and I actually felt guilty about going on holiday as I could only think about him, we spoke non-stop for the whole time of my holiday and arranged a date for when I got back. The cinema date went awful and I was gutted but somehow he didn't care and wanted to see me again. I won't say all the details mainly because I can sense a few people would be falling asleep by this haha! Aaaanyway, we've seen eachother ever since and have been in a relationship for nearly 3 months, I've never been able to see a futre with any guy in the past but with him I can and I can't wait for any adventures that happen along the way because aslong as I have my friends, family (including the cats) and my boyfriend I feel like the luckiest girl in the world!!!

Nothing else has really changed in the past year apart from I got my first tattoo and spent a lot of money on concerts, fun days, clothes and food.

The past 12 months have been crazy but I've loved every moment of it and learnt who was important to me, I feel like I've really set myself up for a good future with the people I have around me. All the pieces are just falling together and I can't wait to see what happens within the next year. I can say for certain that I want time to slow down slightly though because I'm enjoying myself too much for life to just speed past me.

Hope this very chatty post wasn't too long for everyone but I honestly have missed blogging so hopefully it won't take me months to update this again.

Day At The Zoo.

Hello everyone,

I know I haven't posted in a while as I just sort of lost touch with what I was writing and didn't want to just put up content for the sake of posting something mediocre but lately life has been so hectic, I'll write a little post all about that soon just as a little catch up, so I haven't been able to concentrate or put all my energy into what I'm writing and if I'm going to put something online I want it to be right. So here I am with a post that I love the topic of because it was such a lovely day and it will be a memory that I cherish for the rest of time.

Growing up I was always going to my local happy place, Colchester Zoo, and I've seen the zoo grow, new animals come in and sadly the beloved creatures go but I still love the place as much as I first did stepping into the home for amazing animals. Now I'm fully aware that everyone has different opinons on zoos and the well-being of the animals that habitat in them and my opinon has positives and negatives on both sides but this isn't a post to have that debate right now..maybe one day I'll write my views down but for this post it's just a pleasant memory. 

Last Sunday, 6th March, I arranged for my boyfriend to come round after he had finished work which wasn't until about 8:30/9pm but as this was Mother's Day everything came together nicely. Just as he text me saying he was leaving for drive to mine he mentioned he had the next day off, which amazed us both as our schedules never sync up too well, so straight away I sent replied with a mini freak out text telling him to bring a change of clothes and everything round as we had been planning a trip to the zoo for a few weeks, now we could finally go, and I felt like a child again filling up with excitment that I was finally going back to my happy place and taking the person I adore with me. The last time I had gone to this zoo was for my 20th birthday, which was in October, so I hadn't been away for that long but I used to own a membership card and would be up there every couple of weeks. That night I went to sleep fairly early as we planned to be out the house by 10 and I don't like rushing to get ready.

My alarm went off at 8am and I peeked out of the curtains to check the weather, much to delight the sun was beaming so I hopped out of bed super quick as I knew this would be a good day. My boyfriend joined me downstairs whilst I was finishing getting ready and just watched tv and spoke to my parents, I love that my parents both think he's a decent guy as my family is very close and my dad has a great judge of character so if his gut feeling is bad about someone then I tend to give them a chance and then decide I can't be with them if my family thinks badly of them, anyway I finished getting ready and we left. We decided to stop in McDonalds on the way out to feed ourselves, the breakfast bagel is my go-to order, then we sat in the car listening to the radio and just talking about random things while we ate. 

Finally we got to the zoo and I literally squeeled of excitement when we parked up, even though the sun had gone in and the cold starting to show itself but that didn't phase me at all. I went and asked for 2 adult tickets and then paid for our entry, he's done so much for me that I decided this would be a little treat day for him plus we both work hard for our money so why shouldn't we both treat eachother. Once we were in and walked around a few of the enclosures we decided we were both freezing so we spent a lot of the time huddled together for warmth, not that I'm complaining about that, we got to the sea-lions and they just started their little 'show', not this wasn't like some awful show for peoples enjoyment it was the animals doing their daily checks and feed with the keepers whilst they spoke about them and and the training they do at the zoo to make humans able to check them closely without having to use any medicine to knock them out. After watching that we went to get some hot chocolates to try and warm up and then started again around the park, my favourites to watch are always the chimps but their new enclosure was shut for maintenance so the public weren't able to go and see them but still I had an amazing time watching the other animals the zoo had to offer. When we got to the meerkats a few looked like they were fighting, but much to the mother with a small child next to us, they were infact mating. We laughed and joked with the parent of the child who was asking what they were doing, which he got a reply of 'a special cuddle'..good cover up to the mum! 

Thankfully there weren't many people there so we didn't have to try and muscle our way through the crowds, we could go at a leisurely place and could even have a few cuddles to warm up without everyone cringing, trust me I cringe so much when I see the slightest PSA! On our way out we played around in the gift shop, considering I'm 20 and he's 24 next month we probably should have gone to the grown up gift shop but instead we played around with a jelly snake thing for a good 10 minuets. 

After walking around we were both pretty hungry so we decided to stop off at Harvester on the way home, I ordered my absolute favourite of battered halloumi and fries, and with their new drinks machine we used our refills as a good opportunity to try the strangest drink combinations..a winner was on the Pepsi options, vanilla, cherry and strawberry all mixed together. It was delicious. 

This date day was pretty much perfect. 

Feeling Loved.

Hello everyone, 

Well I didn't think I would be writing a post like this for a long time but here we are, I couldn't dive into writing up some hauls or anything else as I just had all these feelings and thoughts of how lucky and happy I am lately. This will basically be a list of all the cute things that my boyfriend has done for me recently so I 100% don't blame you if you don't want to continue reading this, it's just a little something to document my feelings for the future.

November. The month I met him, whilst being slightly intoxicated, in the middle of one of my favourite weekday clubs..typical Essex love story. We danced, we spoke, we exchanged numbers and then we kissed. I thought that this would be a typical drunk thing and never speak to each other again until my phone flashed, about 2 hours after going home from the club, with a text saying the standard 'nice to meet you' and we spoke constantly for the next few weeks, even when I flew off to Lanzarote! We arranged a date for when I got back, The Good Dinosaur was a perfect choice for two Disney nerds like us, he was so gentlemanly and just everything I would want from a first date.

February. Fast forward a little bit and here we are, lets start with the 13th as this was the day that I got the cutest surprise and our relationship officially started. I always work on Saturdays and I just really wasn't feeling it on this particular day, I was in such a good mood but I wanted to go and live my life not be stuck in work. Anyway I'd been working and keeping myself busy to try and make the time go faster when one of my favourite women who works there comes into the kitchen grinning from ear to ear and told me to come out into the seating area, usually she would find a good looking guy and come tell me so I was expecting to look for some eye candy, when I looked up I saw my guy standing there holding the cutest bunch of flowers with a little, dopey smile on his face. Now I don't really know what my reaction was apart from smiling like an idiot and just saying this was all cute, to be perfectly honest I was just in utter shock I still can't believe he planned that all out..anyway long story short he gave me a beautiful bunch of flowers and asked me to be his girlfriend. Of course I said yes!

Valentines Day. The day of love started off, for me, with a 6:30am alarm to get myself to work and the person who was 'in charge' on that day is also a woman I have a slight disliking to..brilliant start! After a pretty mediocre shift, I mainly just spoke to one of the guys about random topics, I went home and had a lovely Lush bath to unwind and to get ready for the night. My boyfriend picked me up, bonus points to him for actually meeting me at the door instead of getting a message and him waiting in the car, and then he drove to the cinema where we went to see Deadpool, as we pulled up snow started falling! Luckily the weather didn't set but he did offer me to wear his coat, I felt too bad and let him keep it as we were both freezing though. As for the film it was absolutely brilliant and I loved every second of it, when that had finished we drove back to mine where we just cuddled and spoke about anything that came to mind. It was a pretty perfect night. 

This sounds like the biggest cliche in the world but I honestly feel like the luckiest girl! Never has a guy treated me like a true princess, it's so rare to find someone who doesn't just want sex and cares about the relationship as well as me, and that makes me feel so loved it's unreal, also he makes all the bad relationships and guys I've been through so worth the heartache. It's just the little things like we went out for dinner the other night and I insisted on splitting the bill and he just said I've got this and even when we're just watching a film I can see him out of the corner of my eye just looking at me, watching all my facial expressions but most importantly he remembers everything I say even from our very first conversations together. He's never heard me say this but I want him to be in my life for a very long time as it's just natural and easy, how real relationships should be. 

I'm so excited for our story to continue.  

Hello February.

Hello everyone,

January has gone so quick and I can't even remember what I done with most of it, this post was originally going to be a recap of my month but all I can remember is work, getting back into the gym, and getting old feelings back for someone. One thing I can remember very clear is starting my blog. I can't believe that I've stuck to it for this long to be perfectly honest with you but I think this time around it's different as I'm not thinking about what people would want to read, but what I want to write about and that makes a hell of a difference. I have one person to thank for that, if I had never found her blog then I wouldn't have been inspired to start this, so thank you Chloe!

That was the quickest recap ever so I'm changing this to more of a 'what I plan to do this month' type of post instead. The theme for February is always love as Valentine's always creeps up and makes everyone evaluate their love life, and that's exactly what I've been doing all morning! My love life is in a bit of a pickle lately as I'm kind of seeing where things go with someone but he's not the guy I want, I don't want to just settle for someone because he likes me and I'm bored of being lonely but I'm scared that will happen so tonight I'm biting the bullet and laying all my cards out on the table..I don't think anything will happen with him but I just have to get things of my chest as I know Ill regret what I don't say to him more. I might get rejected and be a bit embarrassed but I can deal with that. I can't deal with the 'what if' that would be playing on my mind if I kept quiet!

Now that leads me on to my biggest goal for this month. I don't want to bottle anything up. I'm the type of person who will let all my emotions build up within me as I don't want to feel like I'm burdening people with my problems, after all they're my problems why would anyone need to know. Wrong! For my own sanity I need to rely on my friends more to help me through certain situations because if they're my friends they'll be happy to help, like I'm always there when they need me. I think doing this will help with my overall happiness as I'm the worst person for over-thinking and my mind can play nasty tricks on me. 

Lastly I plan to get fully on track with healthy eating, I'm back to the gym and feel great but I need to sort my eating plan out more to help me get to the fitness level and weight I want to be. I love eating healthily just as much as I like the junk food so I think instead of having a treat day once a week I'll probably change that to every other week and have a treat item..not a day! I'm going to start doing a weekly food plan so I know what I'm eating and when so I can get prepared and I have a bad habit of over buying fruit and vegetables, especially kale, then it goes out of date and that's food and money wasted. 

Love. Happiness. Health. 

That's what I want to achieve in this month, wish me luck! 

Boys on the Brain.

Hello everyone,

Boys. For the past few days I've been dealing with a lot of boy related shit, and I didn't really want to write a blog post about it but I feel like it'll probably help me with my current state of mind, so sorry but welcome to my brain! Also Adele is playing in the background and there's a cup of tea with my name on it so brace yourself for the chattiest post I'll probably ever write.

First of all lets talk about my ex. Now this guy is always in my head, either living in the front or sneakily hiding at the back, and that's something I know I'll have to live with. I met him when I was 16, coming up to 4 years ago, when I started my job and my first impressions weren't really amazing as I thought he was a little bit of a dick but he had a mysterious vibe about him and I find that hot as hell so I was instantly attracted to him..also his eyes helped with my overwhelming attraction for him, they're pretty much dark pools of beauty. Fast forward 3 years and we got talking at a works Christmas party then skip past a dangerous amount of vodka and sambuca and before I knew it I was laying on my sofa being sick everywhere and my mum saying I might have to be hospitalised for drinking to much..stupid move! The next day he messaged me, much to my surprise, and we started talking from there but it wasn't until the following week that I found out we shared a few drunken kisses. I was literally the last person to know, seeing as I didn't and still don't have any memory of that night. One thing led to another and we ended up seeing each other, then got into a short but sweet relationship, I was so confused by the whole thing because how could he, the mysterious, gorgeous guy who was a tiny bit obsessed with cars, like me? I wasn't really myself towards the end of our little romance because I felt as if the whole thing was a ticking time bomb, just waiting until he realised how stupid he was to like me, or until he found someone a million times better. We ended on a bit of an argument but we've later had a few conversations and everything is now peachy between the both us, but I miss him..a lot. I don't know whether he's gained his way to the front of my brain because I was attempting to help with a friends boy business, shockingly she trusts me enough to share things..never saw that coming as I walk around like a grade a bitch all the time and if she's reading this then hello! 

Anyway back to this guy, as I was saying he's currently right in the front of my brain, any further forward and he'd be coming through my skull and out my face. A part of me wishes that I never developed feelings for him, but an even bigger part of me wishes we never had a 'thing' as now I'm just left feeling sad that we never worked but also more curious to if we tried again because I know I'm different now and things would be better. But in the grand scheme of things I'm so glad I got to know him on more of a personal level while we was together because he was the guy I knew I always wanted just never expected it to actually happen because he could get any slim, stupidly pretty girl he'd like but he chose me..far from society's thought of beauty. If he was reading this, which I can assure you he isn't, then I'd want to tell him thank you. Thank you for giving me a chance and also helping me a lot with getting over my confidence issues, without me knowing you helped me change for the better as I wanted to make myself a better human to try and get a second chance with you..but sadly I don't think that will happen. Also you are the one guy I literally can't go a day without having a little thought about, as sad as that sounds but it's true. 

Now for my next little issue. I've been seeing this guy recently and I thought it was all going well between us but I'm now doubting everything! For the past couple of days a friend and myself have been playing around on Tinder, probably not a smart move but strangely it's helped me to connect to people I used to talk to in school by matching up with each other..and before I sound like an awful human it's literally general chit chat, I'm not trying to play games or see other options as I had this guy in my life. So after a lot of swipes to the left and this said guy's profile pops up, I didn't think anything of it and swiped right without thinking. A few hours later and I had a notification saying I had a new match..from him. I instantly told my friend and she started putting ideas in my brain, like why is he still using the app when he has already told me he wants us to turn into a relationship but I couldn't get angry about that because he didn't know the reason I was on it. The thing that really pissed me off is when I realised he hadn't replied to my messages that I had sent him, only read them, but he's happily spending time floating around on some shitty app, to make matters worse my friend then messaged him to see if his story added up to mine..he replied instantly. After a few messages to my friend, and her mentioning my name my phone then buzzed with a message from him, I had got 1 message in 2 days. I shouldn't be complaining because at least he messaged me but it was just that one text while he still replied to my friend, and today there is absolutely no sign of him, it's just really confusing and I'm now thinking everything he told me was to just get sex, which sadly wouldn't be the first time that had happened to me as last year, after the first guy I spoke about ended the relationship, consisted of being a fragile, semi-heartbroken puppy with guys just playing me. 

But now I'm in the situation where I refuse to message him because recently it's only me been putting in the effort and messaging first, now I know that sounds pretty silly, but I'm the type of girl that likes the guy to put in an equal amount of effort and commitment as I do but I just feel as if I'm not getting that anymore. He used to message me in every spare moment he had, and now it's as if I'm just an effort to see how I am and I can't be dealing with anymore bullshit from guys. 

After all of this thinking about these two guys I should be sad but I'm not, I feel nothing. There's nothing worse to me than feeling empty. So I'll leave this post on two messages to these guys, who won't read this but it's something I need to get off my chest, and sorry to anyone who read all of this, I just needed a way to say what's going on and I thought this would be an appropriate place without making a fool of myself. 

To my ex - I miss you, always have since the day you left me and honestly I probably always will. I thought meeting new guys would make me forget but it never, it just made me lose respect for myself and appreciate how caring you was towards me, I know now that I just need time and apparently lots of it, because a year later and I still love the idea of being yours again. It was always the little things with you like a message to see how I was doing, or stroking my thumb while we was holding hands. Whenever I catch a glimpse of you now I instantly get a smile on my face even though I no longer have the privilege to call you mine, but I wish you all the happiness in the world because lord knows you deserve it.

To the guy who is potentially playing me - You seem like the sweetest guy and I would never have you down as being a player, but as I always say it's always the quiet ones you have to watch, I trusted you with everything I had but now that seems to have faded, I don't know what will be of us as I'm leaving the ball in your court. But, if it turns out that you played me, well then, fuck you. 

Until next time,

Shannon.

xxx