Sometimes I am horribly crippled by doubt and this bizarre fear of failure that inhibits me from getting what I want anyway. This is madness. I feel pressure that isn't real. Pressure is in my mind. What is real is the paper in front of me. The computer in front of me. The 17 year old body I am in. I have only been alive for 17 years, yet it feels like forever. I am too young to feel so burdened. I say that with no resentment, I am stating a pure fact. It is a fact that emotions can be controlled, they cannot be touched and they have no name in concrete. I am concrete. A book is concrete. All the knowledge in the world is there for me. I do not know why I must live in perpetual fear. Because fear is an emotion, it isn't real. It can be controlled. It cannot be touched, therefore it cannot be there. What I want though, that can be real anytime. The chair I'm sitting on is the result of someone's wants coming true in the most absolute sense. I'm ready for everything life has to give me, and it is just giving it to me. I must take it wholeheartedly. I have everything I want. But I must let all these bloom and stop feeling fearful and guilty and negative and impotent. I have so much power in me. I amaze myself. To achieve catharsis there must be action, and this is what I'm doing my project on, for Pete's sake. I must claim what is real and let go of what is not. I am unstoppable.

I am invincible.

It is difficult for me to constantly put my life into perspective, and to realise that I am the constant in my life. So with these few days off, I vow to enjoy the following:

1. My youth, and all its trappings - balloons, fairies, rainbows and dancing.

2. The music that is all around me.

3. My room, and knowing that it is my space.

4. Pretty dresses.

5. The freedom of my own mind - the freedom to relax, to just be.

6. Writing, writing beauty and ugliness and complexity and lightness.

7. My family - my mother, my brother and my grandfather, who are all treasures in their own right.

8. Myself.

I remember peace like the back of my hand. I finally feel like I can breathe. I can always breathe. My life never has to be claustrophobic, and the things that I fear are not real, nowhere near as real as this corporeal body that is not meant to grow old so quickly.