writer

Out With a Bang: Farewell 2015!

Life Updates

2015 has been the toughest hurdle to jump over; everything was thrown at me with so little time to prepare for it and I can’t bring myself to accept that I’ve survived it. (Just about)

The year began with hospitalisation and a new health condition: pancreatitis. Over the course of 7 months this developed into Sphincter of Oddi Dysfunction. (SOD) Now, my doctors are so baffled by my health conditions, they’ve put me under the care of another surgeon. So that’s put me under the care of two surgeons, a gastroenterologist, a pancreatic specialist and a laparoscopic surgeon over three years. I really do get around. Thankfully, by God’s grace, I am pain free and have been since being discharged from hospital at the end of November. I’m hoping it’ll stay that way, too.

I also said goodbye to people I thought I couldn’t live without. I embraced new friendships and was reminded what love felt like. Ultimately, I loved and I lost. 87% sure that’s a song lyric.

I exceeded every expectation I, and many others, had of my success both academically and personally. I was nominated for four blog awards in the space of one year, with 12,600 views and 7,200 people clicking onto my blog around the globe. Oh, and now 2 blogs to my name. I managed to bag myself a 2:1 in my first year at university despite being hospitalised 11 times during the year. Flippin’ crazy.

Finally, I am blissfully and disgustingly happy. Being surrounded by wonderful parents who’ve supported me since forever has been the only thing to keep me going: their invaluable advice and commitment to my happiness has been something I’ll never take for granted. For the rest of my time on this planet, I’ll never be able to thank them enough for everything they’ve sacrificed and done for me. I love you both incomprehensible amounts and hope I’ve done you proud so far. The friends who’ve stuck by me during my best and worst hours are all godsends I’ll be forever grateful for, too.  I stumbled across a job which I’ve fallen utterly in love with: my manager is the nicest (and sassiest) human being I’ve ever had the pleasure of working for and the people I work with give me nothing but joy every day. Everything has fallen into place.

I’m incredibly lucky to be alive, as healthy as I can be and to have everyone I love around me. Thank you to everyone who joined me on the journey I took this year and to everyone who stuck by me. I’ve learnt the hard way that those who are destined to be in your life will always be a part of it, and you, and will find a way back to you no matter what. Those who never had the intention of sticking around, or who walked away – well, they’re a lesson learnt for the future.

Here’s to a great 2016. And never looking back.

Anisah x

– Jorge Luis Borges

Quotes

My books (which do not know that I exist) are as much a part of me as this visage, with its grey hair at the temples and grey eyes that look for vanity in glass surfaces and wonderingly run my curved hand over. And not without some logical bitterness it occurs to me that the essential words that most express me are not in my own writings, but in these books that don’t know who I am. Better that way. The voices of the dead will utter me forever. 

A Little Like This

Original Writing

It was like digging your nails into the earth over and over again, and coming up empty every time. Reaching into the core of your soul, and finding nothing to grasp hold of. I could scream his name a thousand times into the twilight, and twenty miles away, all he’d hear is the wailing creatures of the night. His darkness blinded my senses whilst his couldn’t be clearer. The light I gave him couldn’t have shone any brighter. How can one walk away from a person who left footprints, not fucking fingerprints, on your heart? He set me on fire and left me to choke on the smoke, retching on the ashes of our past.

And just like that, he was gone.

‘If I Stay’ – Cinematic Adaptation Review

Original Writing

“Sometimes, you make choices in life.
And sometimes, choices make you.”

After watching Forman’s novel come to life, I was overcome by both extreme sadness that the film was over, and complete ecstasy that the film was exactly how I envisioned it to be.

Mia, a girl with her whole life ahead of her, suddenly finds herself in a coma after a fatal car accident which took the lives of her parents and younger brother, Teddy. The novel, and the film, takes us through a series of flashbacks into Mia’s life and memorable moments which predominately surround her love interest, Adam. The reader is left right up until the end of the story to find out whether or not Mia survives the crash, and the journey from start to end is both tragically endearing and overwhelmingly exhilarating with a few life lessons along the way.

The character of Adam is strangely and seductively compelling, played exquisitely by Jamie Blackley, and represents the conflicts of love and morality thrown into question when someone we love is almost lost to us. I fell in love with his character from the moment Forman introduced us to him; a leather jacket-wearing rockstar who wears his heart on his sleeve and falls for the girl who remained invisible to all but him. Boys wanted to be him. Girls wanted to be on him. Right up until the very end of the story, Adam, and Blackley, did not disappoint.

Chloë Grace Moretz was brilliantly casted to play Mia Hall. She conveyed every emotion I felt whilst reading the novel, and I don’t think anyone else could have captured the essence of Mia Hall the way Moretz did.

I find that the music complimented the film perfectly, too. Very well chosen in accordance with the novel.

I cannot express how amazing it feels to read a book, fall in love with it, then see it on a screen exactly the way you imagined it would be.

So thank you, Gayle Forman, for manipulating me into thinking that true love exists in the form of a rocker, and to the cast of If I Stay, for bringing my imagination to life.