Thank You, It’s the moment you’ve been patiently waiting for. You’ve likely been unable to sleep, hungrily anticipating the day that we release the second edition of our online zine. That day is today and boy is it a good one! Firstly, we wanted to thank you all for the overwhelming support we received on the first issue. We are so grateful to every person who took the time to read our zine and were blown away by the feedback you guys provided us! Your insights help us grow and improve the mag with more of what you want to read about, so from the bottom of our hearts we thank you. We’ve been busy the last few months balancing uni with work and trying to maintain social lives too. City life is still such a vibe and we’re both excited to officially be halfway through our communications degrees. A well-deserved break is on the cards now. For this special journal issue, we are not holding anything back. If you thought the last issue was vulnerable, we’re upping the anti and getting right down to the deepest parts of our minds, bringing those hidden thoughts to the surface. Creatively expressing ourselves through journaling, song-writing and poetry is something we’ve both done for a long time and this issue will take you inside these mediums of self-expression. Esentially, reading our diaries is the most personal you can get. Be prepared for anything and everything.
Emma and Mila xx
I’ve consistently written almost everyday since I was 14, and everyone knows that those are some pretty transformative years for a young person. I actually wrote just the other day about how grateful I am to myself for meticulously keeping diaries, as now I am able to see how much I’ve grown. Where I was, where I’m at and where I’m yet to go. It’s exciting. To kick things off, here’s a page from my journal about why I do this and how important it is to me. If you’re looking for an outlet for your feelings and have never tried writing them down I wholeheartedly recommend trying at least once. It may not be for you and that’s fine. You’ll read it back and most certainly cringe at yourself (I do, especially from my 2014 diary lollll) but the benefits of writing your unfiltered, unedited thoughts where nobody will see them but you may change your life. It’s certainly shaped mine. - Emma
“Journal keeping is a huge part of my identity. It’s a comfort, a release, a therapeutic tool for conveying all my thoughts and for me it’s as easy as breathing.”
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What the fuck is train jail? I reflect on my travelling a lot. I was away from New Zealand for just over a year and a half and so far those have been the best two years of my life. In that time I filled 6 journals with every detail of what I was doing, where I was going and with whom. It feels very Mamma Mia, but I’ll probably gift those journals to my children someday if they ever wanted to read about what I did. I know it’s a cliche but travelling really did change me. I came back a better, happier, more independent version of myself with a mind full of new ideas, cultures and experiences. It’s something you simply cannot attain from staying within your hometown. Of course, travelling is hard sometimes, particularly as I was by myself. I made friends along the way, but at the end of the day I knew I was the only person looking out for me. I made safe, conscious decisions to always put myself in the driver's seat and respect my own needs. My craziest travel story is from when I was trying to go from Lithuania to Poland. My journal entry goes like this: “I got on the train and three hours later arrived at the border to Belarus. Now at this point I knew something was wrong. These huge, army men board the train with their guns and start checking everyone’s passports. I hand over mine and the guy looks me up and down before asking, “where’s your visa?” I told him I was going to Poland and didn’t need a visa. He told me I was actually on a train to Minsk, Russia. At this point my heart sinks. I’ve made a terrible mistake and now they’ve grabbed my bag and marched me off the train like a criminal. They take me to a little room that I dubbed as ‘train jail.’ There I was interrogated about how and why I was trying to sneak into Russia without a visa. I pleaded dumb tourist and was left to think about what I’d done. A few hours later I was put on a train back to Lithuania. In hindsight, it could have been a lot worse. I could have ended up in Russian prison, making my one call home to my family. I kept my composure the whole time, but I certainly learnt to always check where my ticket was taking me. Particularly in European countries with a language barrier.”
I am sixteen now I am chasing my dreams I've moved out of home and into the city Maybe what I have now Is not everything I wished for at first But i am positive There is something and someone for me here
I’m starting this section with a quote from Love Actually, one of the greatest Christmas rom-coms of all time. It’s from 11-year-old Sam when he says, “let’s go get the shit kicked out of us by love!” I like it the most because pursuing love means taking risks. You put your heart in the hand of another with the potential for them to drop it. A terrifying concept really. My parents split when I was about 14, but this didn’t come as a shock. I was older, obedient and observant, I knew it was somewhat inevitable. Our parents are the first relationship dynamic we see growing up and it’s not perfect by any means. People get lazy, they stop trying and begin cutting themselves and their partner short. Essentially, shit happens. One could think this event triggered a downhill spiral into my young adulthood. That I would grow up feeling impartial to love, being cynical about the prospect of myself having the happy relationship that I wished for but never witnessed. However I’m inclined to believe that I am in charge. This divide does not determine the outcome of my life. Like other kiwi kids produced from broken homes, I am not defined by this.
Those thoughts were mostly taken from my 2016 journal, but I thought they were important to include as the foundation for where my views on relationships began. Now, when I think about my relationship with my boyfriend, I can’t help but smile. It’s so cheesy to say that. But he’s lit up my life in the best way possible. I don’t write a lot of poetry, (I mostly leave that to Mila) but I wrote the poem on the next page on the first day that he went to his placement up North. I had never done long-distance, but I knew we’d be okay. I think a cool metaphor for relationships is thinking of them like a car windshield. There are always going to be bumps in the road that may leave a tiny chip in the glass. Initially, this may not have a huge impact or even be noticeable enough to matter, but as time wears on and the car hits more bumps that small chip could turn into a crack that grows large enough to shatter the entire thing. I am not going to sit back and ignore the chips in our windshield. We will work through things so that we can keep on driving together. If I have it my way, we’ll probably drive off into the clouds just like in my favourite movie Grease.
Florence taught me about pretty privilege, which I know I have. I’m not trying to be cocky or vain, it’s a real thing that a lot of white women have and I know I move about this world experiencing it. I have big boobs and big hair. I’m taller than the average woman and I spent a lot of my youth wanting to shrink myself down to average, even though I’m anything but. I walk with my head up, eyes wide with ambition. People are drawn to this kind of energy. Men especially. I work in an industry where people have access to alcohol that boosts their confidence and makes them think I “want it” before I even open my mouth. It’s not even that I’m doing anything on purpose, how I’m perceived is not my problem. How I walk, talk, dress and act is a construction of me, but it’s not the complete entirety of my being. My clothes don’t convey my dreams or my hopes. My body does not warrant an opinion just for looking like one version of someone’s “ideal” of feminine beauty. Pretty privilege grants me smiles in the streets and whispers as I walk past. Do they think I’m more intelligent? More capable? More willing to sleep with them? Probably. We are drawn to looking at things that bring us joy, maybe for a fleeting moment I am one of those things for these people. A sight to behold, like a jewel behind plexiglass. The problem is that I am not an object. I’m a human. I’m fallible and flawed. I’ve been yelled at from cars and demanded that I give my number over to men that don’t deserve anything from me. When I don’t, they scream in my face “FUCK YOU”. What they were expecting I can’t possibly know. This is why I am confused when people tell me to just smile, brush it off, or better yet, take it as a compliment. Maybe it’s not that deep, but it is.
The age old saying, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is true when the beholder has been conditioned to believe that beauty is able-bodied, white and cisgendered. I feel like a part of the problem for presenting the way I do. I wonder if I cut off all my hair, dressed more conservatively and walked with my eyes turned down at the pavement, perhaps I’d no longer have my pretty privilege (which would be great) but I’d no longer be myself (oh). I’m constantly conflicted as I resent people who feel entitled to comment on my body yet I have the sheer audacity to like myself and how I look. Fuck it’s all pretty confusing. The only thing I can guarantee is I won’t be “breaking myself down into bite-sized pieces.” I’ll be staying whole and letting them choke. Words to live by Floss, thankyou for the continued learning.
Imagine the person you’d become if you stopped trying to fix others and put that energy into yourself
Florence Given
Emma 16/06/21
Mila 16/06/21