Some thoughts about life and other things

Have you ever read a poem where it feels like the poet has reached into your head and pulled something out, woven it into words you never could've come up with to express a feeling which you didn't quite understand? That's the feeling I get when I read this book. It must've become annoying by now to my closest female friends that every time we stay up until the small hours of the morning talking about life and broken hearts, I find a poem by Rupi to read aloud. One of us will stumble upon a feeling and I'll get up, reach for her on my bookshelf, reaching for the writing which will render that feeling universal, make us feel less alone. She takes your pain and makes it tangible, then makes it bearable, then teaches you to allow yourself to move on from it. She is the voice I need to hear when I am feeling low, feeling like I can't fathom how to let go of anger, or hurt. "It's okay" her poems whisper. "You are allowed to feel this way, I ha...

When I was 16, my BMI matched my age. I know this because one morning my mum asked me to work it out - the night before my sister had seen me getting changed into my pyjamas from her room across the hall and seen the vertebrae of my spine sticking out. For her, that was it. She’d spent weeks and weeks watching me make excuses at mealtimes, eating a yoghurt for breakfast, skipping lunch at school for one piece of toast, and overexercising, and she’d kept trying to make me see that something was wrong, but I wouldn’t listen. Finally, desperately, she told my parents, and they stood and watched me weigh myself, worked out my BMI and were mildly horrified that I’d managed to become malnourished under their noses.  I was taking my GCSEs at the time, and had taken them so seriously that I’d let my phone go out of charge for weeks, deactivated my Facebook and shut myself away to revise for 8 hours a day. I felt out of control - these exams were dictating my life. So I decided to rees...