Taking Control

Chapter Eleven - Aidostar

Most of my life in Year 10 and Year 11 revolved around Sam and so I've already spoken about most of my experience. There was also the musical aspect of it however, this was when I really started releasing my own music having previously only featured in Enough Is Enough, one of my friends songs when I was 13. Let me paint the picture. It's September 2018 and I'm 14 years old. One of my idols Gabi Demartino comes out with a song called Yacht and after hearing it I decide to cover it and put it on my main Instagram account. I was the laughing stock of the school for months and it worsened when a month later I came out with a video called Aidoween which was basically me acting out a scene from Scream Queens by the name of Chaneloween, but making it about me. Every single person in the entire school, not even just my year, watched my Aidoween video and to this very day random people who I don't even know quote it to me. It even happened recently in college when a new girl who I have never met in my life joined my course and told me she recognised me from my YouTube channel, particularly the Aidoween video. I was taken aback to say the least but she's a really sweet girl and now we're sort of friends. I also did my GCSE courses in Year 10 and 11 and the music course consisted of lots of different trips and performances which i thoroughly enjoyed. One of the first things we did was take a trip to the most iconic venue in Lincoln for the day - The Drill Hall! We took part in many activities, one of them being teaching a group of primary school kids how to write a song. It did feel a bit weird as a 14 year old teaching 7 year olds how to write a song if I'm honest, I felt pretty unqualified to do so even if I did have a huge catalogue of my own songs. When I was 14 or 15 Cameron Boyce died and I had grown up watching him on Disney Channel so I was devestated for weeks. Immediately after his death, I wrote a song called Cam and uploaded it to SoundCloud. It was a gorgeous piano ballad and I'm still very proud of it to this day. It takes a lot of courage to put out an original song and I still get scared to do so even now. I worked towards my final Year 11 performance for months on end and luckily I just got to do it by a landslide because a week after my performance, the covid pandemic hit and we went into lockdown. I performed Bloodshot by Dove Cameron, wish you were gay by Billie Eilish accompanied by Lily on guitar, Bottom of The Ocean by Miley Cyrus, and Good As Hell by Lizzo. I wore a gorgeous sparkly jumpsuit and even incorpated some choreography to my performance. I received tremendous feedback and I was so pleased with the way my performance went. Less than a week later, we were told that we only had 2 days left at the school. Our GCSEs were cancelled and our final grades came from our mock exams, predicted grades and basically our teachers overall opinions. It was a terrifying time, knowing that there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. The last day of school was bittersweet. I knew I was coming back in September for sixth form, as were most of my friends but there were a chunk who also weren't so saying goodbye to them was hard. The first week of lockdown was pretty exciting, knowing I was about to have 6 months off from school for the first time ever with absolutely no work to do. I made a ton of YouTube videos and TikToks, wrote songs, and just made the most out of what I had. Pretty soon though it did become boring and I was left with nothing but my thoughts. I began to feel very depressed and before I knew it I was in the worst mental state of my entire life. I've always struggled with body dysmorphia and I was diagnosed with it when I was about 5, but at the same time it didn't have too much of an impact on me until lockdown hit. I had too much time on my hands and I grew to hate myself, specifically my appearance. I hated my body, my face, my hair, just everything. I didn't realise exactly how much it impacted me until I began Sixth Form in September 2020. I hadn't left the house in months and suddenly being around all of these people made my anxiety hit the roof and it had never been that bad ever before in my life. I started comparing myself to people and I hated myself more than ever. I remember on the first day of sixth form, I came home in the evening and broke down crying. This may be triggering to some of you who have eating disorders so this is your warning. I vouched that from that day forward I was going to starve myself and eat one meal a day, consisting of 500 calories. It's hard to say but I actually stuck to that exactly for at least a year. I got so tiny but I still couldn't see the difference in my body because that's what body dysmorphia does to you. I was absolutely miserable and this eating disorder I had developed made everything way worse. I stopped eating in public completely and I didn't eat one single thing whilst I was at school during sixth form. At one point I was the lowest I had ever been before and I went on google and searched "the most painless ways to kill yourself." I had never been that low in my entire life and the fact I was contemplating suicide was so out of character for me. I couldn't take it anymore, I just wanted to my pain to end. Luckily I managed to cope in other ways and I actually never attempted to kill myself. No matter how bad I get, I will never kill myself and that is a promise I have made to myself and to whoever is looking down on me from up above. I would love to tell you my eating disorder has gone but the truth is it hasn't. Don't get me wrong, it has got better and I don't restrict myself to 500 calories anymore but I still do suffer with an eating disorder. That first year of sixth form was the worst I had ever been mentally, or so I thought at the time. I felt enormous amounts of anxiety every time I walked into school. My business class was particularly bad but at least I had Emma. That was until I didn't have Emma. In April 2021, someone made an Instagram account and messaged her accusing her of stealing their boyfriend. She for whatever reason blamed this on me. Don't ask me why it was so dramatic because even if it was me, was it ever really that deep? She insisted that she had proof it was me and she just didn't, because if that were the case I have proof that I secretly have access to Ariana Grande's Instagram account. We had a huge bust-up in the canteen at school, Emma even got her friend involved and don't ask me why because it had absolutely nothing to do with them whatsoever. I sat there as she yelled at me abuse a million miles per minute. She told me that I was never her friend, I never liked her, and it was all fake. She was insistent that I was behind the Instagram account but I was never in a million years going to admit to it because it genuinely was not me. I told her that she had been lowkey toxic to me for our entire friendship and she put me on the spot by asking me to list her toxic traits, which of course I couldn't do then and there. I ended up becoming infuriated and I yelled at her "well you're just a stupid bitch anyway and I hate you" and I stormed off. To my surprise I was later called into the head of sixth form's office. She had snitched on me so I just gave my side to the head of sixth form. She didn't seem to be interested in the situation at all and she didn't want to get involved so she just told Emma and I to stay away from each other and that if she wanted to get the police involved that was up to her. Get the police involved? You're kidding me, right? Get the police involved because someone messaged her on Instagram saying she stole their boyfriend. It's worth noting we were 16 at this point so this whole argument just seemed so petty and below us. Later that night she messaged me on Snapchat hurling a load of abuse in me so I just blocked her and never spoke to her again. She's still friends with Malia though so I've since been to a few parties Emma is at which can get a bit awkward to say the least but we don't speak to each other at the parties at all. This meant that I was all alone in the scary Business class now causing my anxiety to spiral out of control. When I came back for the second year of sixth form in September 2021 I asked if I could drop my Business class. When they told me I wasn't allowed to, I knew I couldn't stay because it was literally going to kill me. I had to make a decision for myself for a change and after that day I never returned to that school. I had an awful experience in sixth form but there were still some positives to come out of it though. I obviously took music at sixth form and that was a very fun and eventful year. We couldn't do live performances because of the whole covid situation but towards the end of the year, we were able to travel to a venue in Lincoln and put on a livestreamed concert. The whole day was very fun and I had a very nice bonding experience with my 5 classmates. I performed solo vocals on Ordinary World by Duran Duran and did a duet on Heart of Glass by Blondie. It was so much fun and we were interviewed afterwards which I also enjoyed. The clip is still online to watch! I do remember that the day before the show I had spent the entire weekend at Malia's house watching Star Wars for the first time ever because she is obsessed with it and had always wanted me to watch it. I instantly fell in love with Mark Hamill and I couldn't stop thinking about him the entire day of the performance which is actually kind of funny. Another reason I'm grateful for sixth form is because I reconciled with Jess, you know, my friend since I was 4 who I later fell out with in Year 8 due to Ellie? Jess and I pretty much picked up exactly where we left off and now we're best friends again. It makes me so happy because she's literally like my sister. We've known each other our whole lives and it just feels like we're meant to be friends for life. We were always meant to find each other again. Right now my best friends are Jess, Malia, and Chanelle (who I've also been friends with since Year 9.) They are literally the best and most genuine, loyal friends I've ever had - they are literally my biggest fans! I didn't know what it was like to not have any toxic friends but now I do and I couldn't be more pleased with any of the friends I have.