One Hell Of A Life

chapter nineteen: the first of thousands.

Em POV:

"I'm home!" I shouted, throwing my school bag into its reserved space next to the shoe cupboard.

The year was 2012, and I was in year nine of "normal school", i.e. I'd left The Brit School and started secondary school the year before, however still keeping in touch with Talia.

It was a wet, dingy February afternoon when I arrived at my house, having just walked home from school.

"Mum! I have my booklet!" I exclaimed, entering the kitchen.

In the third year of secondary school, you're asked what three subjects you'd like to continue with through years ten and eleven. English, maths and science's are compulsory, but the idea is that you get three lessons a week on each subject you choose to carry on studying. For this, you are given a booklet to fill out, circling your chosen subjects, and then handing it into the headmaster by a specific deadline.

I already knew that I definitely wanted to pick PE. That was an absolute must.

"Bring it in here, Emmy!" Mum beckoned me into the lounge, where she was stood ironing. I did as I was told, opening the paper to the correct page that showed the subjects that I was able to choose.

"Do you have any idea of what you want to pick?" Mum asked me.
"I want to do PE because I like it." I replied, rather childishly.
"Is that all?"
"Yeah."
"What about sticking with Spanish? You're good at that, right?" She suggested.
"Sure. Cool." In my head I crossed a second subject off the list.
"You're good at drawing, too. In fact, you're fantastic at drawing - what about art?" Mum said.
"I want to do psychology. The brain's interesting." I told her.

"Well, that's fine by me." She nodded in approval, signing the bottom corner of the paper on the line provided.

"Em?" She called as I was about to leave the room and start on cooking dinner.
"What's up?"
"What job do you want to have when you're older?"
"I want to be like JJ and Deji. I wanna have my own channel where I can be creative and make videos and make people laugh and smile." I told her. "I like that idea."
"You can achieve whatever you want, honey, just as long as you put all of your effort into it. You can have any job you like." Mum exclaimed.

Her words flooded my brain, and I knew that if I wanted to fully achieve my dreams of being a prevalent youtuber, like Deji and JJ, I had to start soon.

So that night, my only day in the week I had off football training, JJ was filming a football video and I asked to be in it. He obliged, thinking that it would be a fantastic idea.

My passion for videography grew massively that night. I decided that soon, I'd make my first YouTube video. But what would the topic be? I didn't know myself.

But, a week later - when I was getting a lift home from football - Simon's words pushed me just far enough to bite the bullet.

"Hey, I bet you'd never make a video. Even I'll end up putting out a video before you do!"
"How much do you bet, bitch-ass?" I replied back, hands on my hips, determined to prove him wrong.
"Twenty quid." He smirked smugly, thinking he was right.
"Deal." I shook his hand on it.

As soon as we got home, I began scribbling down video ideas. It didn't take me long to decide that my first ever YouTube video would be '20 facts about me'.

How basic.

But I still made the channel, filmed, edited, and published it on the same night. God, if only things were so easy now.

In short, it was horrendous. It's cringe. Literally, it gives me the creeps. It's still up on my channel, though, as a small symbol for people to see how far I've come and how much I've grown.

I edited it like an Antonio Garza video - except that I thought the zoom ins, voice effects, and white Comic Sans text every now and then was actually cool, and not for the irony.

Little did thirteen year old Em know that this crappy, low-quality form of entertainment would expand hugely, and many more, hopefully better, videos were to come.

Suffice to say, by end of the week, I was twenty pounds better off.

a/n:

apologies for the bag-of-shite chapter. it's 1am and i'm concentrating on getting a chapter out for the past week. writer's block is a prick.

also, another huge achievement, over 1.75k reads is on this book! tysm dudes.

a better chapter is coming soon.

thanks for reading!

lee x