a note to myself

What is it exactly about taking risks that causes you to feel so petrified? Is it the thought of jumping off the edge into something unknown that makes you quiver? Is it the outcome – that intangible conclusion – that makes your heart flutter? Can it be that you're afraid that the foundation you've built may be compromised? The probability that if you take the next necessary step, you'll end up falling. Does it have something to do with completing this on your own? That this is your decision to make and no one else can make it for you. What exactly causes you to feel so petrified about taking a chance? Why are you inconclusive as to what you want to do? Why don't you already know the answers? Why can't you make the decision? 

What do you want to do? 

Badley

she is

She called me three days ago and before I heard the soft hello, I knew that something wasn't right. I felt it in the pit of my stomach as I sat in a pile of dirty laundry. I felt it coursing through my fingertips as I gripped the phone tighter in an effort to hear her whispers. But I didn't recognize the extent of the damage and I didn't understand the loneliness. Because you never want to admit that distance is a problem, you never want to own up to its confinement.

**

It’s terrifying to hear that depression is the culprit. Somehow, the words creep through the phone and into my bed – making itself comfortable and it's presence admissible. It is a tragedy to have to reconnect through gut-wrenching fears. Yet, there it is hanging in the air – the implications derived from isolation – and there's nothing left for us to do but to sit and listen to the other cry.

she is my best friend. she is all the memories and all the secrets. she is the tough times and all the times we laughed the hardest. she's the one sitting in the parking lot with me so I don't have to cry alone and she's beside me for every 5am conversation. she is the late night drives and every mixed CD I ever owned. she is my best friend.

**

Maybe this reads like a terrible Chicken Soup for the Soul  but the reason I wrote it is because of a simple phone call that wasn't so simple. And the only reason I'm making it public is because whoever she is to you, I hope you never forget to call her and tell her how much she's loved.

Badley

images by Petra Collins via

everything to give

images by Dan Mountford via 

A short conversation about nothing

All day I've been feeling bad for myself. It doesn't help that I'm now listening to ambient music while sitting on the floor of my half empty apartment eating the last box of Kraft Dinner (mom, if you're reading this, please send food). While feeling exceptionally dark, I spent the entire evening trying to figure out activities to enhance my mood sans a bottle of red wine. The first option was to shave legs, wash hair and paint nails (I'm boring, whatever) but this meant doing laundry (read: no towels) and my roommate took the nail polish with her. No joke, I nearly text myself sad face emoticons.

The next option was to write a post that read, "New Year New Me: Big Things Happening," where I'd lie to you and myself about doing ass crunches and eating healthy in 2013. Or better yet, I'd recap the entire last year in a few hundred characters. However, since it's taken me exactly three hours to write up to this point, I figure that's not happening anytime soon. To be perfectly honest, I have no clue where I'm going with this post anymore and I just discovered The Cure has been added to Netflix. Can we take a rain check on this conversation?

 (hand-knitted scarf by Scarffaces, Zara Coat, American Apparel hat)

P.s. I'm okay, just having one of those years.

Badley

For what it's worth

I disappeared for a year and there's a number of reasons for that. There's also a reason for why I'm returning.

I've lost myself and once upon a time, this is where I'd find her. Therefore, I'm going to write until there's nothing left to say. I'm going to write until I feel naked and exposed.

I don't care who reads this and I don't care if it's any good. I'm going to be honest and I'm going to move forward. I'm going to figure out who I am and I'm going to finally be okay with that.

I can't exactly answer why I started blogging. To write? To take photos? To feel less alone? I'm not entirely sure but the last thing I expected was for anyone to follow along.

I blissfully and ignorantly managed QQueen of Hearts expecting nothing and everything. However, the more I wrote the more people started to take notice.

Sponsors contacted me, other blogs wanted an interview, Seventeen Magazine sent me an email, I was invited to Jean Paul Gaultier's showroom and asked to audition for MTV.

QQueen of Hearts ventured into a direction I never believed it would.

During this time I moved to Toronto, began a relationship and made new friends. It was then people in my past and present discovered that I was writing in this little nook of the internet.

Naturally, I panicked.

It's one thing to have strangers from around the world reading what I have to say but it's an entirely different thing to have people from real life doing the same.

That's when I stopped writing for me. Every post was fake; just a string of words talking about something I had no interest in. Maybe I stopped caring or maybe I just didn't have the guts to be an open book anymore.

Whatever the case, I disappeared for a year.

Yet, there's been a void growing inside of me ever since I stopped writing. I'm losing a grip on the person I want to be. She is not insecure. She is not jealous. She is not hateful or vindictive. She is smart, she is ambitious, she is worthy of it all.

She's just lost at the moment.

So here I am. Not returning as QQueen of Hearts but as Zoe Badley.

I'll no longer be taking sponsorships, running ads, or hosting contests.

Instead, I'll be writing whatever the hell I feel like writing whenever the hell I feel like writing it.

-- Badley