A picture speaks a thousand words. (Ooh watch me now!).

So, as I've mentioned recently, I turn 20 in May. To me this feels very very old. It only feels like two minutes ago that I was 15, it really is scary how fast time seems to go as you get older, when you're younger you always seem to think that you'll live forever. Today's topic is - Age.

I think it's kind of scary how much I've changed over the years. My Nannan still refuses to believe that I'm nearly 20, she laughs when I tell her because she's so convinced that I'm joking. So with this blog, I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane, and also contemplate how much the future still has to hold.

 So this is me as a baby, around 18 months old I think. I mean, come on, how attractive is that face I'm pulling? I am genuinely surprised that I never won any beautiful baby competitions. At least back then I wasn't conscious of how I looked for the photograph, I just wanted to pull a stupid face and hold my hairbrush evidently. Sometimes I think it would be good to be that carefree again but when you're a baby you can shit yourself in public and no one bats an eyelid, so there's my point proven.

And here is me as a toddler. According to my mum, in this picture I'm dancing around the garden to 'Do you love me'. I remember I actually used to love that song, I used to be in fits of laughter at the mashed potato reference in the lyrics. No idea at all why. But up until last year I wouldn't even dance in a nightclub. I also used to adore that Minnie Mouse outfit, even though now on later reflections, I do look like I'm wearing pyjamas. Nice.

And here I am aged 6. This was definitely the start of the bowl fringe days. When I'm a parent I am gonna make sure that my children have nice, unridiculous hair and a decent fashion sense, my Mum however obviously used to dress me up and laugh at me. This is also a rare photo in which I'm smiling. When I got older I became more and more self-conscious of my, what I call, 'ventriloquist-dummy chin'. When I smile my chin forms two lines at either side, making it look like someone could just attach a stick to it, pull it, and I'll be their puppet. I'm also not keen on my teeth, because I think when I smile and bare my teeth I look creepy like a Chucky doll. So my recent photos tend to be me either pouting or looking mardy, even if I'm actually having the time of the life.

So, fast-forward 10 years and here we are on my 16th birthday. Gone are the days of happy, smiley photos, and here I am, looking like I'm observing an execution, when in fact I am actually enjoying my birthday gathering. And it seems quite strange actually, that appearance wise, nothing has changed that much. I have (Lily Allen was big at the time) the bowl fringe yet again and awful clothes. Bright pink jeans? What was I thinking?! I grew through childhood and early teens trying to fit in. I wore a Reebok hoody throughout year 7 just so I'd fit in with the chavs at school and they wouldn't pick on me. It didn't work... they still grew to hate me. But when I got to around 14 I wanted to be different, the last thing I wanted was to look like everyone else.

School was all about popularity, but those so-called 'popular' people from my year at school are all now either on the dole, stuck in dead-end jobs, or parents to several illegitimate children. It kinda makes me proud in a way that as I grew up I decided against conforming, I thought, hang on, I actually do have a brain and I'm gonna use it. It seems through my life I've always been popular with boys but girls seem to take one look at me and decide they hate me. It's slightly improved as I've gotten older and I have close girl friends, but I still get girls always taking an instant dislike me, and I honestly have no idea why. I always got told 'it's because they're jealous' and in theory they probably are, but there's really not all that much to be jealous of. I'm an average girl with average grades who wears very good make-up, and if the time is taken to know me, I am also a very nice person (if I'm not tired, hungry or hormonal).

Now skip forward another 2 years and here I am at my 18th birthday party with my friend Oli. And notice the big cheesy grin. It wasn't even forced, I was genuinely happy and content. Being away from the social pressures of school, starting college and meeting some, what I believe are, friends for life, really does change a lot of things. Even if I was so drunk this night that i walked out of the toilet with my dress tucked into my Bridget Jones knickers, and pulled, and had the embarrassment of flashing my big 'sexy' pants to a guy, it was fun.

And here I am at Baker Street Station, London in October 2009, waiting for the tube to go to my Fresher's Ball at Pacha. I'd been living in London for around 3 weeks when this photo was taken and it really was the experience of my life. Even though uni life at Westminster didn't work out for me, I have no regrets that I did it. London is just the most amazing city, I miss it so much at times, but in comparison to how much I missed my family and friends while I was there it doesn't win. I've not been back since I left last May but I know I need to, though I am partly scared that I won't wanna come home again if I go back. But I met some amazing people in this amazing city, and going to see them is on the list of my priorities. 

Although the Fresher's Ball itself wasn't brilliant, the highlight of the night was seeing Mutya who used to be in the Sugababes (she was my first celebrity spotting in London, let me off), and I got followed around all night by a 'grinding dancefloor guy', and an Archers and Lemonade cost £8(!), this photo pinpoints a very happy moment of my life. 

This trip of nostalgia has opened my eyes to a lot of things, and that's to not care what you look like or what other people think. The most important thing is to just care about what the people you actually give a shit about think, and just focus on enjoying the moment. Life really is too short.

Awful tragedies happen every single day, to people younger than myself, and it really could be any of us, so just make the most of what you've got. In the words of the great prophet Gary Barlow, things can only get better.

And to end... I can mash potato!

Roses are red, violets are blue...Fuck you whore. (Men are like bogeys, I never seem to pick a winner).

So today's date is the 9th of February which means the worst day of the year is looming....Yes, Valentine's Day.

It has recently come to my attention that I am nearly 20 years old and I have never had what you would call a serious, functional, normal relationship. It either ends around the 1-month stage, or is a crazy fucked-up version of a 'relationship'.

I seem to get questioned a lot by various people about why I don't have a boyfriend or why I have no luck with men, and I never really know what to say about it. So, I've sat and thought long and hard about why I can't seem to be able to do the normal relationship thing, and the obvious conclusion was that there's something wrong with me. Then I thought hang on a minute, no, I'm lovely. I have to live with me every single day so I know for a fact that I'm perfectly lovely and nothing short of a perfect girlfriend to be honest. The problem is the men I'm attracted to, I'm like a magnet for arseholes and weirdos. During these nosey and often patronising conversations I also came to the scary conclusion that I'm ready to settle down. Don't worry, I'm not talking marriage, kids, mortgage, I'm talking a nice boyfriend. A boyfriend with prospects of being a future-husband, Dilf, and boring car owner. I've been there, done everything and got all of the T-Shirts.

The weird thing is, because I've had a quite a few boyfriends and can be a bit of a flirt, whenever I meet someone they always become paranoid that I'm gonna cheat on them. I've never cheated on anyone. I've had it done to me a lot of times but that's a different story. But, basically, my theory is, a person is more likely to cheat if they've not had a lot of boyfriends and girlfriends before because they think they're missing out on something. And because I know what is out there (a lot of knobheads), if I meet a nice guy then I know there's definitely nobody better who's gonna come along, and I'm really not missing out on anything.

I don't really go on nights out that much and the thought of going out every single week like a lot of people do just scares me. I am officially old.  Unfortunately though this prevents me from 'pulling'. Though the only men I meet in nightclubs are drunken, creepy, verging on rapists kinda guys. I find it hard to meet guys at uni because to be quite frank, I always look like shit at uni. Waking up at 6am and attempting to do my make-up on the train isn't the best look for me. And I've tried meeting guys through facebook, they're either not as fit in real-life as they are in their pictures, they turn out to be really short or have a girly voice, or just plain weirdos.

I've always thought to myself 'Rachael, it's ok to be fussy, you're 19 years old, you're funny, you're intelligent and drunk people mistake you for Pixie Lott', but Valentine's Day is always the day where I wish I'd make an exception.

As soon as I walk into Tesco it hits me, an overwhelming sense of nausea as I see the cards, teddies, chocolates, flowers, balloons and wine. The tag line should be 'Valentine's Day - The one day of the year invented to make single people feel like absolute shit'.

I've only actually not been for single for one Valentine's, and that was with the 'most serious relationship' guy. We hadn't been together for very long at the time but this defies the point of what he gave me. I decided to treat him (and myself) to a night of pro-evo, a takeaway, Ben & Jerry's, WKD (yes I went out with a guy who drank alcopops, don't judge) and very skimpy underwear.

He gave me a huge Me to You card, it was lovely :) apart from the fact that inside the first line said - 'To Amy Rachael'. Humph. His excuse was that he'd left his ex-girlfriend to be with me a few weeks before and he'd already bought and written inside the card which had cost him the huge amount of £4.50, and to add insult to injury, was my present. He had very kindly sellotaped a Cherry Chapstick inside of the card because, and to quote, 'last time I kissed you I noticed your lips were a bit chapped so I thought I'd get you a thoughtful present'. You couldn't make it up could you?

I also received a present and card off a different guy a year or two later, which was quite sweet. A card with my name spelt wrong and a cuddly gorilla holding a rose. Except the guy in question was someone I'd broken up with a few weeks before because he was still shamelessly obsessed with his ex-girlfriend. So...the gorilla became a cat toy.

Valentine's day itself is just a pointless cliche. But if you spent it like I did last year sat in Pizza Hut (I love Pizza Hut, take note guys) in central London, listening to 'All by myself' and staring at rainy Baker Street like I was in a crap Hugh Grant film then it does kind of hit a nerve.

I also think I'm mentally scarred for life from a primary school incident. I was in year 3, and I was 7. My mum had bought me a card making kit from Avon and I got to work making a valentine's card for the boy in my class that I liked. I thought he was cute because he had big ears like a monkey. I spent a total of 3 hours making this card. It had hand-drawn hearts, crepe paper, feathers, glitter and diamante. And I even put a drumstick lolly inside of it, I was so proud, even signed it 'guess who'. I slipped it into the drawer of the boy in question and waited for him to find it. He had no idea who it was from, up until break time when my 'friend' told him it was from me and I had to endure the humiliation of him going 'eurrrgggghhhh!', pulling it out of his bag and ripping into tiny pieces in front of me. Aaron Taylor, if you're reading this, you owe me shitloads of glitter and glue you heartless prick.

So, as you've probably gathered, I am definitely not a big fan of Valentine's day. But that's not to say that I'm not quite upset at the fact that yet again I'm gonna be spending it alone.

If there's any of you out there that have never seen '500 Days of Summer' then your homework for today is to watch it. That film pretty much sums up my big 'relationship' except I'm Tom and my ex is Summer. And one of my favourite scenes from the film is the one involving the first part of the title of this blog. Enjoy.

So I am now about to venture to Tesco as I need supplies of cat food, ice cream and batteries for my vibrators so wish me luck as I try not to vomit all over the Valentine's displays.