May 22, 2015 Eimear Fallon

This is what I look like these days. My hair is longer than it’s been in years; sometimes it falls just right, like today, and other days it just piles up in an unflattering bird’s nest on top of my head. I feel like this photo puts undue emphasis o… — This is what I look like these days. My hair is longer than it’s been in years; sometimes it falls just right, like today, and other days it just piles up in an unflattering bird’s nest on top of my head. I feel like this photo puts undue emphasis on the (comparatively) large size of my nose. I am starting to look more like an adult, and it terrifies me.

February 4, 2015 Eimear Fallon

I am twenty-four, and there are mountains of snow outside, and tomorrow I’m going to buy new clothes for the first time in years because I decided that it’s time I stop alternating between two pairs of pants. Despite all appearances to t… — I am twenty-four, and there are mountains of snow outside, and tomorrow I’m going to buy new clothes for the first time in years because I decided that it’s time I stop alternating between two pairs of pants. Despite all appearances to the contrary, my head’s in a pretty good space right now.

January 2, 2015 Eimear Fallon

Decided it already: my default selfie pose for 2015 is going to be “look how dignified my bedroom looks when my head blocks the wall of anime posters!”
Also, I finally figured out how to get Chrome to recognise my better webcam. Don&rsqu… — Decided it already: my default selfie pose for 2015 is going to be “look how dignified my bedroom looks when my head blocks the wall of anime posters!”

Also, I finally figured out how to get Chrome to recognise my better webcam. Don’t I look crisp?

September 12, 2014 Eimear Fallon

There is something to be said for the brilliantly terrible artifacting that goes on with my integrated webcam. I don’t think I’ve ever looked better.

July 8, 2014 Eimear Fallon

Sometimes I have crises of meaning. Sometimes I wonder if writing thousand-word essays about Richard Dawkins are the best use of my time. Sometimes I think of turning this into a blog of terrified-looking selfies, because I’m self-conscious ab… — Sometimes I have crises of meaning. Sometimes I wonder if writing thousand-word essays about Richard Dawkins are the best use of my time. Sometimes I think of turning this into a blog of terrified-looking selfies, because I’m self-conscious about my smile.

March 3, 2014 Eimear Fallon

January 11, 2014 Eimear Fallon

You get used to different backdrops. The stack of CDs on the left; a faded pink headboard on the right, and my bed, in various states of disarray. When I come back to this country to visit, maybe a year from now, the bed will be gone, the room rearr… — You get used to different backdrops. The stack of CDs on the left; a faded pink headboard on the right, and my bed, in various states of disarray. When I come back to this country to visit, maybe a year from now, the bed will be gone, the room rearranged with guests in mind. Already, this room looks so much emptier. Shelves are left clear. Cupboards are empty. I am moving around a third of the things I own, but two thirds doesn’t look like much when it’s spread out.

It’s not the moving that feels strange - I’ve moved before, to student houses and apartment complexes sixty miles away, often bringing more and more of my belongings as the year progressed. What makes this different is where I’ll be weighing anchor - studying in York, there was always the sense that Stockport was my home, where I’d lay my head once all of this was over. This time is different.

Tomorrow night, I will fall asleep next to Arden, and I know that while the surroundings may take some getting used to, that visceral feeling of being *home* will already be present. Home can be a lot of things, I suppose. Here, it’s my parents, and my best friend living five minutes away, and that purple stripe above the curtain rail, and thinking in the metric system. There are a thousand things in this country that make it feel like home, and one person in the United States who, for me, captures that feeling without the backup of the sort of cultural backdrop you can assimilate over twenty-three years.

The rest - guessing the weather outside without mental arithmetic, dealing with an over-reliance on cars, approaching an economy with different priorities to the UK - will take time. But I’m not worried. I’ll have the company of someone truly remarkable while I navigate through the small stuff, and that’s more than enough.

January 7, 2014 Eimear Fallon

January 1, 2014 Eimear Fallon

Last selfie of 2013. I look like a damn cartoon character.

September 19, 2013 Eimear Fallon

I think this is my new favourite picture of me.

August 5, 2013 Eimear Fallon

I tried making a gif but got a headache. Have this instead. Have my face. Go on. Take it. It’s not like I’m using it.

April 12, 2013 Eimear Fallon

I’m figuring out how to use Photoshop. Or, rather, not.

March 3, 2013 Eimear Fallon

New glasses, slightly new hair, and a new profile photo that doesn’t look like I’m about to tell you to bend over. Always trying to be more professional, me.

February 13, 2013 Eimear Fallon

You haven’t seen me in a while.

I’ve had this feeling of ageing a lot more lately. I’m aware how silly that can sound - I’m twenty-two, I’m far from done - but I have a lot of reasons, however superficial, to feel like I’m growing up. For the last two years (or thereabouts), I’ve been navigating a relationship that has taken me to places (literal and metaphorical) that I never thought I’d experience. There are less emotional processes, too, that have begun to shape me - I’ve started my first salaried job, which brings with it this odd level of stability and permanence (even though it’s a fixed contract and part time). It’s been a few years since I’ve undergone any major upheaval, and I have a lot coming at me at once.

I looked at a few old photos and videos the other day, too. Of course there are the really old ones, like the one on the left up there. I’m fifteen there. I have spots, and by that, I mean a few - if you zoom in (and I recommend that you don’t), I’m in the midst of an acne bout that’s only really dulled by the fact that the photo was taken in Scotland during the winter. And the hair. (I wore really bad shirts, too, but that’s another story.)

But I can’t wrap my head around the difference in my face. It’s hard to get past, initially - you identify with your own reflection the most, and always underestimate your own age - but seven years is starting to look like it should. It’s not just understanding when a haircut’s overdue; my cheekbones are more pronounced than my cheeks now, I have a jawline that feels a lot more pronounced, and at such a stupidly young age I already have crow’s feet.

That other one was taken shortly after I started university. It’s a bit more recognisable, but it still looks a lot softer. Less weathered. The Chris in the photo on the left is about to go through a lot of secondary trauma, trying (and failing) to navigate the crippling mental illness of others at a painfully young and inexperienced age. He’s also yet to understand what really being in love is like. The Chris on the right has come out of that, and is starting to make sense of it all, but he has his own anxieties and depression to come. But he has the space to flourish again - to engage in a load of projects, to forge new friendships and relationships. He’s fresh off the back of a trip to Florida to meet someone he’d only ever spoken to online, and by this point has spent a fortnight with no friends or family in the centre of Marrakech.

The Chris at the top still has mental issues, but they’re softer, background annoyances rather than day-to-day nightmares. He’s getting married in a few months. He’s fallen in love again - something the Chris on the right would probably scoff at. The next couple of years are probably going to change his face a little more. There’ll be peaks - and if trends are anything to go by, a steady increase in them - and troughs, and more experience to integrate. Something else to add to the autobiography.

Maybe in three years’ time I’ll have stopped thinking about myself so much.