odd really

I will broadcast something on the internet that I won't even tell my friends. I am so miserable and fed up.
I feel like there is no silver lining but I do still feel extremely lucky.
When I walk home alone in the dark without getting harassed I appreciate it,
After being homeless for 5 months, having a room to myself,
Getting a hug from someone who I have made angry all day just because they understand what I need,
Laughing too hard and too long at something just because it feels right,
Getting a message from one of my old friends,
Hearing someone tell me I am still worth something in the world,
Staying up all night to chat to someone who quickly changed from a stranger to a friend.
All these things I really feel lucky to have.

Instead of finishing my nap I stared at a wall and thought about how much I needed to pour myself into you.
Call me delusional, but I would rather spend my time in a happy daydream than angry and sad that reality is being so cruel to me. 
My daydream lets me function like a normal human being and get things done.

...

then something terrible and beautiful happened.

We don't deserve this.

I don't think there is a word yet for the emotion you go through when you and your best friend both have broken hearts together and not from each other.
It feels a bit like bittersweet but far more intense and powerful, and lost but not quite so lonely.

-Sylvia Plath

“Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.”

Sometimes I go crazy inside my own special breed of madness, and sometimes I marinate in it.
I often wonder if I am going to drive myself to the brink of insanity and then just settle down and shut up.

I left you a buttercup

because finally my life is going the way we both planned, more or less.

God I miss you.

Today

belonged to me.

If you can't lose what you never had

I must be losing my mind.

bittersweet sadness and blinding heat.

The last time I went blank

was 14 months ago when I heard "cancer."

Imagine if for just one day of your life, you could have everything you wanted on that day.

I would let each of my nearest and dearest turn into duplicate polly pockets and take them away with me to Canada.

I would spend the morning with a basket of kittens, the afternoon with Grandma Beth, the evening at a dinner party with everyone I don't get to see enough of and the early hours of the next morning sitting on a bean bag with my best friend, playing nintendo, drinking wine out of teacups, smoking inside and having a heart to heart.

I would surf, dance in a city centre, fly over a forest and tell everyone everything my somewhat limited self restraint stops me from saying.

I would let someone close to me read me a bedtime story at 7am, spoon them to sleep then never ask anyone for anything ever again.

What would you do?

everything is spinning.

I see the way they look at me fondly, I am a pet to them, an unruly shrew with curves.
I don't mind because I made myself this way...
But you look right through me, past what I can even see myself, and you bring out the best in me.
I like it, because I never anticipated it, not at all.

I do struggle with the idea that people want to stay. However, I let them stay. I let them stick like glue. They mould themselves onto me until I am an amalgamation of things they think I could be and things they need to be tolerant of while I become the person they deserve to be friends with. You will know when I have become this sort of person because I will stop broadcasting my insignificant problems to the world wide web.

late wine and secret optimism
which is gone by morning making way
for bloodshot eyes
and limbo
in which real lies are realised
and suddenly
the thoughts that plague you
feel so insignificant
if just for minutes
giving you
a clarity and slight release
before it catches up with you
so dizzy
apathetic
it will never feel perfect
but at least
it shows you everything
with blurred perception
long enough
to make sense fuzzily
of something hurting
and so trivial
maybe next time
answers come
instead of helping you
forget the question

Today was the hardest day of my life and the first day of the rest of my life

I literally could not comprehend the inevitable, which in a way, stopped me from worrying.
Staring out through the rain soaked window at the garden which held all my fondest memories, I couldn't bring myself to actually go outside and sit in it one last time. That garden was my favourite place in the world and now I can never go back there. I don't like the lack of control I have over the situation but I always try to spend as little time as possible worrying about things I know I can't change.
I lay on the floor and sobbed until there were no more tears because it was all I could do.
I knew she was going to die, but while the house was there, she was still alive. Even going back there today, seeing it stripped of character and not resembling anything in my head, I could still smell Clarins.
She was still in there somehow, but we can't go back and I can no longer pretend everything is normal when I wake up from a nap in the spare room. I am going to miss that hazy limbo where my mind told me everything was fine for just a few precious seconds. No more wandering around looking at all her things the way she had left them, it has all gone. Completely dismantled, everything broken up like an unused jigsaw and scattered around our own houses so she can live on in a way in our day to day lives.
I knew she was going to die, even though she didn't know herself, but nothing could prepare me for the death of the house. For me, she truly died the moment I shut the front door for the last time.
I said goodbye to my childhood today, to everything I have ever understood as normality and now there is just the rest of everything else to deal with forever, and my god, I am not ready.

I will never be ready. I don't think I will ever truly say goodbye, I can't. She makes up too much of me to let go.

everything is too easy now

I am too intolerant of hardship which means the smallest suggestion of conflict sends me overboard. It shouldn't be like this. I do not have enough responsibilities for a 23 year old. If someone was to look in on my life and hazard a guess, they would assume I was 16. I feel like I have been around forever but behave as though I was born yesterday. I worked so hard last year to fashion a persona which allowed people to believe I was achieving, but now I have unpicked all of the stitches and feel quite ashamed when I allow myself the time to reflect on what a fuck up I have let myself become. The devil may care attitude might look refreshing to some, but really it is just immaturity.

think outside the box

I can't offer you conventional behaviour but I will keep you occupied. I would rather be occupied than bored, personally. The same goes for all the men I subtly reject. I will love you with rose tinted glasses for the rest of our lives, but I won't expect you to see an inch of me as anything less than inadequate, however far our relationship progresses. Mind you, an ego boost is sometimes needed, thank you.

A close friend asked me recently if I had a "one that got away" and I replied "all of them." Letting everyone go and keeping them as friends means I have friends forever rather than people who could've been amazing who I now ignore on the street. I won't die alone if I have my friends, I might die alone if they find someone truly amazing and better than me who sees me as a threat.

I am difficult, yes.

But I didn't realise I was getting dropped while my entire life goes arse over tit.

oh well.

i know this doesnt belong on the world wide web but realistically i cant think of anywhere else to put it. i feel like i cant make a good desicion. i feel underskilled and underwhelmed. most importantly, i have no emotions. i am just existing. i am more tied down than i have ever been and i have nothing to look forward to because the one thing in life that i could look forward to, my one feeble excuse of a dream will now only happen after my whole world comes crashing down in a way i will probably never fully recover from.

i cant talk to anyone about it because people either do not understand or have to deal with far worse. i am so lucky to have such a vast and valuable support network but i need a goal to work towards and i cant have one. any suggestions are just a series of words and ill thought out ideas which will not work. i know this is all temporary but in a selfish way, it is not enough just to know that it will end at somepoint. i struggle to understand how people even recognise me because as an outsider looking in it must look as though my personality has been wiped and left a boring void. it is true that only boring people are bored, and i am so bored.

the struggle is awful and boring, and will result in nothing. the worst part is that no matter how terrible i feel, it does not even enter the spectrum of how one of the most important people to me must be feeling. i will never be able to make them better, and that alone is so horrible. i feel utterly powerless to everything that is going on in my life. anything i do to try and change this will leave me riddled with guilt and it is just the beginning of a long hard struggle.

i hope it will make me a stronger, better person but the wait is making me weak and hopeless. i am a bad, boring person and i miss making other people happy.

pack it in

When I was a little girl I spent ridiculous amounts of time packing for an adventure that never happened.

I packed as though it was ritual to do so, my room was full of hidden bags in case of various emergencies... anything from running away to a flash flood.

It is a good job I have become so good at packing, because it is now what I spend my entire life doing.

I spent the last 48 hours trying to make other people happy (and sleeping) and all I have managed to do is make myself sad.

I am so sick of my simple little world.

a whole day has passed. the sunbeams tore through the massive crack down my window today and pushed through the material (which fancies itself as a curtain) and i realised they were not unwelcome, even though it felt like i hadnt been to sleep at all.
i hope i forget everything about today apart from the sunbeams and the performance poetry i watched on youtube.

so they found something lightyears away from earth with near enough "goldilocks" living conditions, except that it is fixed so from one angle there is an eternal sunrise.

imagine that.

within days of returning to leicester i had compromised my plans of moving in december.
it looks like the easiest thing for me to do is stay a little bit homeless in the new year and just house hop between shifts until march, then go home for a month before canada.

perhaps i had too much diet pepsi when i felt optimistic about this plan... lets see how i feel about it tomorrow when i am tired.

i am certainly not happy with myself at the moment but it would be unfair to insinuate that i was terribly unhappy either. i go through fairly regular stages of absolutley hating myself and feeling very much trapped in my own body to feeling as though i am not in it at all, which at best keeps me occupied.

my life isnt bad. in fact, i count my blessings all the time. i just dont spend enough time with the people who make it worth living.

when im with you it feels like we have an audience.

so the first train home was total jokes... i was all sloppy and drunk and eating cold pizza out of tin foil and exchanging filth via text message with my friend too next to this guy in a suit and alls i could think was "my suit is at home today."

second train was much better. i usually have to travel alone because you know, i live forever away from everyone so it was unreal to catch a mates mum in the seat in front of me. how i laughed. she said she knew it was me on the phone (to her son as well) when she heard me talking about how i had disgraced myself. i apologised in case my behaviour had embarrased her and she said she doesnt waste time getting embarrassed. she would be the best mother in law ever, serious.

as we pulled up to the supermarket someone was getting arrested and i wondered if it was someone i knew... it wasnt. i saw a friend i havent spoken to in a very long time (on purpose) inside and instead of a punch i got a hug. i told her about my job and she told me she was waiting on a video rental callback. i said, "how nice that we've both ended up in the film industry" and for a split second when we laughed there was a little bit of the past there.

we had a big family meal because we are never ever together as a unit anymore. most of the discussion centered around fat people and how some of them get flat bottoms from sitting down too long, which was engaging. i havent had a sunday dinner in months. me and my housemate dont have a freezer or like, anything so it all puts a bit of a limit on a few things... this dinner was top notch as well.

i went to see a friend after. her family are hilarious. the kids are mental comedy genius, if i ever reproduce i hope mine are a bit like that. i love seeing her because she never does that ridiculous small talk thing, she just jumps into a random conversation. i really admire people who see the importance of doing this for me when i see them. only the best people do it.

saturday was unreal. it was so sad and decent all at once when we left the coffee shop after meeting my old bosses best mate and all three of us agreed that none of us had laughed like that in as long as we could remember. when did we all turn into these old, miserable people? i seriously cant hack it. it was great to have a break from that for a bit.

saturday night was absolutley ridiculous. we all got terribly reckless and i literally felt exactly how i had wanted to feel for ages, which was 18 again. it seeped into the next day effortlessley, and when we got my mum to drop us at the park i found something i written on it in 2004.

i was an absolute state. we both were, and i loved every second of it. i never get to be a state anymore and i never get to answer "how are you?"truthfully and i never ever get an understanding nod instead of raised eyebrows... it was so good just to have people to talk to about everything and anything. while i was sat on the park i realised how rubbish it would be to take a step backwards in my life but at the same time, i think being so lonely is slowly eating away at me.

it twisted my stomach to hear how everyone was so bored and overworked. i mean, at least we are in this shit together but wow, we have all changed. last night and this morning were so crucial... i hope i never forget them.

even if it isn't there, sometimes you have to keep looking for it.

everyone
right
and gone

you will never ever be made to feel this insignificant again.

i bet you are glad it is finally out of the way.

(no need to thank me.)

vy canis majoris

i really love the feeling you get just after it seems everything has gone to shit when small good things happen and it perks you up twice as much.

IM MAD ME

I find it difficult to understand why people think it is enough to tell you to be yourself.
The ideology that if you stay true to yourself you will grant yourself the right to meet your perfect partner seems a bit botched.
Being yourself just to find a suitable mate seems rather stupid.
It takes real balls to be yourself through sacrificing the possibility of ever finding someone... To be so true to yourself that you risk being alone forever is quite intense.


Iif this seems hypocritical, find me in twenty years time.

Today I saw a little girl smearing her hands all over some glued down pebbles near the city shopping centre... her mother said "FLO! goodness me, don't put your hands on that... do you know what has been on that?"

The little girl laughed and said "wee-wee."



Moments like these make me want to procreate.

lately ive grown very bitter towards the smug pity of people who have time in their day to sit and ponder. they see strangers around them walking too quickly to work away their lives and amble home in a blurry daze to wait until sleep consumes them before something loud and rude wakes them up and it begins all over again. and they can just sit there and feel pleased. i know i am just jealous. it is in part an angry envy because that it how my life used to be. i dont have chance to think about anything anymore, i feel uneducated and very tired. but once in a while admist a cloud of meaningless numbers and empty food wrappers with the television on mute so i dont feel quite so alone, something jumps out at me and shouts "wake up please" and for a split second i do, but it is all so confusing that even constructing a blog and putting a few stray attempts at punctuation in it seems a bit too much. i cant really forge an adequate viewpoint in all of this really, because truthfully i belong to neither group and i guess it would be ridiculous to assume that anyone else really does either, but often it feels like such a clear divide that it is easy to let yourself think there is black and white, and no shades in between. every day i strike meaningless, interesting, shallow connections with people i dont know at all and i suppose it is important but sometimes it would be lovely just to sit in some grass somewhere with a stranger or otherwise and really... you know, engage in something.

every day i wake up tired and go to work until they send me home.
then i eat through boredom and just wait for sleep.

i feel like a nothing...

but today i walked through the trees and didnt need to feel anything for an hour :)

I havent found my way out of the friend limbo yet... it is only getting worse.

postgrads living at home with their parents on the dole...

i hate it when you have strong opinions on something you dont really understand.

ive had my eye on a bag for ages.

huge, waterproof and light blue with a fancy scribbly flower pattern all over it, at £20 it was a reasonable price but still something i needed to persuade myself i had worked hard enough for.

after my seventeen hour shift, i went to get it.

im not a fan of retail therapy, shopping gives me a headache and makes me feel drunk so i avoid it at all costs and in any case, every stupid purchase i make now could mean one less day living in canada next year... that is really what it boils down to.

however, this bag cheered me up. i have needed a decent one for ages and taking everything out of my old one which was falling apart and putting them into this shiny new one was the higlight of my sad little life for an entire day.

i can see how buying materialistic items works for people, but i am lucky enough to have a best friend who sends me beautiful letters which begin with things like "oh hello scarecrow" and follow with the sort of words which make you realise that even the paper they are written on and the ink they are written with really means nothing because something invisible and immeasurable exists which makes nothing hurt quite as much as it ought to.

i would sellotape everything from my bag onto my clothes for my best friend.

"i am very proud that you have become an adult but when you come home can we be children again? and break into the village hall and play with that lion and eat playdough and laugh like we are the most important thing that has ever and will ever exist...?"

nothing else matters.

today as I sobbed into my Grandma's arms over unimportant misunderstandings and sat down to dry my eyes as Dad explained what Milton Keynes was, I felt a little bit safer again.

i like to think we are going to protect each other.

we accept the love we think we deserve

This morning when I opened my eyes, one of my best friends from home was staring back at me, smiling.

I've been sleeping with kyanite under my pillow again so I thought it was all a dream, not a beautiful surprise.

bored of being jealous of the reckless

I realise now that I only felt alone because I was disappointing myself by looking in the obvious places.

yesterday i did lots of things in 22 hours and i felt tired and happy.

today i did nothing and i still feel happy.

with dramatic ease
i fell to my knees
and soon enough
you were sick of me

why i laugh when i am sad.

kurt vonnegut rightly identified laughter as potential responses to frustration and exhaustion.
osho said you could not control an ecstatic man.
misery loves company, but laughter is infectious.
i will continue to laugh, even if it must be instead of you or in spite of you.

when to keep a friend

"That's not an answer, love. I know I'm the kind of guy you hate till I'm inside you but like it or not, I don't like to think you're in a bad way."

i dont want to be satisfied with my job forever, but while i have nothing else to wake up for, i am so grateful that i enjoy it. ive had far worse after all, and even then it has never been that bad.

today a middle aged couple came in when it was quiet so i went out of my way to help them, partly for the (very selfish) reason that i knew it would make me feel better about myself.

"you're ever so happy today, why are you so happy? have you been taking happy pills? oh it's lovely to speak to someone who is so happy..."

well goodness me. i was having a horrible day, i had recieved some terrible news on my break and even before my break i was messing everything up and feeling a little out of focus.

for the rest of my shift i smiled.

their kindness had such a lovely knock-on effect, i almost didnt want to come home.

i really want to be with my cat and hear her purr so i know i am safe and everything will be ok.

"...truer than all subsequent loves because it never had to survive real life"
-The Virgin Suicides

last week was one of the worst of my life.
it wasnt that anything particulaly bad happened, the whole affair was just utterly suffocating.
my little hamster died, in the middle of us moving house. i know there are a thousand and one worse things that can happen to a person, but watching her suffer and feeling completley helpless, then having to go to work and think about her there struggling on her own was horrible.
we buried her in the meadow and i will miss having her around. last summer she was the only company i had really.
i love my new house, but i am sick of being treated like a retarded 16 year old. my money is as good as anyone elses, and im not a stupid girl. it has been an uphill struggle, but at least i can be proud of myself because it was hard work that got me here.
on the topic of hard work, i secured a high 2:1, which was lovely. right in the middle of so many other problems it felt completley irrelevant, but i know everyone is proud of me which is what really counts.
i dont really feel anything anymore except tired. i have little money and even less fun but at least i am being independent.

the more you let yourself be treated as stupid, the easier it is to believe.

butter kissed

i havent acted out in a while...

i had a choice between sensible and brave and i chose brave because i would rather learn something new and be piss poor.



it is going to be a six month non-stop struggle.

wilde thing

Pt. III, st. 29
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.

I reckon one of the useful things to learn is how to become less self absorbed and more self aware.

bored and ignored

imagine a deer drunk in headlights,
hi.

everybody looked so weary
but we still managed to laugh

hello, i dont fit in.

i really really miss my cat.

on leaving university

I thought I would feel more. I thought there would be plenty of leaving parties and last hugs goodbye, but there wasn't. People just started to fade away, and I continued to go to work everyday, completley unaffected.

Perhaps it will hit me when September comes, and I realise that we will never sit in a classroom together again, or make a trip to the local pub in between lectures, or laugh and share hangovers and stupid in-jokes. I think that because I am not leaving myself, it doesn't feel like such a huge step. It is nice to return from a long shift and think "well that's me done then, goodnight."

Just before I left for University, someone told me that if I walked out of their front door we would no longer be friends. I called their bluff and left, and we didn't speak for a year. When my Mum found out I was walking home in the middle of the night she came and picked me up and for the first time in our lives, we had a heart-to-heart. She told me what was on her mind, and I returned the favour. Mum said that she thought uni would be good for me and she knew I would be fine because I had always adapted really well to change. I imagined myself to be someone who would find change hard, but over the years I have realised that it affects me so little that it is almost worrying.

I like to be able to fret about tiny things, huge things just seem to happen. I suppose it will be the tiny things I miss most too; Coffee with Chris, laughing with Claire, having a cigarette with Joe and wondering why we weren't closer. Bumping into Alexia and Laurena when we were all late for lectures, and always getting something out of even a really small conversation with them. Sitting on the rock while the lads smoked roll ups and let me join in their crude and hilarious conversations as an honourary man. I'll miss Georgia, because I don't think I will ever meet another person like her.

So yes, the tiny things will creep up on me and demand I feel their absence, but nothing really feels any different.

sometimes all you can do is cover your walls in chalk.

last time i looked in the mirror i was a naive little girl with colourful hair who was scared and excited to be going to university.

now i wake with swollen eyes to panic about council tax before i can get back to sleep,

i work 16 hour shifts not only because i really need the money but because i have nothing better to do and like having people to talk to.

i cry quickly without noise and on my own.

(people could make the fuss i dont want to cause and tell me everything will be ok,
but then i would just whisper you don't know that
and they would say i was only trying to help.)

i dont want people to see me as a weakling and crying in public is a bit awkward really. besides, ive written worse on a blog, what is anybody going to do?

my whole day is governed by trivial calculations... how much money do i have for food, how much would cheaper broadband cost split between two, how much am i saving on a bedsit with bills included if the rent is extra, how many calories have i had, how much change does that man need, shit... how many calories have i had again? how much is a cappucino sachet worth if i buy a box of ten, how much is that saving if i stop drinking takeout coffee in town, how many calories have i had NOW, how much is the bus home, how many hours sleep will i get before a ten hour shift if i walk, how many calories will i fail to burn if i dont, and on and on and on and ive always fucking hated maths.

the only thing holding me together is the knowledge that i am trying my best, i KNOW i am.

i could fail and end up jobless and homeless, (and every week until christmas it will be at the front of my mind) but at least i am trying to live in the real world and not taking a step backwards just because it would be convenient.

when i look in the mirror now, i remind myself of the part in slaughterhouse 5 when the old lady says to her son,

"when did i get so old?"

i have more on my mind than in it.
and erm, no one to talk to.

box

here

when words won't do

i had a very difficult conversation with my best friend yesterday,
he couldnt understand why i could easily accept that for five months i will run myself down into the ground, he says i am making myself ill.

how can doing the right thing be wrong?

I don't know who I am but I'm pretty sure it isn't the person living here.

I know this doesn't belong on the world wide web but I don't have anyone to talk to about it in real life (I don't suppose I would talk a great deal about it even if I could) and I certainly don't have much to lose.

At 21 years old I have spent so much time worrying about the way I look that I have let myself turn into a bit of a monster.

Everything is out of proportion with everything else because I keep losing and gaining weight at the wrong pace and in the wrong places, and it doesn't even matter because nobody noticed or cared either way.

I still get out of bed every morning to go to work or finish my university deadlines, I still have friends and I am still alone. I am probably still healthy, but not as healthy as I once was.

In a year, nothing has changed on the outside, but I have wasted a lot of time worrying to myself. The worst part is, I'm not done worrying, not even close.

I guess the point of this is to quote something I heard once;

"If you can't be a good example, you can be a horrible warning."

On the plus side, at least it shows how lucky I am. If I had real problems I wouldn't have time to waste worrying about something so trivial.

goodnight.

when my final piece of work for uni is handed in i will write a blog about the desperate housedykes and justify why i like them.

poor tinies

Why do people view awful things differently when it involves animals instead of humans?
We all breathe, their emotions are as valid as ours and no less real.
This made me so sad.

As I sat outside the bar where I had eaten breakfast and dinner and drank too much coffee and tea, I realised I was shaking and couldn't read the name of the place on the sign properly.

This was when I realised how close I was to a burn out.

Please, if it is going to happen again, let it be after my deadlines and not during a shift.

I can't think at all.

it has all gone too fast.

if i stop to think too slowly

i will cry and i won't stop

and it wont help.

all i have to say on the matter

"You're looking awesome, seriously. But be careful."

narcissists who don't govern themselves

any examples?

i watched a video of dad spinning me round with his hands, me squealing like an excited piggy to altered images aged 2 in the living room. when he watched it he probably felt sad too that i am grown up now.

then i watched one of grandma. she picked me up and held me close and gave me a cuddle. she has been dead for 15 years and i didnt even remember her voice. i got as sad as ive been for a while but this time i cried.

then i fell asleep and dreamed earthquakes and swimming and shattered glass and deep baths.

but i also saw my friends back in cheshire floating around inside my head and when i opened my eyes i was at home.

we lay on a hobo blanket in his front garden.
my legs were in the air.
the flashdance top which had fashioned itself as a dress through choosing a size too big was riding up and revealing the tops of my thighs to the neighbourhood.
his legs lay across mine.
we didnt care.
he drew and i wrote.


he asked me what i wanted to do if i could do anything at all.
"go to canada. become famous. not too famous, just famous enough to matter. then come home and be nobody again, i think that would be cool."
"yeah, that would be cool. i want to have intercourse with barack and michelle obama. i guess your wish is slightly more plausible."
we laughed, almost catnapped, and when the clouds covered the sun we went inside to watch a film.

just a perfect day

i loved that mental jetlag.

my body was sat, arse frozen on my doorstep puffing on a roll-up i wish i hadnt told myself i wanted, while my mind was still 100 miles away on warm grass in the sunshine with everyone who mattered once.

having another place to call home means i can escape and three years are quickly erased. the memories we cant share are wiped clean and all that is left is an easier, simpler time when we were just friends with few real cares or worries, living out of each others pockets with a naive outlook on the world.in a small town you can dream that you will become anything.

tori and stipe

bouncing off clouds
and
near wild heaven

shallow thoughts

gaunt face
doe eyes
licked lips
i want you
i want you
i want you

i love stipe

R.E.M - she just wants to be

It's not that she walked away
Her world got smaller
All the usual places
The same destinations
Only something's changed.

She just wants to be somewhere
She just wants to be.
She just wants to be somewhere
She just wants to be.

It's not that the transparency
Of her earlier incarnations
Now looked back on
Were rich and loaded
With beautiful vulnerability
But now she knows
Now is greater
And she knows that.

today i ran again,
across the bridge and down by the river, close to where my Grandmas ashes were scattered.

i stopped for a while to catch my breath, and when i looked around and saw how perfect and peaceful everything was, i felt a few tears buzz and prickle at the back of my eyes.

when i come back here it often feels like i have walked into a distorted dream or a blurred memory.

everything becomes very vivid with a fuzzy border, and i feel upset as well as my happiest.

the part of my stomach which used to ache for people now aches for home... even when i am here.

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."

-Kurt Vonnegut

dandy lion

"sometimes when i get in from a night out i think of you both and how you are getting on in leicester..."

well i think of you too.

all the time.

Watching lulu on the tv just now, I got very annoyed. She was talking about the ways plastic surgery can ruin a face, without being capable of moving hers at all. She does look great for her age but seeing a multi millionaire with a great shape and great figure doesn’t mean anything to normal women with regular salaries. I don’t know what I want to do with my life but I am as good as certain it will never involve being rich, so to see a rich women looking great is worse than seeing poor people look terrible, because it shows that it is attainable. The possibility that a woman can look amazing at 50 exists, but only as long as you have a disposable fortune. This impossible goal is cruel, and can destroy self confidence if you use it in comparison with yourself.
What people really need to see is how realistic goals can be reached. This is the point at which I realised how blessed I am to have such great role models.

At my age, my mum definitely had a better figure than me. She lost it over the years, but always manages to look brilliant whatever she is wearing because she knows how to flatter herself, and accessorises with quirky jewellery without making it look like an overstatement. She has never dyed her hair so it looks great, and she doesn’t wear too much make up either, which works in her favour. My Grandma and Auntie on my Dads side of the family look impeccable for their age. Perhaps it is in part due to “good genes” but the fact that they eat well, sleep properly and exercise regularly has to have had some effect on it all. They don’t look “young” because they are not young. They just look great for their age. I don’t want to have a shiny, stretched face with no expression; I want wrinkles that show me as a real person with emotions.

My obsession with weight is embarrassing. After death, being fat is the thing I fear most, and I know that makes me a hideously shallow person. I am going to get old; that much is unavoidable (perhaps if nothing else it will bring some clarity) but the thought of spreading out absolutely terrifies me. Seeing the women on both sides of the family looking as well as they do gives me some confidence. I am blessed that the only things they have wanted me to change are my piercings and provocative clothes, both of which I grew out of on my own. They embraced me being an individual teenager, and always said “dare to be different” So I did. I can only imagine how horrible it would be to encounter adults trying to change how you looked and felt. I hear dreadful stories about mothers who tell girls with perfect figures to lose weight because of their own insecurities, and I hope if I have children I would have the backbone to love them no matter how they looked and not pass on any of my own hang-ups about self image, just the way my family have.

became a fan of...

i was recommended the chinese horoscope application on facebook.

on the first day in months that i came close to exceeding my recommended daily allowance i read this:

Be vigilant as far as your food is concerned so as to avoid taking on weight which would transform itself into horrible folds of fat.

i think the chinese horoscope understands my needs.

one hundred and one

the ice cream van outside is playing greensleeves and i feel like i could burst.

last night was incredible.

the gig at the independent arts centre was ridiculously cool; grace and the magic roots and free control were absolutley brilliant... the visuals that were projected onto the wall behind sally and the band were mesmerising. i really hope that place gets huuuge, it deserves it. what a lovely atmosphere. i met some cracking people!

after that i went to the garage to meet some friends so i could go to a party. one of them smashed a bottle of magners on the floor by accident so i stood around it to stop a lawsuit.

someone asked what it was (duhh) so i told them i was expecting triplets and they were about to come out.

the party was amazing... loads of people i didnt expect to see turned up and made the night. a boy was going round with a fisheye lens snapping pictures of everyone, it was really sweet.

when i ran out of rum i drunk more pepsi than my body had room for, it was great.

i wandered home around 6 or 7 while it was light and pink and blue and my eyes were hazy, but i was so happy. i cant remember the last time i felt this good.

photograph by hanscrystalanderson

today is my half birthday,

the day i went to belgium last year and experienced one of the biggest learning curves of my life

and the day my parents started going out in their second year of university.

i went to bed at 4am and got a call at 5am telling me to go outside. i thought i was dreaming and went to look. my friend sam was stood outside the house with his bike wearing sunglasses. i invited him in and we had a little talk. i read the toon tellegen letter from the squirrel to the ant and then we went to sleep.

i had a dream last night that someone cut off my limbs and i was going to die, and a man took me in his arms and kissed me. i cried and said "thank you for making me feel less undesirable." i told my friends i was cross that i couldnt think of a poem to say as my final words and we all laughed.

my housemate took me into her room today to show me a lilac clockwork bunny with chicken feet called mr. easter... this wasnt a dream.

today in work as i mopped spilt salsa and pepsi with a guy i recognised but didnt know, he said

"i know your face..."

"uh oh. go on then..."

"you're that head media girl"

"oh wow, you basically just called me the king of media!"

"well you are arent you? you gave us that talk about being a student rep, you love media!"

"yeah, media is my boyfriend."

never have i been so proud to be keen.

night night turn out the light one two three

i feel safe when i pay to get a taxi instead of walking home after a late shift,
when i bolt the door twice,
and when my friend tom gives me a great big silly hug.

but sometimes i feel really weak and stupid and wish i had someone to ask me what is the matter? and tell me things will be fine even if they wont just to give me a bit of courage, and then tuck me up in bed and turn the light out.

i was scared of the dark until i was about 18 years old.

my room was like a circus with cheap and cheerful lava lamps, disco lights and spinning UFOs illuminating it all hours... it used to drive my parents mad.

my mum and dad knew i was a bit nervous about having a dark room when i was younger so they used to leave the door wide open with the landing light on, and the last thing they used to say as they left the room was

night night turn out the light, one two three!

and when i was making a cup of tea before i realised how much i missed that.

in sleep is the only way...

i fell into a deep sleep this afternoon and while i was there, i turned round with tears in my eyes and found someone i hadnt seen for ten years standing at the door in my head.

she motioned to me, put her arm around me and walked me through an imagined city.

i asked her why she had come back for me and she said "we were never supposed to be sympathetic but i couldnt forget your big eyes"

...and i was so safe and unaware.

i knew my subconscious was just trying to offer me something i had lost in reality.

when i woke up it felt like i was drunk from my dreams and for a while i couldnt remember who and where i really was.

disorientated, i knew at the very least that i was pleased to have forgotten.

why am i so terrified of waking?

rehearsing...

RE-
HEAR
SING

wow.

I don't remember how to get out of the well.
help.

states of independence

The Independent Press day was absolutley great, but I knew it would be.

Although I have little interest in pursuing my severely limited writing skills after university, I thought it would be foolish to see this as a justification for missing such a great oppurtunity.

I went to a talk by Leicester Writers Club at 11am which was quite insightful. They spoke of their various experiences of success in publishing, which made me wish I had heard the talk before I handed an essay on the literary market in earlier this year. I met one of the writers afterwards, and was delighted to discover that we shared the same passion for keeping our family history alive.

Afterwards i did a bit of stallholding and felt very important and very out of my depth in equal measures. People kept asking important questions, to which i had to basically reply in better words, "i am not a useful or important human being, the people who can answer your questions will be back around 2pm."

At 1pm Some of our class read out their work. I was pleased to find that everyone kept to their 3 minute slots, rather than having to tolerate anyone who struggles to understand how GMT does not slow down for their own REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT reading. Saying that, Nath was perhaps a little bit over but began with a warning and an apology, neither of which were needed considering he stole the show and was definitley the best person to end with. I read one poem and said something about yoda. I didnt mean to say anything about yoda.

The readings by Crystal Clear at 3pm were all excellent too. I met a charming woman afterwards who told me she gets as nervous as I do about reading aloud, which was reassuring considering how confident she looked and the warm feedback she got from the audience. My favourite piece was the poem about the merman by Maria.

I then had a little bit of time to look around the stalls and FINALLY got my hands on not one but two copies of coffee house magazine, which I have had my eye on for a while. I would also like to take this moment to say that I wish I lived in Deborah Tyler-Bennett's wardrobe.

I met all manners of weird and wonderful people picking up pens, sweets and contact cards along the way. There were consideringly less waistcoats and bumbags than I first anticipated (I am not slating either item of course, as a child I was a keen waitcoat wearer and nothing makes sense at an all-day event like a bumbag.) and it was nice to be part of something which had such an electric atmosphere.

I was also allowed the rare chance to see chris partaking in manual labour while we helped with the relocation of over 4,000 tables... sweaty and hilarious all at once.


today won.

He asked us what our favourite work of art was, and never could I tell him it was him.

When I woke up this morning I decided I should listen to a song I hadnt heard for years.


The Art Teacher


As I listened, the song took me back, and halfway through it, somebody sent me a text message out of the blue to tell me they had been listening to the same song and were thinking of me.

tossing and turning

Cliche as it might be, I realised last night that I found something I didnt know I had lost.

I am truly grateful for this, because to not realise how unhappy you are until it has left you is possibly for the best..

It struck me halfway through a sleepless night that I was thinking again as a young person with optimism, not someone who was slowly growing old and getting frustrated with everything in their life. I thought about some of the things that had made me see myself only as hopeless and insignificant, and I cried.

Partly because I didn't understand how someone who had (apparently) been so unhappy didnt cry anymore, and partly out of confusion, because I didn't feel sad about it, rather relieved and a little bit enlightened. I never like to cry in front of people, but i used to cry on my own a lot, and until it hit me i hadnt even noticed this had stopped. The same applies for talking in my sleep.

Instead of feeling upset and lonely, I counted all my blessings, which appeared mainly in the shape of friends I never expected to matter as much as they do.

:)

places in our minds which change with the passing of time will (given half a chance) seek to tarnish what enchants us

relax

it's a soft igloo

and you can't have it anyway.