"This movie is everything I like in life; music, glamour, glitter, romance..."

Watching Funny Girl with E. I knew I chose the right person to watch this with. We're also both girl-crushing on Streisand like nobody's business. Saturday has become a beautiful daynight.

Open up your heart.

...the words are all escaping
And coming back all damaged

The truth is that you're afraid to get involved with me because you're already in love with someone else. Is it strange that I'm sheepish about telling you that... well, I am too? A couple of people, really.

I asked you out almost directly after I had a horrible night with a friend that ended with us ashamed of actions we'd never even performed; just reading each other's minds was enough to make us guilty. The complicated part is that he's straight and I'm, um, not. And there's a sentence I choke back when I'm talking to and about him and I can't hold it in any longer. He confuses me about my sexuality. I'm not sexually attracted to him, which is the part which clarifies everything, but I definitely feel something larger for him than just friendship. I'm not sure if that is something good though and I certainly don't feel good about it of late. That night cemented a decision for me; that he and I need space. And, at least for now, I am 100% gay. Thank you so much.

And then there's that friend who, if I'm honest, I've been drawn to since the moment I met her. Of late we've gotten ridiculously close, so close that I think we're both afraid we might one day cross the lesbian-friendship line that's drawn so clearly and firmly in sinking sand. I genuinely love her too much to risk the friendship- it's a cliche and yet so real here. Funny how that always happens to me- but it's almost like this thing with you helps distract me. I would feel bad admitting that if I didn't know I serve a similar purpose for you, really.

And that girl I've been watching from a respectable and justifiable distance (I promise). She's so stunning, the kind of person who might be capable of real love and who I might be capable of loving. But she's too much promise, too much beauty in one idea. I have to steer clear of those people, they fuck with my head.

So many other people, too. I'm not one to obsess over just one person. Except, apparently, you.

I like you a lot. Seeing you, talking to you, texting you, laughing with and at you. And, funnily enough, I like your lover a fuckload too. Part of me knows that however I proceed here; ask to be your friend, ask to be more... I'll still end up getting my heart broken. But I feel like it might be about time I let that happen, and as I said to you the other night while drunk and leaning heavily on Glee analogies, all I have is how okay I feel right now. I want to try and convince you that I can do this, that I can do just the right amount of focussing on you without it being too much or too little. And maybe take it less seriously than this?

Wow, this is so ridiculous that I'm literally laughing at myself. There's so much more to say but this is just another step toward being honest with someone, even if that someone is the internet.


And all of my stumbling phrases never amounted
To anything worth this feeling

I dare you to let me be.

I remember once when I was talking to A in high school about something... mediocre. Something that shouldn't upset anyone but devastated me, something so small that I don't remember what it was. And she said "it would be a lot easier of we didn't all hate ourselves quite so much".

By 'we', she meant that bunch of kids at school that would maybe once have been called 'outsiders' or 'misfits' but- luckily for us- were then known as 'lesbian emos'. A group of people who were drawn together due to a variety of shared characteristics, among them queer sexuality, above-average intelligence, quirky and obscure interests and a general dissatisfaction with what those personality traits meant for us in the 'real world'. I've never felt more lonely or loved in all my life as when I was with those girls. Nothing can replace that group of friends you have in high school that smother and nurture everything you love and hate about being who you are. Sometimes I wish I could go back and correct or bask in what that group did for and to me. But mostly I am grateful that I had the experience at all so that I can compare what I feel now to something different.

Independence is zen. It's delicious and crisp and feels like an early morning on your bare skin. I like it a lot and I fought for a long time to fully experience it. And fuck, it sucks. I miss being touched, being hugged and held. I miss being seen through and having my mind read by people who heard my thoughts before I did. I miss knowing that my days would never be empty of other people because we'd promised each other we'd be there. I miss caring about someone else more than myself. And yet I hated that shit. The whole time I was Miss Self-Sacrificing (or, more, Miss Sacrificing), wearing my emotions like my favourite dress and showing off all my life's scars to anyone that would look; I was miserable. Not just teenage, hormonal, romantic melancholy miserable. No, none of the above. I hated myself for being incapable of being myself, for not being separable from anyone else. I wasn't me, there was no me, and I resented that more than I resented every single person in close proximity to me just for being there and blurring the lines between me and them.

So now when times are bad and I wish I still had the support network that I sewed myself into when I was fifteen, I tell myself about all the crying I did, the ways I made myself numb, the nights spent lying awake wondering what it was like to have this. Because now even when I have off days or horrible moods, my first instinct is to look inside myself to find a solution. No matter how large the problem, I can't seem to want to go to other people to help me fix it. I might miss the good parts of being co-dependent, but I certainly don't miss the bad. Is it fair to want joy and familial intimacy and abundant love with everybody when I don't want the pain and drama and shared sorrow? I know it's not. Because the little stuff doesn't piss me off anymore. I don't feel overwhelmed all the bloody time. I feel love but not need. So I am better off, no matter how cold I get sometimes standing out here on my own. I just need to be reminded, I think.

Not.

I'm not sure who I'm saying this to but I felt like it should be said; this post may be triggering or upsetting for survivors of sexual violence.

I was fourteen the time a close friend of mine walked into class late one day and asked me to walk her to the bathroom about two minutes after she'd first sat down at her desk. She looked sick; shaken, pale and dishevelled. I followed her around twenty metres out of the classroom, down the steps into a courtyard, and then she turned around and threw herself into my arms. She was about a lot taller than me and she curled her shoulders so that she could hide her face in our hug. I realised she was crying harder than I'd ever seen before and knew this was something horrible, not just the normal dramas we'd shared up until this point in our friendship. I didn't even get the chance to ask her what had happened before she told me, in one crisp, clear sentence, that she'd been raped.

I stared at her, determined not to believe it could be true but certain that it was. These things didn't happen, I thought, they didn't actually happen. They didn't happen to my friend. They didn't happen when you were fifteen. I'd been certain I'd be sheltered from all the ugliest realities of being human for the rest of my life. And in an instant, I knew that if this had happened once it definitely could happen, and it could happen again, and it could happen to her. It could happen to me. I put my arm around her and walked her to the bathrooms, washed her face and held her whenever she needed me to. All this time, I gently asked her to tell me what happened and encouraged her several times to go to the police. The more I heard though, the more I knew that she never would, and that if she did her life would definitely be worse for it.

That's the thing they don't tell you when they start educating you as a young woman. They say "anything ever happens, tell someone". Sometimes the only person you can tell is your fourteen-year-old classmate because the rest of the world thinks you're promiscuous and probably lying when you say you said "no". Sometimes you know about someone's having been hurt and you know that if you break their trust and tell someone, you'll never be able to help them again. Sometimes you can see how it will look to the police and the friends of the person who hurt you. You reapply your make-up in a high school bathroom. You help your friend walk back to art class. And you keep your mouth shut.

I'm fairly ashamed of what happened that day. The way I've gone all these years, through more accounts from people I care about of things that have hurt them, and not hated myself for the way I handled the courageous and heartbreaking honesty of my friend. That I pride myself on taking care of people, protecting them, helping them, and all I could do in that moment was give her small, brief comfort. Because I knew now. I was part of a world where "these things unfortunately do happen". It was just an event that occurred in people's lives that we dealt with in any way we could. The horrific, the unthinkable, had become part of my school day. I was able, through being exposed to this truth, to go on with things as though it were not still unreal. And I have done ever since.

I wonder who else has felt this way? Has seen the shift from horror to resigned sadness in their own mind? Has looked back on the very first time, early in life, that they knew the latter response would become a familiar one? That they would feel helpless and disgusting for not being able to help or change? I still wish things had been different, would be different. I look at my crying over these memories today as an indication that perhaps I'd not gone as numb as I feared. More than anything though, I want to know how to fix the whole wide world for what happened to my friend, starting with myself.

Father's Day was not terrible. But I didn't feel anything. I know that's a horrible confession but my relationship with my father may well be dead. I don't really know when this happened; sometime between my coming home and his offering to do my dishes the morning I got off the aeroplane so that I could run off and see my friend and Sunday when we sat across the breakfast table at a local cafe with nothing to say to each other. He's made a game of taking shots at my physical appearance of late (I'm fat, didn't you know?) and over the weekend he also criticised my "student" vocabulary. I never knew the thing my father has always revelled in most about me- my success at school- would also be the nail in the coffin of our ability to relate to each other. The day I got my tertiary entrance result, I think he told everyone he knew. Three years later, he's embarrassed to be with me in public because I use 'hyperbole' in a sentence without flinching. We haven't had an easy conversation this year, I think. Every time I speak directly and firmly to him; he retreats, hurt. He teases me or offers a compliment and I am wary of the bitterness that might be underneath his humour. He's not told me he loved me in months. Once upon a time, I heard those words from him every day, even if they were the only ones we exchanged before bed or as one of us made a hasty exit in pursuit of our morning train.

I used to hold him when I was cold inside and my head resting against his heart would feel less foggy. Now I hug him out of habit and all that is familiar is the contrasts of our height, the way the balls of my feet feel on the hard floor as I reach up to wrap my arms around him. I stopped laughing at his bigotry and started returning his disturbingly smug looks with blank stares over six months ago. So I suppose it's my fault he sees me, as he never has before, as his expendable child. He sensed me withdraw from him; I quit the job I'd had in the same industry, started avoiding home whenever I could and ignore his presence when I was there. Both he and I are strangely emotionally sensitive; we know how other people feel but we don't deal with it well. And I am painfully clear when I don't like somebody, though I never say so in anyway overtly. Between my coldness, my desire to break with the traditions of our Daddy-Daughter relationship, establish independence and my own identity, and his sense for discord; we were doomed, I guess. After all I've dealt with in regards to him; alcoholism, depression, loyalty, affection, gratitude, fear, anger... I never thought there would be a time when I cared so little about the dissolution of our relationship. But I can't muster up any upset over his rejection of me. I guess it was, after all, a reaction to my becoming disenchanted after all these years fighting for a positive image of 'Dad'.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and think I’m a beautiful girl, maybe a little overweight and with a bad haircut, but overall quite genetically blessed. I see the way certain men look at me, especially when I wear dresses and leave my hair down, and know that if I put the effort into my appearance I could be successful anywhere I went in anything I did just because people would be sucked in by how I looked. Such a sweet girl, look at that smile, and those eyes. I like her. And other times I think that rare moment of self-hatred tinged confidence was insanity because I’m hideous and nothing about me is attractive and I’ll never get my way in any career or group because I’m just the ugly, fat girl who people tolerate because she has personality or despise because she has the nerve to have confidence despite all her physical shortcomings. But I feel secure in the knowledge that I’d have felt so guilty and ridiculous if I’d conformed to the Pretty Girl stereotype and that my being repulsive helps me see people’s true natures and I’m glad of that.

I'll cut the telephone line just to keep expectation alive.

Dear J,

I missed you this week. We normally have three days together, three sweet classes that you make better with your voice and your face and your capes. But you weren't there; no explanation, no smiles from the back of the room or the bus or the lecture theatre. I'd say this made me suspect you no longer loved me but, indeed, you never did profess to love me. Quite right; it would be wrong to love me when we've known each other so little for not long. Still, I like you a great deal and my days are longer when you're not making me giggle with your funny little confessions, whispered with that conspiratorial air you have. Our lecturers were dry and you weren't there to commiserate with me when they were done; our tutorial was all me tripping over my own tongue without you there to interrupt and outshine me as you do so well. You're a new friend and I am always afraid I've jeopardised or ruined our fledgling bond with my last silly comment or forgetful look or over-affectionate gesture. Have I done that, J? I joke that the only friends I ever make are beautiful gay men that I fall shamelessly in love with and, truly, you're the beauty I love the most right now, who brightens up moments and sweeps minutes away with fervent chatter. I'm enjoying my platonic infatuation with you. I'm not sure how healthy that is but I don't think I can stop but if I know you as well as I might well do by now, you'd find it amusing and not annoying. I don't think many likely-lesbian girls fall for you, J- as lovely as you are- and I'm quite enjoying being one of the few. It makes one special, doesn't it, loving someone or something in a sort of strange, rare way? Manic Pixie Dream Girls are like that, in film and life, and I've always believed that if I were skinnier and prettier and had better hand-eye co-ordination, I could be someone's MPDG. So, J, without having your permission or your phone number or your heart, I plan to be yours. Mayhaps you'll find me sitting at your bus stop one morning in the fog eating chocolate ice-cream out of the tub with a plastic spoon, reading classic American poetry aloud from a dog-eared paperback that I ferreted out of my neighbour's recycling bin. But likely this blog is the best I can do to impress you and it's nothing you're ever going to see. I just wanted- no, needed- no, had- to let you know how I felt about your having been absent from my life for three days that I really would have liked for you to be there. I'm not sure why I needed you so very badly, darling stranger.

love- yes, 'love', because I'm afraid I might well do, dear friend,

H.

Today

my favourite song is Noisettes' Never Forget You;

my Born This Way t-shirt would say Emotional Yo-Yo;

my favourite food that I don't have access to is chocolate ice-cream;

my Uni reading that I am incapable of doing is Anthropology;

my only legitimate concern is a rather impressive tension headache;

my hope for the future centres on New Zealand and a guitar pick;

and my only certainty is that all of this will be different tomorrow

which is really very comforting.

My sister's okay. I've tried to create some boundaries between us so that I am not her everything because she's been dealing with so much lately that it would be tempting for both of us to let her just lean on me endlessly. I just don't think that would ever make either of us happy and if she's going to get better it has to start right about now or else I can see her just continuing to go downhill for years. I couldn't handle that. So I guess lately I've been distant but that also kicks in when I'm not doing so well which I'm not right now. I don't know what I have, the Doctor calls it depression but I'm not sure... anyway, whatever it is kicks in occasionally and turns me into a person nobody likes and that's happened again. I've had trouble getting out of bed, my appetite is going up and down like crazy, I either sleep all day or not at all and I'm sluggish at work, at Uni, when I'm with people... I'm pretty shit at my life right now. I don't even know when assignments are due, my boss seems to be noticing me having stopped working at work, every member of my family is unimpressed with me- though my mother is nice enough to pity me as well- and I'm not putting the effort into being a friend that even I would normally deem necessary. I'm not listening to people properly, my short term memory sucks, I'm rude, I hate everything for making me exist when all I want to do is lie down for the next ten years. I want to wake up finished with something good. I don't want to be in the middle of accomplishing something mediocre.

You are my equal and my likeness.

It took me a long time to read Jane Eyre the first time around but by the time I was finished, I felt changed somehow by the story, because despite the things I didn't like about her, I was like Jane in ways I couldn't yet properly comprehend. And then when I was eighteen I walked away from the only home I'd ever known because I felt, strangely, that I deserved more. And I ended up alone in a farmhouse in Canada, in a room without a curtain or a light and woke up before dawn when I had no idea what to expect for the coming day. So I wandered downstairs, barefoot, out onto the wraparound porch. I crept round to the back of the house and sat with my knees pulled up to my chin and looked out at the sun rise over the lake that preceded the horizon, among a landscape I'd never known before. I waited down there for an hour, watching to see what this new place was all about. Scared and exhilarated. I imagine that kind of feeling is only allowed once.

Anyway, I went to see the new adaptation today and it was lovely and heartbreaking and reminded me, as always, of all the reasons it's sometimes important to run away for the right reasons. And those horrible moments when somebody asks you why you don't believe that they love you and you have to admit it's because you feel unworthy. The times when all you have to sustain you is a love you can't touch, work that will never properly reward you, and people that do nothing but mildly ease numbness.

Except it's all Christian and idealistic and uncompromising and other things one should probably take with a grain of salt. But when you identify with something- and really, a love for pretty words is all I have- you have to revel in that, I think. Because otherwise we just feel alone and ungrateful for being adrift in a world that'll always be a little alien, long after we stop being sheltered and unsure of what we think. Jane was right about what she needed to do, ultimately. I think I am too.

The riots rage in other countries and one of the best friends I've ever had journeys across the sea toward home. It all feels significant somehow, but all I can think of is the ducks I saw playing the fountain in the Exhibition gardens today while it rained, making me think of all the fun it's possible to have that we don't.

Note to self: don't blog while sleep-deprived.

You remember it later, read it back and feel bad about yourself. Ugh.

Character? Or rock-hard thighs?

Well, Blog, you're officially unread. And perhaps unreadable. For as long as it's you and me, anyway, I think I'll just riff. Which is so markedly different from what I've been doing until now.

I am super sick right now which I mildly revel in because I've had to take time off work and just bum around the house. It's given me time to think and ponder some stuffz which ultimately feels overdue but nevertheless lovely. My birthday was yesterday and due to being ill and having made no important plans previously it was spent eating junk food, watching TV and hanging out with my sister and a fellow sick friend. So basically how I would likely have spent any other Monday night this year. I joke that turning twenty is essentially the quarter-life mark, like, sixty years to go. The reason I am so openly macabre is simply due to my belief that twenty-firsts are ridiculous milestones for us all to celebrate when legally and socially they mean very little these days and in this country so let's look at something close to that that has at least some significance. Nope, even written down like that I still sound crazy.

My family and friend got me beautiful gifts which was wonderful and the fact that I am turning another year older at all deserves celebration, as ever. But I doubt being a year older will feel like... anything at all, to be honest, until I've left the house for the first time in days and seen people. I think I'm becoming more of a dreamer as I head into adulthood which is strange but I spend most of my time these days idealising things and planning for far-off or unrealistic futures rather than truly living in what I have. I can't bring myself to be sorry for that though so while I am still very much nineteen-years-old and wondering what it'd be like to be twenty and still clueless, I'm happily contemplating all the novels I'm going to write and the beautiful cities I'm going to see.

People have been asking me a lot about post-grad plans and the fact that I have none doesn't seem to stop me talking a really big game. But I don't know what to do since "write" seems way too self-indulgent and insupportable so I say "social justice" and hope no one calls me on how broad and cliched that answer is. What do I do though, really? Where do I take myself, how do I live with myself, what do I 'work on' for the next decade or half-century or whatever of my life? Identify a passion- how do I do that when they're such short bursts and are so varied and I have to pick just one? Knowing that I will always choose paths rather than be forced down one or step straight onto one out of indifference or fear makes me curious to see which children's story will resemble my life. Ruby slippers? Bread crumbs? Red hood? White rabbit? I take heart in the fact that they all end happily and try not to worry about the turmoil to come in the meantime. Besides, if it's anything like last year's adventures and my childhood reading preferences, the chaos in the middle might be my favourite part.

I'm in a fair bit of pain right now, with throats and heads and things, so I don't really know how much sense I'm making. It seems absurd that I'm of a generation that works out their issues publicly- AKA on the internet- before properly dealing with them privately when for so long the assumption was that one should only do it the other way around. I'm just musing on my identity and mental health in the most public forum there is because somehow it feels safer and more anonymous than doing so in my own head, or talking about it with people I love across my own kitchen table. I worry that one day I'll regret that there are so many pieces of me scattered across cyberspace, little crevices of my memory and consciousness that I can't see in the darkness but that unknown others may uncover with flashlights and feather dusters. It seems fairly self-obsessed to assume someone would bother though, so mostly I feel fine about displaying all my neuroses here, not bothering to censor myself. I guess I hope I never have reason to regret having such low self-esteem.

11:04 | City Loop Train | Stopping All Stations.

Melbourne is brilliant right now. Autumn is illuminated: the raised arms of the trees are backlit by an exuberant sun. Today feels glorious through every stop on the train, each suburb drenched and sparkling. I wish you were with me, to see this, but I love drinking in the beauty alone. It's painful almost, feeling this love for a city I've always planned to fly away from as soon as I can, for forever or as long as that seems. Even the graffiti-covered fences warm me today, Autumn's strange hot-cold emotions pervading everything from my lounge room to the train carriage to the parks I'm passing.

I console myself with the fact that the falling leaves I love so dearly don't belong here; the gold lining the streets is false compared to the places I want to be. The music caressing my melancholy comes from a modest New York artist I can't wait to hear sing live, maybe even meet. My clothes, my books, my ideas- all that I carry with me- are acquired due to my unapologetic wanderlust. To love this journey, today, for showing me a sun-blessed city seasoned with foliage and frost... this is not weakness. I don't need to be sad. This is bigger than me, or today, or Melbourne. It speaks to the part of me that's already flown elsewhere, keeping vigil, patiently waiting for the rest of myself to be ready to leave and never come back.

Don't fix my smile. Life is long enough.

I made a list of things I wanted to do on my mid-semester break and stuck it on my wall and not one of them got done this week. Not even "vacuum". I'm overwhelmed by how underwhelming my existence is.

I didn't study. I didn't exercise. I barely left the house. I just ate, spent time on the interwebz and watched Gilmore Girls and Glee. It brought home how exhausted the last eight weeks of (badly) juggling school with a lot of work hours has left me. I have no social life right now, I watch characters on TV shows laughing hysterically together and wonder why I don't have that before I realise that all the people I used to giggle and goof around with are just email addresses in my inbox right now. Ugh, sucky, selfish idiot I am.

Highlights of my day today:

- Finding a lone condom (wrapped and unopened, by the by) on one of the book trolleys at the library. That was funny for about fifteen minutes.
- Eating good, nut-free muesli for breakfast. It's more difficult to find than you'd think.
- Replaying the one album by a band I just recently brought myself to listen to over and over again for the three hours of my shift. Dancing to it some more when I got home and my sister had moved all the furniture to the side of our lounge room so she could vacuum. I saw it more as an opportunity to bust out some sweet moves without breaking something.
- Looking down the tunnel at the underground station while the wind started hitting my face and the light rounded the corner as the train was arriving.
- Making a favourite soup I didn't realise I no longer need a recipe for. Eating it with bread and brussels sprouts and realising I might actually be eating healthy because I want to, for once.
- Realising all of these little things bring glory and happiness I didn't know was possible in such a small day and a small life.

A requiem for the soul.

What you think about
when you’ve suddenly lost
a person whose path
you’ve not often crossed:

Takes a moment to remember
And another to regret
Until all you have is sorry
And a thousand little debts

But you never were that anxious
To see them on the day;
It stains your newfound grieving
And can’t be wiped away

Still you feel you loved them
They always seemed so nice;
Just fragments of a person
That charmed you once or twice

In your firm denial;
The sadness you’ve embraced
You honour a small friendship
You really should have chased.

She never cared for me. But did she ever say a prayer for me?

It's only when I feel really hopelessly sad that I remember that I don't really talk to people about this stuff regularly. I don't have an emo phone friend who listens to me cry about little things that set off my melancholy or a person who hugs me and tells me everything'll be okay when I collapse onto their couch. It's not that I feel like I couldn't have somebody, I just don't seem to think to establish relationships like that before I hit rock bottom so when I do I look around in vain for someone to pity me. It's a very small problem, really, but I do envy the support other people seem to get from their rainy-day relationships, the ones that are somehow well-served by the ice-cream anti-socials and long chats about negative emotions. Friends who feel better after crying together and who see cups of tea and sympathy as necessary to a healthy diet.

Ironically, I don't even know what's set off my angst. I've been feeling pretty positive lately, getting to work on time and enjoying all the reading I have to do for school. I eat green apples and go to movies with friends and dress in bright colours and ride my bike to get groceries and buy books. Things are good, they're progressing well and in the middle of the day I don't have many complaints at all. Sure, I have my off moments which usually result in a midnight blog post or solitary sulk in an out-of-the-way cafe with a coffee and a book. For the most part, though, this is unexpected. I can only assuming it's hormonal or the stress of mid-semester is getting to me.

I have a major essay due tomorrow, a presentation to do in my morning tutorial, a cake to make and a lecture to listen to online. And yet. I'm writing this because I hope the catharsis will lead to all of these things going and feeling better. But I'm calm and I don't know why. Part of me thinks stressing about it all might work more but even when I get emotional these days, it lacks the frantic desperation I used to be so full of. I'm still figuring out how that can be and whether it'll ever change. I guess I hope it'll help this loneliness dissipate a little quicker. Tranquil or not, I want this sadness gone.

Too school for cool.

Fangirling in a really hardcore way. I don't know where I get this from but I assume it's hereditary because my sister is right there with me. Either that or we spend way too much time together.

I've suffered a few minor heartbreaks. Nothing good enough to really dwell on, just the niggling disappointment felt when the person you were developing feelings for tells you about their new love interest. It's not that I think I ever had a chance with any of the people I was attracted to; I just like their company. As soon as there's a partner on the scene, you automatically see less of your friend. And if that's a friend that made your heart race, you take it a little harder. I should've learnt by now not to quietly love somebody. It doesn't change anything except me; adding a little more melancholy and taking hope I could've directed elsewhere.

I'm studying and working right now and apart from compulsive youtubing (which I maintain is a coping mechanism and not part of a genuinely hopeless unrequited love for Chris Colfer), I guess all I have to worry about is that special somebody that sees me as neither special nor a Somebody. I wish I could just focus on school and not think about any of that romantic stuff that sneaks up on me when I think I'm fine but I get stuck in this depressed mood. Can my Gothic Fictions course start already? That I feel I could connect with right now.

Rumour has it.

Right now, I feel allergic to sleep. So I'm blogging.

Sometimes I have these really poisonous thoughts and I don't know how to shake them but I feel like if I write them here they'll either languish in cyberspace and die on their own or someone will read them and tell me they feel the same way and I'll know it's not so strange.

I like to wear weird clothes in weird ways and it feels good in my bedroom while I'm getting ready but the second I step out of the house and people look at me in my wacky outfits, I always imagine that they're thinking "if that girl was thinner, she might be able to get away with that". Or if I was pretty and elegant, I could wear the hats I like and the jewellery I want. But I'm this incredibly ordinary-looking, chubby girl who just loves to wear bright, primary colours with bow ties and top hats and stripey socks and it's just painful for the people who see me.

Everyone acts like you graduate from high school and everything changes and somehow you're fixed and you become an adult but you don't. There's no age, no line, no rite of passage that will turn you into a mature person if it's not who you are. And I'm so afraid I'm not. I don't know how to pay an electricity bill and my bathroom cleaning skills aren't up to snuff and ringing up to order pizza or arrange Doctor's appointments still scares me. My friends drive cars and pay rent. Why am I so incapable of that, still?

People always look at me like I'm crazy in tutorials when I speak. The fine line I walk between insecurity and over-confidence means that half the time I think it's because I'm blowing their minds with my left-of-centre theories and the other half I think it's because they're imagining gluing my lips shut to stop the stupid from coming out. And what if all this thinking I do, all this study, all this talking, never gets me anywhere and I don't achieve anything and these royally awkward and self-reflective years at University were all for nought, just one long, indulgent daydream?

My Dad had a skin cancer cut off his (bald) head a few days ago, has ten fresh stitches and thus needs to wear a hat for a while to cover it. So I think I'll wear hats all of this week out of solidarity with him and also as an opportunity to indulge my hat fetish in a way that is justifiable and educational. I thought I might make it part of my "looking at a looking" assignment for an Anthropology course on our relationship with the body. People like to stare at the fat girl in the hat, as I've mentioned earlier, so it should provide easy fodder for my notes.

There's so much more, about how I'm obsessed with losing weight and growing my hair out right now so that people will like me, and how I want to go a week without speaking and see if it makes me a better person (one that people will actually like rather than tolerate) and how half the time gender studies discussions make me love my female identity and hope for a great future and the other half I resent everything, most of all gender studies discussion.

My life is this great, happy, busy, stressful, awful place to be and I'm lovehating it constantly. Especially now.

Little Boots.

When I laced you up,
we didn’t dream of what you’d see
that you had a purpose or life
outside of moving me.

We were fearless but shocked
when you stepped into the street-
you’d never known the terrain
that we went to meet-

You saw the sun shine in Ireland;
snow on the rugged moors;
pretty parks in New York;
my feet covered in sores.

You were shiny 'til then;
unblemished and young
With squeaky movements and
a stiffer tongue.

Time changes everything
no matter where you are
though travelling will ensure
the hasty getting of scars;

the talking lines you’ve acquired
from long conversations with paths
and sand you collected
from sudden saltwater baths.

Once, we were different;
you hurt my toes.
I wasn’t ready to feel
the things that you know,

but then I walked all those miles-
further than I’d guessed-
your strength never wavered
as we walked further west.

And the sun finally set
as we finished our tired trek
but you can’t retire, not yet.
Though you’re a glorious wreck

with holes at your edges
and dirt crusted to your sides;
you’ve got the perfect voice
to narrate my lived lives.

I should at least pretend to be objective.

Singles are always relieved to be single again, even if that's all they've ever been.

Don't ever imply that a single is unhappy with their current relationship status or they will be forced to scream defensive, Oprah-reminiscent statements at you until your ears bleed and you truly believe they're "independent, happy and healthy", much like 2+2=5 and that we have always been at war with Eurasia.

Single people require you to listen as they list the reasons their previous or potential partners are all wrong for them and they are waiting for the "real deal".

If you have found the "real deal", it is not helpful for you to describe it and how you achieved it to them or to try to aid them in finding it for themselves. Like shoe-tying, finding true love is something people must do on their own.

Singles do not expect your pity. Rather, they expect many opportunities to meet friends of your partner and "socialise" in a "fun, harmless" way. This is your obligation as a happily coupled-up person, much like paying taxes when in a high-income bracket.

To remain single is always a choice. Always.

Don't take a single's word for it when they tell you that "nothing happened" with that cute person before they then smile coyly and walk away. It is necessary for the survival of your relationship with said single person that you neither believe nor disbelieve them. You must then take on the task of badgering them constantly for "details" about their encounter very seriously. These heavily choreographed and scripted conversations about non-existent flings are bread and butter to bored singles.

"Meeting people" really is as hard as singles say it is. The fact that you've "met someone" should always be put down to luck because if it's based on merit, timing or maturity then singles really have something to worry about.

Being single is something people "love" but don't ask them to use the l-word in any other context; it may force them to admit that there are relationship statuses they appreciate more than their current one.

Nothing sets a single off like the l-word, Valentine's Day and news about weddings. Especially the last one. If you're getting married and your friend/sibling/co-worker is feeling a bit fragile already, sometimes it's best to just not tell the single at all. Walk yourself down the aisle. It might encourage some empathy.

Singles understand relationships, they just don't want one. That's why they're still openly pining for their previous paramour a year after the split. They're happy alone.

People who are single avoid relationships because it would take time away from their career and plans. Things that are too much fun to cut back on.

If a single tells you they've been really busy with other things lately, smile and nod. They need to think so. Really.

Single people take the time to enjoy life in many ways. One of the best ways to do this is talking (or writing blogs) about how great it is to be single.


Tune in next time for Stuff Sarcastic People Like.

Couples' Law.

Couples believe it is very important to be overly public and mushy about their romance. This is because such behaviour made them very uncomfortable when they were single so it's important to alienate others now they're coupled up. It's not hazing if kissing is involved.

Couples get depressed when they can't be physically touching or sitting next to each other.

All couples need to make use of generic nicknames for each other and cliched descriptions of their happiness because every couple's love is both uniformly perfect and unique.

Couples can never "help it" and thus need to be treated with more sensitivity and respect than individuals.

Long-term couples are allowed to take a disproportionate amount of offence to the allegation that their relationship comes first and their friends second.

Once in a couple, there is no reason to assume that friendships that predate the relationship cannot handle the addition of an extra person at every meeting.

When a couple becomes two singles again, it is legitimate to contact (former) friends for the first time in months or years with an interest to "catch up". Any negative reaction to this action is uncalled for, irrational and hurtful.

Couples are always right. You can be sure of this because there are two of them and one of you.

There is no correct way to deal with a couple being physically affectionate for a sustained period of time right next to or in front of you. It is best to cease existing to avoid a) offending said couple or b) projectile vomiting.

It is never insensitive for a couple to be physically or emotionally intimate in your presence. It is the right of those "in love" to share such a beautiful bond with everyone else.

Couples reserve the right, after any of the aforementioned public displays, to say they don't want to talk about personal matters. After this statement it is not acceptable to laugh or roll one's eyes.

Anybody who is irritated by a couple or couples, regardless of their own relationship status, is just jealous and bitter.





Monogamists are optimists.