Saturday, August 27, 2011

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.

Monday, August 22, 2011

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.



Wednesday, August 17, 2011


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.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

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.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011


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.