insertpalindromehere

2011-12-03T01:15:00.001-08:00

"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.

2011-11-13T02:40:00.000-08:00

...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.

2011-09-24T06:01:00.001-07:00

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.

2011-09-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-09-05T03:59:00.000-07:00

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'.

2011-09-03T01:42:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-08-27T05:41:00.001-07:00

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

2011-08-22T05:52:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-08-17T04:36:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-08-14T03:21:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-08-09T06:30:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-06-21T17:21:00.001-07:00

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

Character? Or rock-hard thighs?

2011-06-21T06:55:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-05-30T02:29:00.001-07:00

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.

2011-05-01T02:58:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-04-18T02:37:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-04-04T02:39:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-04-01T04:13:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-03-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-03-17T04:23:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-02-22T04:07:00.000-08:00

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.

2011-02-20T04:44:00.001-08:00

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.

To the well-organised mind.

2010-12-08T04:59:00.000-08:00

I'm going through a massive Harry Potter phase right now which makes me wonder about a whole lot of stuff I've never really figured out. I consider myself a part of the Harry Potter generation (as opposed to say the Star Wars generation, or the Flower Power one, or Elvis, or some other cultural marker-related age bracket...) and it seems entirely regular for people to define themselves through something that they feel gives their life more structure and meaning. And often that's a movie, book, musician, celebrity, political figure, artist... But what does that mean, really? These are all such haphazard elements added to our lives through chance encounters and the contributions they make to our states of being are so variable, how can we judge them as so important? Especially considering the gravity of so many other occurrences in our lifetimes and the comparatively lesser attention paid to them. All the while the contemporary culture of the day, or even retrieved relics of bygone eras, are- sometimes solely- invoked to characterise our existence. I relate the feelings I have toward Harry Potter to my childhood, the people around me, and the messages and morals I feel are relevant to my consciousness and lifestyle. But in a hundred years we'll all be dead and what will it mean then? Why is it so important to me to define myself through this thing that's so irrelevant in the Grand Scheme of Things?

This is not a new question. I think most people have wondered about things like this from the time they fully comprehended their own mortality, for some of us it wasn't for a long while and for others like my younger sister it was when they were around six. And there is that ever-lingering question in everything that we do; why else the emphasis on not procrastinating, and being happy, or experiencing love? We are constantly told to spend our time wisely. Nothing is precious unless there is a finite amount of it. So it is curious to me that we choose to spend our time so differently, or even more interestingly, in the same way. If you added together all the hours people my age had spent reading Harry Potter or watching the film adaptations (not to mention talking about it), you could create a lifetime for every character mentioned in the series.

Is it positive or negative that something so superficial- a woman's imaginative narrative- has absorbed so much of our time, captured our attention so much more than fleetingly? Should I be happy or proud of being obsessed with another person's words and mind for years? The inevitable follow-on from worrying about this is; if not a children's story, what is worth spending my thoughts and moments on? If I'm worried about being remembered as part of the group who worshipped tales of a bespectacled wizard, what would I feel more comfortable with?

And I don't have an answer to that. If it comes to leaving this life knowing my contribution was as yet another voice praising J.K. Rowling, even at nineteen or ninety when I should surely have grown out of reading about Harry's antics, I think I'll be satisfied with that. I don't know what the meaning of life is or how I was supposed to spend mine, but the human experience is so complex and the desire, shared by the Bronte sisters and Virginia Woolf and even this far, far less brilliant girl, to define oneself by the writing you adore, feels too comfortable and comforting for me to deny. When thinking about all the great deeds I could be doing with my days, I find motivation to wax poetic about Potter pandemonium far more readily than that to do anything else.

And, mortal or not, who am I to deny nature?

Agora.

2010-12-04T02:35:00.000-08:00

My discovery that there was a movie of Hypatia's life was something of a surprise.

The film adaptation made by Alejandro Amenabar, starring Rachel Weisz as Hypatia, is simply extraordinary. I was excited and frustrated when I learned of the existence of this film because it was there but I couldn't see it. As is heartbreakingly, unbearably, gutwrenchingly common in Australia, we didn't receive this film until long after other audiences had seen it. Agora is getting a very limited cinematic release in Melbourne a full year after its world premiere. As a pop culture addict and spoilt brat, having to wait for any length of time for... anything to do with the media- is absolute death. Worst of all, when forced to wait long enough, I convince myself to forget about the whole thing and repeat an inner monologue along the lines of "I don't care all that much anyway." And if I had kept with that way of thinking I might have missed out on this mind-blowing film. Luckily my mother wanted to see it and also desired company. I was more than happy to oblige.

The movie is extraordinary. I was captivated by Rachel Weisz as I always am but there is always an air about her that there is something she's not telling you and that was absolutely essential to a character as inherently inscrutable as Hypatia. The script and direction perfectly mirrored her focus on something bigger, broader and more mystical than potential suitors and religions nitpicking each other's shortcomings. I love that Hypatia was imagining things so beautiful in the sky and in the mind that obsessed and enchanted her but she was accused of being too rational, too questioning, and incapable of believing in anything. Truly, though, there is nothing more fantastic than the theories she put her faith in. And she knew that every step of the way which is why she told one of her former students, now a bishop: "You don't question what you believe. I must."

There are so many messages in this narrative. A discussion of the persecution of intellectuals and what a society loses when it cuts down those who seem to know so much more than us. The fear demonstrated in that action and the uselessness of taking a person from the world for the small reason that they disagree with us. Which bleeds into the other warning about the dangers of fundamentalism of any kind and of religious intolerance leading to the damaging or eradication of other cultures and people.

The film demonstrates how passion of any kind is stunning and essential to a satisfying life. And, therefore, beauty is what we make it. Hypatia's love affair with the stars, the "wandering" planets, the sun and the earth's relation to it all is startling in its vivid invocation of emotion and an irrepressible desire to be closer to her beloved, only ever glimpsed at a distance; the answer to her mind's endless queries. Her good-natured struggle with her intellect's own shortcomings and final victory over her own close-mindedness is a lesson she is not the first to teach us. We can all make the choice to better ourselves, pursue a larger story than our own.

But, similarly, we are shown that obsession and fear and ambition can also turn us into larger entities, but not ones we can be proud of. Especially when we ignore the reverence for life that defines people like Hypatia, we are truly lost. The movie depicts weak or disadvantaged individuals who are susceptible to the mob mentality, who find peace in the deindividuation that religious or other groups can allow them, and are convinced of the validity of their destruction of others. Being part of the majority does not prove that you are right, especially if you are doing things you would consider evil if done by others- like they may once have done to you.

Which is another thing I respect about the film. It does not singularly demonise the Christians; it is as equally unimpressed with the initially smug and arrogant Pagans when they are in power. Whoever is in government sees it as their duty to punish or kill others for their perceived ignorance and only when they are thrown from their previously comfortable positions do they acknowledge that the needless violence and exaggerated sense of pride and honour was wrong. Even Hypatia herself is not perfect; a product of her time, she is prone to undervaluing and mistreating slaves. Her affection for her personal slave, Davus, does not stop her from insulting him or taking advantage of him. The director and actor's depiction of Davus' unrequited love for his mistress makes the audience feel more keenly the cutting nature of her bigoted remarks.

Aside from her personal shortcomings though, Hypatia is something bigger than either her beauty or her worship of knowledge. She is a symbol of feminine defiance, in many ways. The most obvious manifestation of that is her refusal to marry or take a lover, though in the film she is given at least one very suitable match in Orestes. Rachel Weisz imbues her character with a sensuality and conflicted nature, invoked especially in her interactions with Orestes. The dialogue allows her to muse on her choosing learning above love and where that has lead her- although, fittingly, she interrupts herself to continue researching and inadvertently answers her own question. Her independence as a woman in Alexandria hinges on being unmarried and allowed to teach and speak as she pleases without a husband present to clap a hand over her mouth, and her independence as a thinker hinges on her being free to imagine rather than entertain or have children or keep a home.

More than just her sexual identity though, Hypatia exhibits typically feminine traits in other dissident acts. Her sometimes lone hatred of war, violence and cruelty in the film could be characterised as a woman's hysteria but, in fact, it is what makes her the most human of any of the other characters. Her consistent pleas that mercy and reason be used to resolve arguments are what are now considered key elements to a civilised and fair society but were- then and even now- dismissed as soft, maternal ideas that inhibit progress and even justice. Hypatia's ideals of peace and tolerance are her most rational.

The destruction of the Alexandria library, then the largest in the world, was harrowing. The most depressing realisation of the scene, with scrolls being torn and burned, was that the event has taken place a thousand times since then. A pre-existing love of knowledge is still perhaps the first thing to be outlawed in reborn societies and the use of force to overthrow passive institutions continues to be one of the most distressing and repetitious tactics used by humans. This scene was, next to Hypatia's death scene, the film's single most disturbing moment if only because of its epitomising the overall theme of a film focussed on the tragedies of intolerance, violence and war: waste.

This blog has gone on ridiculously long but I needed to write it. I just needed to. After seeing the film this afternoon, I felt like I needed to talk about it all. If only to myself. I was impressed by the writing, the cinematography, every single one of the actors, the epic scope of some scenes matched with the heart wrenchingly small details of others. The moment where Davus disobeys everything he's ever been taught just to touch Hypatia- her foot, actually- as he has probably wanted to forever. The theories being formulated by curious students and teachers in bare feet and Roman dress compared with the realities we "know" now- although to follow Hypatia's lead, we should always question that. The overwhelming violence of the battle scenes overshadowed by the fervor of religious extremism.

I love that this movie was made. I love that this was made by a man about a woman so impressive and complex that after another millennium has gone by a schoolgirl like me will fall in love with her and want to know more about her and for everyone else to just know her- she will want all of this just as desperately as I did.

the "Come Home" Blues.

2010-11-21T20:48:00.000-08:00

This is what my best friend has dubbed my current melancholy. She's right, I suppose; these feelings are of a completely different texture to those I experienced while away or before I'd ever set out on that trip. I drift between a desire to be working and at university and spending time with people and a desperate need to engrave the shape of my silhouette into my mattress, sink into the hole and never leave it, just sleep and read and journal and watch TV and listen to music without ever having to exit my fetal position pose ever again.

And although my depression is unique, the urges it gives me are by no means similarly individual. It sucks that although every person in the world that has ever felt unhappy had their own reasons, they all fall into the such narrow categories when it comes to how they dealt with it. But we all want to be seen as different. Sucks, doesn't it?

So while I could continue to characterise myself as a reluctant cliche (but then, consciously or unconsciously, that is always how I will come across), I actually wanted to write about some other stuff, not just my dark days and inability to find a job.

It is nice to be back on this blog though. I left off in such a horrible way which is sort of the proof I needed that my overseas trip was necessary. To recap: trip was good but hard sometimes, person I mentioned in my eight-month old last post is still letting me talk to them and family is still deliciously dysfunctional. And I mean that. My family are exactly the same as when I left but somehow I think I'm a little different, like an identical twin that is exactly the same as their sibling DNA-wise but still likes to part their hair to the other side. I promise better similes in my future posts.

Anyway, things are crazy right now purely because things aren't crazy. I have absolutely nothing going on. For the first time in my life, I'm not moving in any direction. No school. No work. No plans. No prospects. Sorry, that last one was rather Jane Austen. But basically, I am adjusting to being a Lady of Little-to-do. I would say "leisure" but that costs money and I have absolutely none. I am going to spend my summer reading library books, eating hummus straight out of the tub (or bowl) and browsing Melbourne markets where I can afford nothing, before riding into the sunset on my bike that I will abandon if it breaks because I have not the money or the means to fix it.

Who said I can't have a happy ending?

I just want you to be happy.

2010-03-22T04:38:00.000-07:00

It's an unusual feeling, the one you get when you outgrow a friendship. I feel nauseous all the time when I think about it, there's no other way to be. Along with fears of abandonment, conflict and exclusion; also present in my heart is a fear of love. I could spend years discussing if my issues with both friendship and romance are a result of my upbringing or just my own persona, divorced from any external influence. But the reality is that I have to break someone's heart and my own and it's not the first time. I have a friend who put me on a pedestal and loved me more than I ever deserved. I, in turn, idealised them and treated them as cotton wool to shield me from the world. They built me up and both believed in and tolerated me at the very best and worst of times for me. When I was younger I needed someone to be that for me and for the longest time I thought I still needed that.

But I sabotaged that friendship recently; I have to believe out of a concerted desire to just bring out our demise rather than dread it any longer. I feel like an actor in our relationship because regardless of how much I love my friend, I don't love what I become every time I am around them. I regress and I allow their high opinion of me to make me obnoxious, too comfortable and too smug. I don't think our friendship is real anymore and it hasn't been for a while now. We're both putting on fake smiles and I think I'm figuring out why.

My friend loved me. Was in love with me. And, as arrogant and conceited as this may sound, will always at least remember those feelings when they look at me. In a sick way I think I have always known that and for a long time I enjoyed knowing I could be that sort of figure to someone. I've never been in a relationship, partially because nobody I have ever wanted has ever wanted me back and partially because I am incapable of dealing with emotions the way most people do. I think this friendship was a pseudo-relationship for me and the longer that I protested that everything was fine the more I realised that it could never be. Because though- at least for a certain period of time- I enjoyed the way my friend looked at me; I can't sit across the table from somebody who sees me that way. I never could. I ran from somebody I could have truly loved because of my inability to be held in that kind of mythical esteem by someone and I have run from more than one person who could have been a great friend to me for the same reason.

I feel sad that this might reflect the way I'll behave for the rest of my life. I am not behaving rationally or regularly and that may become a pattern I never break. I don't want to be idolised and I don't want people to put me in the centre of their world, not even in a good way (ha, as though there could be one). I am hypocritical because I have obsessed over people and loved them just as much as I claim to have been loved. How would I feel if my victims told me they were as unwilling as I am? But I can't help who I am and that is someone who is squiriming all the time because she exploits those who need her because it's the only way she knows how to be and it's hurting her, too.

Mostly I want my friend to be happy. They're amazing and they will have a great life with or without me. It's time to not be friends anymore, at least for a while. I am sorry for my inability to tell them in any softened way and for the way this realisation has happened but I can't apologise for what I know is the right thing. We stopped being good for each other a while ago and though I could continue pretending for our sake or our other friends' sake, I won't let my life be a shadow of what it could have been because I continue to make decisions based on other people rather than myself. I owe us both the opportunity to grow up. This is not an opinion I wish to discuss or defend or alter. It is one I have fought enough myself. It's time to articulate it and move on.

If I wrote "Mission Accomplished" as a closing note, the irony might just kill me.

Yippee ki yay.

2010-03-14T01:35:00.000-08:00

My family continues to be a powder keg. Sometimes I think I'm the flame retardant standing by and sometimes I think I'm the spark. Friday night saw more yelling and slamming doors. Shelley's apartment today smelled like the holiday units we've stayed in during previous summers. I remember those places as neutral environments that acted like blank canvasses, clean slates, somewhere for our family to be different than we were before. And every year we'd come home again and find ourselves unchanged and miserable as ever, always one moment away from blowing up. I spent this weekend wondering whether, while I'm gone, my father's juvenile behaviour will subside in the face of my sister's indifference and mother's exhaustion. What do I do for my family dynamic that I will not be here to do for the next few months?

Andrea has taught me that the key to a good action movie is explosions. I guess I wonder if my actions, in leaving or just being a part of this family, make me the villain or the hero. And whether the aftermath may justify the lighting of our fuse.

A heart plus a heart.

2010-03-09T02:23:00.000-08:00

You're never going to lose me. I'm made out of glue.

You stitched me up when I was falling apart and loved me more than I could ever have asked to be loved. You placed my head on your shoulder every day of one of the hardest years of my life. You held my hand, giggled at my jokes, stroked my hair... you were everything that I needed at a very dark time for me. I manipulated you, I think, promised you - through lies of omission - something that I couldn't give you. I wasn't able, at that time, to give much of anything to anyone. But I'm sorriest of all for the things I wasn't able to give you. I will always be jealous of anyone you love the way you loved me. And anyone you love more than you loved me.

You're not boring. You're not forgettable. And you're not mine.

I'm going to go away and learn to be the person you always told me I could be. You've always believed in me and idealised me in a way that I needed. I can never thank you enough for thinking I am better than I am. Your over confidence in what I can do will most likely put me over the line in the days I am sure to feel like I want to give in to the voices in my head that tell me I'm worthless. But I'm going to try my hardest not to miss when you saw a light lining my shadow. And I know you're never going to see that there again.

I think we're both going to have to be okay with that.

Things are looking up, oh finally.

2010-03-01T13:05:00.000-08:00

Things that might be good rather than bad:

* The possibility of a Canadian working visa.
* A different trip than I'd planned. One that puts me in Canada for the summer.
* Angry rants at certain long-suffering friends.
* A day off work here and there. It offers possibilities of baking and chai lattes in the city.
* A haircut. Oh, gawd, the mullet is getting gross.
* Cancelling travel insurance, UK visa application and long-standing beliefs.
* Rearranging everything. Everything.

Louder than sirens, louder than bells.

2010-02-26T03:16:00.000-08:00

My week. Hmm. My week.

I stepped on a small piece of broken glass in bare feet. I realised I most likely won't qualify for a working visa so will have to rely on my wits in Europe. My wounds from the fall I had over a week ago are still healing rather slowly and the scab on my knee just gets grosser. I got downgraded from full time at work to two days a week. I'm not sleeping properly. I owe my parents a lot more money than I am currently making because I was given an hour and a half's notice that I was losing a lot of work. I'm lonely all the time and it's so much more my fault than anything else's because I push everyone away at the worst possible times and then cling to them without explanation.

My mood is refusing to improve. I'm trying, I really am. I have this deep set belief that what you project, good or bad, is what is returned to you in life. So I feel like all of this is happening because I've made mistakes or been cruel or selfish. And I know that if I continue to be negative and nasty and useless that it'll only get worse. It's just so hard to ignore all of the things that are hurting so much right now.

If I was happier and friendlier at work then maybe this would *stop* happening. Maybe they'd find the hours for me. If I could get my teen angst together and get over myself, people would want to hang out with me and I'd want to hang with them and we could enjoy whatever time is left for me here in Melbourne. Maybe I could be more careful with my body and my mind and the hurts would stop finding me so easily.

It's all about hope, really. Every single terrible thing that happens, and every single great thing too. All that is present in my life right now and all that is coming. I'm trying to process and articulate experiences with that in mind.

And at the end of it all, you're waiting there in my head. Like a shadow standing in this ambiguous doorway that I want to be ready to step through but aren't yet. I want to come with you but I need to find you properly first. I've never been sure about you, of who you really are, but I know you're perfect for me. Or perfect for who I plan to be. When I've evolved enough, sorted all this out- sorted me out- I want us to be together. Whatever that means. Wait for me. Or find me first?

We're still holding hands through a catflap, aren't we?

2010-02-23T21:14:00.001-08:00

I had my tarot read last night and it was beautiful. It was frightening and mysterious and confusing. For what it was, it was beautiful.

I also learnt about Buddhism, meditation and the inner lives of two of my good friends.

It's too soon to talk about it. It was too soon last night and I don't know when I'll be ready. But I want to be ready. A lot happened yesterday, the details of which I can't really articulate. But it was magical in a really melancholy, unexpected way.

Today I simply recovered from everything I discovered last night.

Please destroy me this way.

2010-02-16T19:05:00.000-08:00

You told me we shouldn't talk and it's the last thing I want but I'm doing it. And now you're everywhere in my head and this isn't new or unexpected. I'm trying so hard to let you go because I truly believe it's what you want. But is it possible I'm doing something wrong there, too? I hope not. I hope you're well. I love you, always, regardless of what I say or write to contradict that statement. Really.

I fell.

So now I'm off work and sitting on my bed, alone, since Trina left me happier than I can remember being in some time. We had tea, ate too much cake and she gave me a lot of gifts, some physical and some not. One was a book. Another was the realisation that there is hope. For her, especially, and for me also. I'm $120 poorer for staying home today but I don't feel it.

I think I will make dinner for my mother tonight. She's been impressing people for almost a month now and I think it's exhausting her. I need her to know she is loved here, too, though maybe not so blindly. I think that's better, really, and I hope she does too.

Morning comes and you don't want to know me anymore.

2010-02-14T22:08:00.000-08:00

My credit card application was just approved so I can begin my long awaited descent into debt. One of my closest friends in the whole wide world arrives back in the country tomorrow. I fell on my arse today... in public... while wearing a short dress.

It's the litle things.

Protect me, protect me.

2010-02-12T00:58:00.000-08:00

This time last year, I had just got my first adult job. Goodbye bright blue t-shirt with a hideous logo on the breast, hello ID cards and smooth telephone pick-up ("City morgue", my home phone greeting, was deemed inappropriate for the workplace).

I spent Valentine's Day in 2009 with a girl who loves to hold my hand and that was more than enough for me. We sat in corners of Melbourne and talked about various painful experiences we'd had recently. I wish she was in the country this year to be with on Sunday. I get to hug her soon, though, and that's enough for me.

If you want to find me tomorrow I'll be standing outside a bank with a humungous cup of tea and a terrified look on my face. Don't ask.

Copper boom.

2010-01-31T01:10:00.000-08:00

In four hours it will be February. And thus, it will be around fifty days until I leave the country.

The whole world is orange at the moment because the sun is on its way down and I have terrible eyesight. Either that or the stress has actually begun to impede my vision.

I've been doing that thing I do when life gets to me. I picked a fight with one of the people I love most in the world. I either eat nothing but crap or nothing. And I am excruciatingly dull, most especially when writing blogs. Even I get bored listening to me talk. Seriously. I don't even want to finish these sentences because I know they're no better at the end than they were at the start.

I have fifty days to decide what I want. What I will do.

Shame is the shadow of love.

2010-01-25T16:09:00.000-08:00

It's the morning of Australia Day and the air in my neighbourhood smells distinctly like burning. It makes me wrinkle up my nose but I'm sure other people associate the scent with barbeques. I hope it makes them smile.

I was disgusted the other day to realise that I have unwittingly accrued a slight tan this summer. How I did that I can't be sure but it's disappointing nonetheless. Thank goodness I'll be in England soon enough where, try as it might, the weather can't affect people's skin. Only their moods. Last night my neighbour talked to me about how when he was in England people went to the pub at lunchtime during winter in order to offset the boredom and loneliness they felt walking home from work in the dark later in the day. I wondered if he knew that I see so many people in the city doing that all the time while the sun still shines brightly overhead for the entire day and most of the night. What's our excuse?

I want to feel patriotic but it is a feeling I'm not entirely familiar with. The things I am proud of in this country are present in basically every other culture in the world, somewhere, and that's what I focus on when I think about things in this world that are beautiful and worth celebrating and fighting for. That being said, I am thankful for a country that gives me public holidays on which I can sleep in and catch up on reading and thinking and cooking. And I am thankful for a country that gives me the privileges I need in order to get organised for a long overseas trip. Right now I am mostly thankful for a country that is gracious enough to let me leave it and come back whenever I want.

I feel guilty for missing those who've left me so very much. I shouldn't want them back so badly, I should stop daydreaming about when they return. They will come back and I should be gracious and wish them well on their own adventures. They're travelling the world and discovering themselves and doesn't that sound like a familiar desire? And yet I count the seconds until they're back with me and I can claim them as my person, my friend. Don't cling so hard, Hannah, or they just might squeeze through the gaps in your fingers like sand. I stare at their postcards, pinned up on my cubicle wall at work, and imagine them. They exist only in my mind right now and, hell, that is a crazy place. Come home, guys. Please? I need you to be real so I can hug you and- I promise- let you go.

Today is waffle day, I've decided. So I'm going to go and eat my feelings. Try not to miss me too much, 'kay?

I felt the rush of a thousand heartbreaks.

2010-01-23T22:26:00.000-08:00

I spent the first hour of my day today lying on a mattress in Andrea's lounge room eating popcorn and reading about places to go in Austria. I don't even plan to go to Austria. But it was fun to read about nonetheless.

Andrea and I had a movie night last night that she graciously let me fall asleep during at around 1am. That girl makes me really happy. Being around her means not bothering to put on an act or a persona. She's so low key in the best possible way. And she has a beautiful puppy who tries to eat your hand.

I miss having time during summer to go to the Australian Open and look at the pretty tennis players. I miss cooking all the time when I had flexible Uni hours. I miss having the presence of mind to miss things when you're not working all day and resting at night time because you're weak and lazy and ... me.

But mostly I'm good. I saw Ryan yesterday and he put me in the right mood to enjoy the rest of my weekend and actually sit down to write this blog. Hopefully I'll be up to writing something of substance after our next meeting, although knowing Ryan that'll be a while away. Ah well, see you in June.

Oh yes.

2010-01-16T20:23:00.000-08:00

Sitting in my living room watching musicals on DVD and researching travel insurance. Yay, my life.

I'm not happy. But I will be. I want to daydream through the woods in Wales and explore the winding streets of English villages. I am going to go swimming at completely inappropriate times of the year when my lips will go blue and I want to wear the completely wrong shoes when I go walking so my feet are covered in blisters. I want to eat disgusting meals I've bought in supermarkets and blow my last couple of dollars/pounds/euros/whatever on some time at an internet cafe so I can send emails lamenting my financial situation to the people waiting at home. But not home because home is what and where you make it and I plan to make it wherever I am for the next few months.

I want to hear strange accents that make me doubt that I've heard people right when they talk to me. I want to get lost in strange places while it's dark and raining and I just want to get somewhere warm and dry and familiar. I want to get so tired I fall asleep on trains and I want to get so hungry that I consider eating dairy again just because it's available. I want to just give up because everything's gone to hell and I want to come home and I miss what I had.

I want to come back to University desperate to study again because of all the life experiences I've had that have led me back to higher education. I want to outwear my welcome with people in other countries who I barely know but foolishly offered their couch to me. I want to want more than I can have in other countries and I want to want more than I can have from this trip.

When I feel completely overwhelmed at work and I resent the way I'm spending my summer, I remember just how greedy I am about my travelling plans. I'm not happy. But I will be.

Maybe someday you'll ask for me by name.

2010-01-05T00:03:00.000-08:00

I could never forget the busy, eccentric local market or the way memories of my bedroom are of incense smoke spirals and folded, freshly laundered pyjamas. And sometimes they feel like one of my limbs, or my heartbeat; something essential to my life. I need to lose that feeling. I wonder when and how I will do that. But not if. Never if.

I'm going travelling in order to learn more about myself. I write for the same reason. But too often I feel like I'm not succeeding. So I stop writing altogether.

*

The closer I get to leaving Melbourne, the more I realise how much I owe to this city. I grew up thirty minutes from the centre of a mess of a metropolis. And I love that.

I love that my city stinks but people still like to sit by the putrid Yarra river and have coffee at filthy laneway cafes. I love that we all dress like we don't care (shopping at sales and Op shops and boutiques in the suburbs) and yet everyone is highly fashion conscious at the same time. I love the public transport in Melbourne and the issues that plague it (I finish my crossword while the tram sits in one place for forty minutes). I love being a walking stereotype and getting away with it at my wankerous inner-city university where lesbian, feminist, vegan Arts students are kind of the norm. I'll miss the Lord of the Fries store on the corner of Elizabeth and Flinders. I'll miss Brunswick Street where weirdos outnumber sane people. I'll miss the crazy arse weather in Melbourne that leaves you with a different season in each suburb you travel through on your way from one side of the city to the other.

I'll miss all those things but I won't. That's what happens when you change. You're rearranged and a little lost but you don't regret. I hope I feel that way when I'm walking around London in three months. And when I'm sitting in my shoebox of a bedroom. And maybe even when I'm remembering home.

Someone to share this love with.

2009-12-19T04:20:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I think I completely understand relationships and other times I know I have absolutely no idea.

I have no social skills but I love hugs. I like human contact. I like jokes with people and laughing too hard at things. I love when you're close enough to someone that tears don't make it awkward but can be shared and understood.

I am trying to navigate my way through the different sorts of humans you come into contact with in the different sorts of ways on the different sorts of days. Quiet people. Boisterous people. People who are talkative one day and silent the next. Or those who like you one day and don't the next.

Workmates. Friends. Family. Friends of friends.

I feel like I'm drowning sometimes when I'm too tired or inexperienced to know how to talk to people. Even when I'm treading water and getting along with people; I know that it's only a couple of words, the wrong tone, the way I look a little bit confused at something that was said...

How do you make it work? Find people to complete you and the person you're trying to be, round out your projection of self? I wish I knew how to feel secure around people but ultimately that sort of security is an illusion.

Improvement is the ultimate goal in anything in life so relationships have to be a part of that. Evolution of friendships is necessary, I suppose. We have to feel lost and unsure around each other in order for that progress to occur, in order to get closer or even to find new, better companions than those we can't seem to relate to no matter how hard we try.

I have to believe that feeling of insecurity has a purpose. Otherwise I'm just inept. I prefer to think this way, that love and friendship and understanding are achievable only through uncertainty and that through that uncertainty we can feel bonded with one another. Our angst and worry and little failures- with people and communication and relating to each other- all lead to a better future where we are happy and loved better for all of our fear and pain.

And if I'm wrong... well, I'd prefer that you didn't tell me.

I am displaced.

2009-12-06T03:33:00.000-08:00

When I was fourteen, I was older than I am now. I was someone who had done too much and hurt inside. I had learnt life lessons too quickly and I wasn't ready for that knowledge. Eventually, I buried it deep inside myself until I was ready to reclaim it and acknowledge who I am.

It was a strange year for me when I discovered things I was too young to properly comprehend. Love was the main thing but there were others. Life. Consciousness. Friendship. Acceptance. Innocence. Time.

I managed to distance myself from everyone who truly loved me. The people who could hold my hand forever and be comfortable in the warmth of us. Not the ones who were on fire and itching to keep moving and who burned me in their haste toward better things. But that's not fair. I was in a hurry, too.

I fell in love that year. I spent until now deciding whether that was true, and if it was, if I could deal with what that meant. I'm still not okay with the way I treated her or myself. We could only have existed as what we were, who we were, in that time. Our attempts since then to be around each other have always failed, probably because pain is the one emotion that never eases. It only gets submerged from time to time; still in tact, but sunk beneath the surface. When you're afraid of who you are, and what you've done, moving on feels impossible.

Which is why I retreated. I lost the friends I worked so hard to accrue. Or the friend, really. I became reliable, simple, pure. I ignored adolescence and focussed on being a unique blend of child and adult; at this I failed, miserably.

Having a breakdown at age fifteen is not great, but neither am I.

The entirety of "I" is a pretty big concept for a little girl. And I was very little, really. Being drawn to people who are bad for you, or who you're taught are bad for you, is the key to breaking your own heart. I did that so many times that my head gave way before my heart could. When my mind came to terms with how to deal with my self destructive behaviour, I was able to decide how to deal with the emotions that went with it.

My solution was to be boring. As boring as possible. Part of that was this; writing about these things like they're not real and I'm just a teenager prone to discussing their life online in a highly stylised way.

Some of my best friends, the ones who've known me since then, wouldn't believe the person that I was- or the things that I did- when I told them. Every now and then I feel my palms sweating a little and I know that it wasn't a dream and for a while that was the girl I was. But for the most part, I'm working to make that chunk of the past smaller, day by day. Because from a distance, even the whole world looks small; even my whole world at age fourteen. And I can see myself waving goodbye.

With the venomous kiss you gave me.

2009-12-05T03:11:00.000-08:00

Ash's LJ entry got me in the mood for HIM. Goth, adolescent angst music still appeals; so sue me.

There are so many things I could write about so I'ma pick whatever falls into my head as I go and everything else can get left out and just deal with it as best it can until it grows up and can afford the counselling sessions that'll help it finally recover emotionally. That was a longwinded joke and not a very funny one so I should probz just get right into the proper blogging, yes? Good, let's go.

My work had its annual Christmas party last night so that was bucket loads of fun. There was some truly awful, cheap alcohol being served all night along with the massive awkwardness of an "intimate" end-of-year party for a large company of people that is inevitably rather clique-y. However, even my rather aggressive and domineering negative side can't ignore the fact that I really enjoyed myself.

I finally achieved one of my- more recent- life goals and received a real hug from Allison. I really love that girl, from her accent to her stylish yet affordable boots. I also got to watch Annie down her weight in beer. I know she weighs about thirty grams but, still, she was going for it. And a whole lot of people who are normally rather reserved got royally sloshed and started chatting to me and everybody else about everything from travelling to high school bullying to wait staff with crushes on ... well, the object of their affection was much debated all evening.

So that was my Friday night. Saturday morning was far more subdued.

Julia and I went to market and purchased lots of things; among the more interesting of our conquests were a finger puppet, elephant-shaped keyring and a dress- gasp!- for none other than Hannah herself. Oh, and we had a friand with ingredients including, but not limited to; chilli, beetroot and belgian chocolate. It was a great morning and really needs no explanation other than; I love Julia, I love vegan food, I love quirky clothing, I love markets, I love Saturday mornings and I love hippies. This particular morning had all of these things in abundance and thus, I have had a really good first-half-of-weekend.

Oh, and before I forget (HA! Never going to happen, actually);

While at the market, Julia decided to go taste some hot sauces at one stall. This young boy was manning the place and his old man told him to warn "the lady" about how to pace herself with the sauces but the boy stayed silent for a minute or two with no explanation about any of the products. Julia tried one such item called "Dragon's Blood" with a heat rating of "10/10" - she ignored me when I suggested starting with the "2/10" range- and complained after having one or two drops that she needed more because it did nothing for her. So, a good dollop later, we discover that the boy behind the counter actually has a voice when he says "it takes two minutes to reach full hotness". Julia's eyes widen as quickly as a VCE student's waistline during exam period and for the next couple of minutes she gets steadily more teary eyed and starts coughing.

I am beginning to hope this guy is actually an adolescent descendant of a native American tribe where the men turn into werewolves so that he can reach full physical maturity, develop an awesome personality and confess a strong attachment to me and my weird emotional screwed-upedness; all so I can marry him today for being so thoroughly spot on with his timing. Then the kid just smiles, watches Julia take a swig from her drink bottle and says "Water makes it worse."

It's not faith if, if you use your eyes.

2009-12-01T02:51:00.000-08:00

I thought after my last- very ugly- post (I read it back and wanted to cut off my own fingers to stop myself ever writing anything so vitriolic ever again. Ugh, it was bad. Apologies.), I might try writing about less... stupid? topics.

My life is nice and boring right now. Work and seeing friends. Every now and then I know I really am inhabiting my "old lady" moniker when I get really happy in my battiness.

I've started talking to the characters in the books that I'm reading when there's no one else in the settlement room with me. I giddily drink in the smell of pine leaves in buildings prematurely decorated for Christmas. And I lament my aching feet to anyone that will listen.

Oh, and just to be uber positive in this entry; here is an overdue quote for you (from last week).

Heard:

"It's the awesome threesome!" - Amanda at work describing me, Annie and Allison. I do love those girls.

Why was I the last to know?

2009-11-28T14:29:00.000-08:00

Friday night was interesting. I was determined not to write about it because my mother considered me horrible and judgemental but, hey, I've always been a 70-year-old in a teenager's body in terms of grumpiness and whatnot; why end such a marvellous tradition?

A family friend who is exactly one day older than me is leaving the country to go work in the ski fields of Canada so he was having a goodbye celebration at his house. Our mothers have been close friends since they were in their twenties so we've always sort of had that "go play together... seriously, I don't care if there is nothing to say- make it work!" thing going on. Sam is a lovely guy so that makes things easier.

What makes things a wee bit awkward in the relationship between our families is the difference in wealth. See, his parents each make a stackload of money while mine have stuck to their lower-middle class roots. It means that outings and stuff are always awkward because they want to pay for us to experience luxury and my family are just not okay with mooching off others. And it means that while I was always sent to public schools by a staunchly left-wing mother, Sam and his little brother, Oscar, went to one of the most expensive private schools in the city.

This leads me to Friday night. At his farewell party, Sam was hanging with all of his school friends. I try as hard as I can not to judge people based on their background or where they went to school. And, who knows, these kids might have been exactly the same no matter where they'd been sent to school. But I doubt it. All they could talk about was alcohol, kissing girls (and boys, interestingly enough), schoolies, alcohol, marijuana, schoolies, alcohol... the list goes on, in a similar fashion. Sam's mother, Therese, informed us that we should consider ourselves lucky that at 6 in the evening, the boys were only drinking copious amounts of beer and not also getting stoned as was their normal habit. Therese was determined that I go "talk with the young people" but, unfortunately, I have very limited experience where schoolies, alcohol and marijuana are involved. Kissing girls on the other hand... I kid, I kid.

I sat there for an hour but try as I might, I could not either find anything I could contribute to the conversation or a way to look interested. I found myself staring at the "intellectual" of the group who one girl complained "used too many big words" (I think he put "sarcastic" in a sentence at some point) and being amused at his Julius Caesar haircut and tortoise shell glasses. Who says money can't buy class?

That last sentence pretty much sums up everything I thought about the entire group until I was able to leave, around three hours later, after having one semi-decent conversation with a newcomer (thus a sober participant in the party, at least at first) about his geographical origins; he was from Europe so I picked his brain about it... because I could/had to in order to keep myself awake.

I know this all comes off as incredibly conceited and judgemental but I can't help but wonder about two things;

a) what happened to me to make me despise people with money, especially teenagers, so much that I couldn't bring myself to try and communicate with them rather than ridicule them in my blog

b) why these kids are destined to have great lives with lots of success and a feeling that they somehow earnt it despite the fact they'll essentially be buying their way into a distinguished University course and thus to the top of the socio-economic order. At least I can already guess what substances these eventual doctors and solicitors will be spending their "hard earned" cash on at the end of the day.

I'ma go hate myself some more now. Thanks for reading.

7 things.

2009-11-27T18:41:00.000-08:00

Some stuff you may or may not know about me. Because a regular blog post felt irregular today, for some reason.

1. Learning about young celebrities is a weird sort of hobby of mine. People think that when I talk about these popstars I am joking or being ironic but I'm not. They fascinate me.

2. I like pineapple juice but I can't stand the texture of pineapple itself.

3. I'm too chicken to go see a movie on my own but I really want to(that one was for you, Annie).

4. I have a good deal of my friend's property on my floor and soon enough it's going to feel like home when I trip over a bag of her CDs in the morning on the way out of my room. Seriously, I'm getting rather attached to the bags of stuff. Little tykes.

5. I worry sometimes that my sarcastic voice is becoming my real voice, both in my mind and in the minds of the people around me, and that one day I will wake up and actually be that racist, sexist, homophobic, mean etc.

6. I'm not ambidextrous but I use cutlery like a left-hander and write with my right hand.

7. I don't think Flight of the Conchords is all that funny. I put that last because I knew that approximately thirty seconds after I wrote it, I would be hunted down and forced to say that its unachieved potential and limited premise as a comedy is actually a total hoot.

Let the spirit move me.

2009-11-21T03:24:00.000-08:00

I'm finished exams so all that's left to do is wait until results time to find out if I passed everything. I have sorted out work- the best I can- so I have some solid hours on which to build in terms of saving up money for next year. I'm methodically creating time in which to catch up with friends.

And here's where the regular, everyday stuff ends. By the end of this weird rant you'll be begging for the mundane. But then that would be me assuming I'm not incredibly predictable and we know that's not true. So perhaps this is more normal than anything. Oh well, here I go.

My best friend's mother's birthday party was tonight. Kat's Mum, Alex, is a fantastic woman in every way. She is physically stunning, she is brave, she's smart, she's creative and she's kind. Of course her friends and family adore her. So this was a lovely party of people just wanting to honour someone who embodies what we all want to be which is undeniably beautiful.

Alex's husband- Kat's father, Joe- said the most wonderful thing when giving a speech. He said to Alex; "I don't just love you. I like you, too." And that's what makes a relationship last, isn't it? Any relationship, really. It's when you don't just love someone. You don't just have a history and heart in common. Your relationship is as alive as when you didn't know them but you wanted to. It grows and it changes and it surprises you and so do they. They make you laugh and smile and cry and curse.

Love is a dull thing. It's an ongoing feeling that is stable and simple when it's there and similarly uncomplicated when it's gone. Like is how we fill our days. It's the hurried conversation between people who trip over topics on their way to learning more about someone, be it for the first time or just the first time in a day or two. Like is the smell of someone's clothing when you hug them. Like is the way you feel about someone the second after they make a good joke or reach out for your hand or miss the food stuck on their chin when they swipe at it with their hand.

I love so many people who have moved in and out of my life but from year to year there are always a finite amount of people who I like. And I am certain there are a smaller number of people who like me, too. But as long as we have that, we know we have it in us to stick together.

Baker is coming to visit tomorrow just 'cause. I love that. And I like him.

2am and she calls me 'cause I'm still awake.

2009-11-15T08:15:00.000-08:00

I get really productive about three hours past my bedtime. Tonight, or this morning, I discovered just how much one can get done when drowsiness doesn't kick in when it should. I always get good at things right about the time I should be focussing on something else. For instance, I am blogging a lot currently because a) there is nothing left to tidy in my bedroom and b) I am supposed to be studying for exams. I never thought I'd be writing much in this blog because, seriously, 'sif my life is interesting. I resolved to be committed anyway, in spite of my lack of inspiration and poor history with follow-through, and here we are. I've written so much here this week I think my journal is going to get suspicious and hire a Private Investigator to tail me.

I have everything organised for tomorrow and, at this rate, I'm going to be awake to greet it. I hope my passport arrives. I hope Julia isn't disgusted by my home and hostessing skillz, respectively. I hope I get a lot of study done and have some fun in the process (HA!). And I hope I can get some work options lined up.

I am so sleepy right now, finally, and am watching Gabrielle and some adorable little punk girl get cornered by a gang of greedy men (is there any other kind? Don't answer that with a "hey!" or I might have to apologise for my lazy and unfunny generalisation). If this beautiful drooping of my eyelids gets any more intense, I might be forced to retire to the Land of Nod and give up on completing minor projects tonight. Oh, what we do for sleep.

To conquer others is to have power. To conquer yourself...

2009-11-14T03:32:00.000-08:00

I could spend less time criticising others and more time improving myself but what fun would that be?

I was so angry when I read a girl's comment on Facebook comparing Kristen Stewart's acting performance in Twilight to the way someone with Down Syndrome behaves. So it's not enough that anti-semitism and homophobia are common inspirations for insults, now we have to bring in people born with debilitating intellectual and physical attributes? Someone pointed out to me recently that I used the word "lame" on this blog and for that I am truly sorry. If it could ever upset someone the way that one sentence written on a website for the entire world to see upset me then ... well, I don't even know how it would make me feel. I can't fathom the kind of pain this abuse of language inflicts on others.

And I can't continue to smile and nod and go against my nature simply because I think it will help my life and make things easier for me. The honour in that is non-existent. Recently I just stood by and listened to a woman at work talk about how homeless people don't try hard enough and I hated myself for doing so. Like all of the other people who were a part of that discussion I ignored her statement; I just went on talking and acted as though I'd accepted what she said as though there was nothing wrong with her viewpoint. I don't normally assume the "I'm right, you're wrong" perspective but in situations like this I don't think a generalisation like that woman's has any real validity. I should have opposed her but selfishness and a distorted idea of self-preservation had me holding my tongue.

I don't understand how comparing someone to a person with Down's Syndrome is funny. I also don't understand how it is an insult. I mean, my nephew is just one of the many incredible people who has this condition and, frankly, anyone being placed in the same category has no right to feel slighted. Similarly, to say making a home for yourself on the streets every day and every night is easier than living with the security and comfort of having a house and all the security that goes with it is beyond forgivable.

My anger does not make me an ideal candidate for discussing this, only a very willing one. I'm afraid of the words I will use if I end up confronting people about the way they talk and the people it affects. I have to hope that I can keep my composure long enough to articulate my viewpoint without giving in and being aggressive and, above all, offensive; the same crime I have charged them with.

As I said before, I am far from innocent. Perhaps my anger would have been better off directed at myself. But I did what I always do which is work through my emotions through writing about them and hopefully discovering a way to be less ... thoroughly insane in the process.

Kiss me goodbye.

2009-11-13T17:07:00.000-08:00

Some stuff I forgot to write in the late hours of last night or didn't feel comfortable bringing up online until nowish.

Watched Glee the other night and it made me cry for the first time. That show don't normally hit so many soft spots at once but this episode went all out. Maybe it was also the lack of sleep I had the night before or the emotional stuff that follows neurotic teenage girls like me around. The reason behind conspicuously casting so many minorities in lead roles became clear around the same time Kurt and his Dad had me blinking furiously and saying "it's just hayfever" through my sleeve.

I guess I'm a little overemotional for other reasons, also. I could resist explaining because writing this stuff in a blog is like yelling "You're making a scene! I can't believe you're doing this in public! People are listening!" on a crowded train or something. But what the hell.

It's probably difficult to discover this, what with my amazing powers of disguise, but I'm a highly insecure, neurotic, extra-strength crazy person. As such, when people just disappear from my life or grow distant, I stop talking and get paranoid and just all-around hurt. Never mind that I can often treat other people like they don't matter without breaking a sweat. Avoid my questions or stop saying "hey" to me frequently and I lose it. But I don't tend to move closer to people and try to discover why they hate me all of a sudden. Because, obviously, it's all about me and has very little to do with them. Instead, I hide behing nonchalance and then get flabbergasted when they say "I thought you didn't care anymore". What gave you that impression?

Well, my amazing skillz with people have brought me some great rewards lately. Not the least of which is two friends being deeply unhappy while I'm nowhere to be seen. Obviously dealing with the much larger issue of why neither of them trust me enough to open up. Those selfish bitches. How could they do this to me?

...basically, I'm blogging about being a teenage girl. Tune in next time, folks, for more excitement. Blerg.

I wanna ... tear up the sky with you.

2009-11-13T04:45:00.000-08:00

It seems that I'm a commitment-phobic blogger. Every time it seems like I'm getting into a rhythm I sort of drop off the face of the earth. Then I start again. Maybe one day I'll settle down and face my posting insecurities but for now I'm doomed to keep avoiding blogging until it breaks up with me out of frustration.

The truth is that "stuff is happening!", as Liz Lemon would say, and I really wanted to write about it. I worry about who is reading, which is ironic because the point of blogging is to let the world know your thoughts and not consider who may or may not constitute the world. I also worry about school and, despite my Olympic-level procrastination, get preoccupied with studying. And- this is what I want to write about in this post- I worry about work and money for the oh-so-impulsive trip.

So I have a job already but I am a casual there so I have no fixed hours and, of course, I am paid only for the hours and minutes I am working and not a second longer and have no real rights as an employee (just as the company has no real rights in relation to me). All of this I happily accept but I asked my boss a while ago if there could perhaps be other work for me in the next couple of months and she called me asking if I wanted to take over a full time position for late November through Christmas. I accepted the offer but recently my boss was forced to rescind this offer when one of the key accounts transitioned from us to another company quicker than expected and all the work dried up. I understand this but I was disappointed nonetheless as I had stopped looking for work in the belief I had a sufficient position.

This is where the fun part comes in.

My father took my mild disappointment and ended up explaining the situation quite bitterly to a colleague at work. The issue is that the office is made up of cubicles so one of my boss's friends overheard my father's creative interpretation of what had occurred. I have no idea where this will go but I was sort of miffed that it would now appear that I was faking the pleasantness on the phone when informed that the job I'd been given was no longer a- no pun intended- workable thing. However, Dad redeemed himself by talking me up to a whole lot of other companies around the settlement traps and apparently there are three or more places that may be interested in me. So I'm going to see where this leads me, as well as keeping an eye or three on the newspaper listings for any and all full time jobs available to someone with nothing to offer but a graduation certificate and a clean pair of socks.

I went to Shelley's birthday celebrations tonight and they were amazing, just like her. Was there a birthday cake? A Jaffa-flavoured birthday cake? A giant cupcake-shaped, Jaffa-flavoured birthday cake? Why, yes, we had one of those, thank you for asking. Shelley's family and friends- friends who seem more like family- are lovely and it was the sort of gathering that leaves you with a warm feeling in your belly, although that last part may have been aided by that sip of Tam's Long Island Ice Tea that I had.

So tomorrow I really have to start studying. My business law exam is in a few days and, job hunting aside, I really have no excuse to fail this one.

Everything you do is simply kissable.

2009-11-02T02:03:00.000-08:00

Or not.

Trying to get a passport organised today was death. I know I shouldn't complain because this is, literally, the only way to get overseas. But two trips to the Post Office for interviews and two rejections for stupid reasons later and I'm losing my oh-so-famous cool. Why must one have a driver's licence to avoid all this extra paperwork? So if private transport isn't my number one concern I have to deal with all this extra identity verification shit even after all the Keypass, bank statement, Medicare card, account card, birth certificate, mother's birth certificate etc. drama? Yay for the age of technology, identity theft and suspicion.

Other than that life is fine. I mean, it's only life, right? It's not something you can choreograph or fix or refine. I spend a lot of my day being wasteful, like today when I tried to make something happen that obviously wasn't meant to be. But I have to reconcile myself with the fact that things will be how they be and if I don't understand or appreciate it at the time I will later because something, somehow, will be fixed or improved or created or prevented or enhanced by every second I feel I've squandered. Even regrets are really just residual hurt or anger. Everyone knows life goes the way it goes and in some way or another we all learn to embrace what happens. I spent a day of my life on this paperwork/passport/stress/bureaucracy that was never going to work in my favour. I'm sure it's taught me something, but maybe I need to learn something else before I can comprehend this lesson properly. So tomorrow is probably "An Introduction to Ink Smudges on Passport Photographs". Wait, that was yesterday. I guess I should go check my timetable...

I am not your consolation prize.

2009-10-31T23:09:00.000-07:00

Watching one of my favourite movies ever, When Harry Met Sally. It's an irrational love, really (although I think pretty much all love is irrational; delightfully so) but I honestly just adore it. I love the humour. I love the softness of Meg Ryan's face when she delivers all her love-y lines. I love that Baker bought me the film's soundtrack for my birthday this year. I love the humour of the film and how it always makes me laugh even though I must know every word of dialogue off-by-heart already.

I went to World Vegan Day celebrations today with Julia. We bought foodz (lots)and were accosted by a couple of wacky, overzealous stall attendants (and some pretty cool ones). Coconut chocolate vegan ice-cream! Good day. And Julia's heaps of fun. We've gotten pretty tight pretty quick, and we keep just hanging out on a moment's notice at really cool places and having a great time. It's like dating except we're friends. Friend dating! Yeah, I'm still a little high on the sugar from today and the happiness of WHMS.

But I should hop to it 'cause Kat'll be here soon and we're going to have an awesome dinner involving hummus, yummy bread and vegies. Yes, I know; five hundred free samples, a buffet lunch and a large serving of ice-cream later and I'm still hungry. Go figure.

Oh, and because I forgot to post it last time, this is from Friday night:

Heard:

"I'm going to smoke... at you... later." - Maddee

We don't need no.

2009-10-30T21:49:00.000-07:00

I had to write an essay a few weeks back on the topic of identities and how they're expressed, or not expressed, through how we use language. It was an interesting exercise and by the end of it I had basically decided I was as close to proud of my essay as I could get. I showed it to a friend, Denise. At the end of it she told me she could barely understand the essay because of the way I used language; it seemed designed to exclude people not university educated.

Despite all the snide remarks I've made all year about the University snobs (post-grad students who work as tutors but talk like they're of noble blood etc.) I have become a part of that world. It's who I am now whether I like it or not and the way I write essays and approach the world and speak about issues is so strongly informed by the privilege and density and utter wankerousness of the atmosphere I'm in at University. The further I go into this degree, the more I think I might not end up somewhere I like. Or I might lose too much of myself to recognise when I've become someone who prizes sounding smart more than making a worthwhile point or who would rather live in borderline poverty and continue studying into my thirties than actually enter the world as an adult and function independently.

I've always been that kid that can't adjust to different social situations. I'm as likely to attempt to use four syllable words during a party as in the middle of a class debate. If I stick around at Uni, will I have any hope of having friends who aren't as over educated and under experienced as I am? Will I ever contribute to the world rather than continue to live in some freaky University clean room?

When I write about identities and language, I worry that the one I'm creating for myself with every subsequent word is one I'll wish I'd never expressed.

'Cause you're hot then you're cold.

2009-10-25T04:21:00.000-07:00

So I went to the Prom on Friday night with a really pretty girl. The best friend, of course. She wore a bright pink dress and her hair was rather big which was perfect due to the '80s theme. I was dressed as a sort of bastardised Madonna which, unfortunately, will be recorded forever on in some horrible photos. But it was a great time and I'm really glad we went. It's the first Uni related event I've been to which is rather pathetic seeing as I'm over three quarters of the way through my first year.

Speaking of, I have now officially applied twice for a Leave of Absence from second year. So next year I am no longer a Uni student, I am simply Hannah. And hopefully I can be simply me in the northern hemisphere for a decent chunk of that year. Everyone is laughing at me right now, with my wacky travel plans. I wish I could put a 'but' at the end of that but I can't. I'm laughing at me too. I'ma go anyway though. We'll see how I do when I try to be impulsive.

There are some people I am missing a lot. I've been busy lately but they're who I think of whenever I have time. Even when I don't. They make a lot of things easier just by being around. When they're not there I feel myself crumbling around the edges a little bit. And when they come back I feel things come back together. It sounds melodramatic but being with them, holding them, talking to them; it reminds me of who I am. Mainly because they're the kind of people who would never forget. That's how you get better; you spend time with people who are better. And my people are ... well, they're the best. I miss you all.

I'm surrounded by your embrace.

2009-10-19T18:12:00.000-07:00

The obsession with Glee continues. The show just fills me with sunshine. I am sort of a closet optimist, even after graduating high school, and it gives me hope for the sort of happiness achievable for young people. It reminds me a bit of when Book Club was nice. But that's a story for another time.

So work friends were teasing me about my non-existent boyfriend the other day (the bearded, biker one who I'm going to Europe with after meeting him a week ago) and I started thinking about the important men in my life. I can literally count them on one hand. I can't help if going to a girls' school and lacking interest in guys who can't string a sentence together (which is about 75% of them after the age of 13) means I don't really know many people of the opposite sex very well.

Two of my best friends are guys, but they've been around for so long that they don't really have a gendered aspect when I consider them as companions. Like my long term female friends, they're just friends. The only good use for boy friends as opposed to just friends is that boy friends are taller than I am which is more than I can say for most of my lady pals. Which is handy when I feel like leaping into their arms in an aggressive hug. Perhaps I should reconsider how often I do that? Hmm. Nah. Nick and Baker feel like home by now, though. Hugging them is like lounging on my couch. Just something comforting I like to do when I need some rest.

And then there's dear old Dad. He's easy to get along with half the time and excruciatingly difficult the rest of the time. But then, so am I. He was already forty when I was born so he got something of a jump start on the grumpy old man thing people find so frustrating/adorable in later life. I kind of like that, due to my older sister, my father was a Grumpa while I was still in high school. That being said, it also explains his persistent irritability and random acts of generousness associated with kindly older relatives.

It is a bit odd that these are the only men I spend any real time with. But what do I need more for? I figure there's no reason to create a need. If I meet someone awesome enough the need will just sort of form itself. Adolescence is coming to a close for me, I'm travelling next year and I'm sure all of my neuroses and prejudices are just waiting for the right Mr. Darcy (or Wickham, even) to break them down.

I mean, who says men and women can't be friends?

What do you say to taking chances?

2009-10-17T16:05:00.000-07:00

I spent yesterday at Baker's. We watched Buffy with his little sister and I stuffed my face with cookies. It sounds mediocre but it was actually really great, something I never get the chance to do with him (and his sister, I guess). I hug him and I feel whole; a way I always promised never to feel because of another person. My happiness is not dependent on anyone else, I said, but this is the good kind of dependent happiness. He's just comfortable and I forget how much until I get to spend some time with him again and then everything just feels better. It helps to know he's the epitome of wonderful, someone who would never take advantage of the way I rely on him. He's just my very favourite boy, I guess.

So researching this Europe/North America/wherever trip is both heartening and terrifying. So it turns out I have no money but apparently this need not be an issue (yet). I'm awfully curious as to how my plans are going to pan out. For the time being, I should probably just enjoy my Baker hugs.

Drumroll, please.

2009-10-10T03:32:00.000-07:00

So I've been talking to my friend, Zoe, and we've decided that we're travelling next year. Like, travelling travelling. What about school, you ask? We're deferring. What about money, you ask? We're ... working on it.

We've barely talked about it, my parents barely know what I'm on about and I barely know what I'm doing. I just know I've finally found a willing victim with whom to travel the globe and I'm gonna go ahead and do it.

And here, for the world to see, is my- far from perfect- preliminary list of countries I'd like to visit. It's weird. It's too ambitious. It's too long. It's too many things. But it's mine.

Le list:

England
Germany
Spain
France
Egypt
Ireland
USA
Austria
Czech
Greece
Canada
Romania
Norway
Switzerland
Denmark
Poland
Morocco

You think this is hard?

2009-10-02T03:30:00.000-07:00

Hmm. So I'ma put this out there. I love Glee. I am a "Gleek" (as in, a Glee geek, not the sort of spit that happens when you yawn). I adore the show in spite of all the cliches and flaws. Masssive girl crush on Rachel Berry (referring to character, not actress. See also: my eternal love for Maxwell Sheffield). Hayley and I had a blast watching the show last night so that's another point in its favour. I also sort of was a Gleek in high school.

When I was fourteen I sang in the middle school talent contest. A capella seemed like a good idea at the time (yeah, I was that girl). It was a two-day competition and I did happen to win my day's contest. That being said, I think I performed on the day of both lesser entrants and overall talent. I definitely ain't a singer; people just tend to admire the brave stupidity, I think.

One of my proudest *cough* moments was performing as a nun in the Sound of Music. The one with glasses, in case you were wondering. I ended up being the one with no microphone (there was a shortage and I'm a self-sacrificing Sister if there ever were one) which I think was a mercy for me- and the audience- in the end.

I also adore musicals, their trivia, anything involving good singing (no, I don't include Australian Idol in that category), stage shows ... I sirpoze I was destined to adore Glee for being an idealised version of everything I wanted at high school. If I'm honest it's the sort of thing I'd want now if I had the time or the talent for it.

And I am a Gleek, I just never joined Glee Club.

I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me as a member.

2009-09-25T17:57:00.000-07:00

So there's this Creative Writing Club that my friend Krystal started ages back where she invites people over to her place and, allegedly, they talk about creative projects (not just writing but photography, songwriting, painting etc). I don't normally go but last time I did (and brought a new friend; Andrea) and it was splendid. Didn't really relate, whatsoever, to projects or pieces we had created. It was, however, very constructive in its own way.

For one, Julia made around five kinds of delicious treats (the most scrumptious, in my humble opinion, being vegan chocolate cheesecake. Then again, I wasn't around to try the fondue). We all just chatted, watched youtube videos and got to know each other (a unique gift of Krystal's being the ablity to put a whole lot of- mostly- strangers together in a room and get them chatting like friends in about three minutes). We didn't get to the writing stuff but I figure we have plenty of time for that. Because, yes, I really do plan to go again. I had a lovely evening (and this was it).

I guess I've been behaving a little out of character lately. Hannah, the I'm only when it happy when it rains girl, seems to be coping with an existent social life. I liked the other night because there was no drinking; no pretense; no pretend maturity or coolness (I know my use of the word 'coolness' indicates just how little 'cool' I possess myself). This is the sort of thing I want to spend my time doing, if I'm not going to do what was expected of me and become a hermit. There isn't really a punchline to this one, guys, just someone who thinks; If this is friendship, and being 'social', well, I guess I'll stay for cake.

What? You know what they say. That Hannah; she's a marshmallow.

Through my eyes, looks so pretty.

2009-09-23T17:36:00.000-07:00

I had big plans this holidays. Picnics. Bike rides. Movies. Walks. Shopping. Okay, maybe not big plans but snack sized, at least. I hoped to do things involving sunscreen and summer dresses, popcorn and ticket stubs, sneakers and ... well, you get the picture. I also planned to study a little and take the pressure off when I got back to school.

If any of these things actually occurred in the last five days, I don't believe I was around to witness it. Why am I so incapable of actually doing something with my spare time? I seem to just bum around constantly. I get so little done. I know recreation isn't something that should be measured and achieved but somehow it ends up feeling like it is. It's like I'm failing at whimsy, or something.

So I've been making more plans. Ones written in pen, not skywriting that blows away with the next breeze. Come the next seven days, I'ma have something to actually report about "what I did on the holidays".

So don't go away, 'kay? I'll be right back.

No, Ted, brunch is not cool.

2009-09-22T03:27:00.000-07:00

I bought Harry Potter glasses today. They're awe-wait for it-some and I heart them. I'm waiting for the lenses to be put into them so they should hit the streets on my oh-so-lucky nose in around seven days.

As you can probably tell by the above sentence, How I Met Your Mother is back. Back on TV, back in my life, back in my heart. Shouldn't make me this happy but it does. Some serious increases in production value contrast with the somewhat lacklustre acting performances of the cast in the first episode. Is okay, living vicariously through Barney and Robin is still easy.

Oh, and man, sexual orientation is a hot topic lately. So here's a recap of what I think. I don't agree with gay marriage purely because I don't agree with marriage. Thus I still love Ellen and rainbows so no need to kill me using only the extraordinary brute power of your political correctness.I do support whoever in my life, for whatever reason, decides their previously assumed sexual identity is no longer who they are. Love is love and my love for you is the same regardless of whom you fall in love with. I dislike Perez Hilton regardless of... anything, really.

Oh, oh, speaking of irrational loves (like that of HIMYM and Harry Potter glasses); I've recovered all of my old music. Well, most of it. Currently enjoying Avril and hating myself for it. Yep, my life rules.

She's one of those girls, nothing but trouble
Just one look and now you're seeing double...

Adios.

I don't know what's right and what's real.

2009-09-19T03:48:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to write again. Like the old days (if you laughed hysterically at that, well, that's fair).

Sample 1 of my new attempts at writing:

tender hands caressed her eyes
tears simmered slyly, unmasking mute cries
They circled, sweating unrest
limbs held still; blistered; blessed
onto her They wrote a script
blood slithered out
as one, They sipped.

Can't think of a title yet. Hmph. Let me know your thoughts if you have any.

So far so great.

2009-09-17T02:04:00.000-07:00

I hit a pedestrian. Or, more, a pedestrian hit me.

It all sounds rather Rory Gilmore but seriously; it wasn't my fault. I was riding in the rain which already spelled trouble. Plus, I was riding through the city which- not to invoke Macbeth but here I go- spelled double trouble. My brakes had already proved practically useless when cars crossed into the bicycle lane just for kicks (oh, how I adore those little two-tonne scamps!) so I was going pretty slowly to avoid, you know, dying.

I'm coming up on Melbourne Central where the traffic lights are problematic and the pedestrians jaywalk like nobody's business. And suddenly, despite his red light and my green one, a pedestrian steps out in front of me while looking in the opposite direction. Smack! I must have been thrown neck first into this guy because shortly afterward I started coughing and feeling like I couldn't breathe. Aside from my life threatening winding, though, I was pretty worried about him. But he was still standing and as soon as I asked him if he was okay he'd asked me about five times and was still going. We just reassured each other for about thirty seconds that we were both fine, whereupon he kept walking across the road and I sat there in the rain waiting for the green light to return to me, its passionately lonely former lover.

Once we were reunited, I continued riding and let the soreness set in after the adrenaline wore off. My life is so interesting and fun.

You just might need dynamite.

2009-09-07T20:45:00.000-07:00

Been busy lately. Avoiding full sentences. Avoiding lots of stuff. But no longer.

I'm here. Present. Reporting for duty. Punching in. Whatever.

Every weekend has brought another party or three, which is loverly but sometimes one wants to curl up on the couch with a cup of tea, unpause the DVD player and continue watching a Judy Garland movie. Lame? Perhaps, but it's me, it's what I do, and I miss it. I haven't been reading much lately, either, which sucks because I had so many big plans. I still have an unopened copy of Sylvia Plath's journals sitting beside my bed (bigger than a bible and something I'm far more likely to worship). And I never write anymore. Not poems, not autobiographical snippets, not short stories, nothing. This isn't exactly a ginormous loss to the world, I know, but it did wonders for my sanity. Online visits are fewer and fewer for me. I miss anyone I don't have a tutorial with or sit with at lunchtimes. Cooking doesn't seem to be happening; I ate a meal out of a packet the other day (*shudder* ...although it was quite alright as far as Indian food goes).

I'm being more who people want me to be; my family are stunned but ecstatic when I come home from a night out partying and drinking, friends are amused and intrigued by my newfound social life, I have more in common with people I meet. And yet... I don't feel like me. And in weird ways it shows. I don't go out at night; I have nothing to wear to clubs and parties. I don't go out to eat; I sit and drink tea or water and then grab a burger on the way home. I start talking excitedly with people about University and TV shows when I should be ordering a drink.

And I miss my place on the couch, and my mug, and my movie. And yet I don't return to them. Someone once called me an enigma. I wonder, were Winston Churchill to observe me, what he would say.

I get by with a little help.

2009-08-30T03:10:00.000-07:00

So I'm coming up on three quarters of the way through the academic year. University's been, well, rather neutral to me. One thing I can boast about, though, is the great friends I have accrued.

Krystal gives me hugs with sides of cuddles. We bonded over steaming plates of dhal. No joke. And in a few measly weeks she was a substantial part of the highlight of my day (it's divided into sections, see). Another decent chunk of said highlight is Michelle, who I've written about before. Who will I share a slice of citrus cake with when she's not around? Not to forget Maddee, who I still owe about two point four Woody Allen films at my place. Preferably while eating chocolate pudding. Oh, plus the beautiful Olle who is incredibly patient with me on the dance floor even though I am so unco-ordinated I might just, literally, bring him down to my level (...my level being the floor. Get it? Get it?) Oh, and Natty who gets frustrated with me for telling her she's like Cassie from Skins ("No, she's a nutter!) but is still the sweetest British chick I've ever met. Daphne, Little Miss anti-Chatterbox who takes six weeks to speak up in out Literature tutorial and stuns the room with her musings on Sylvia Plath. Aha, I also just recalled how when I gave her a birthday cupcake she messaged me later to say "thanks" for the fifth time. I also met Shelley's best friend, Bree, by accident outside a lecture and discovered how much we have in common; from our love/hatred for the Twilight series to our test scores.

Basically this post is about bragging. Check out all the awesome people I get to hang out with in exchange for the wankerous, stressful, ridiculous, wonderful situation that is an Arts degree at University. It's been less than a year but they seem to make everything worth it. Scratch that. They definitely make everything worth it.

She's my superior.

2009-08-21T03:51:00.001-07:00

There's nothing like having to blog for a school assignment to make you want to blog for fun. And, of course, my blog is destined to be a bit of a non sequitur. So just deal with it.

Watching Never Been Kissed on TV and weird things pop into my head. I like little things about the movie and the '90s, by extension. I like that people wore really odd lipsticks; purple, white, sparkly etc. I like that whether you were a dork or trendy, every girl wore clothes that made them look like little girls. I just really like the lack of pretension in that era. These days clothes and fashion and make-up are all corrupt, so obviously an equation we all have to figure out before we can present ourselves to the world. The '90s was grunge. It was the dribs and drabs left over from the '80s. Shapeless sacks of dresses and skirts teamed with big hair and apathy. Girls with curves wearing high waisted stuff that showed them off. Denim. Flannel. Boots. Love.

The '90s was simplicity. It will only feel that way now, I'm certain it didn't feel that way then. But watching this movie makes me yearn for big glasses, ugly haircuts and brightly coloured, novelty sized backpacks.

That is all.

Well, women in London must have learned not to breathe.

2009-08-15T23:00:00.000-07:00

So I bought a corset on Saturday. From a fetish/lingerie/sex shop. You can tell, too, because it has an easy access zip. But before you judge me, let me explain. I was invited to a Sweeney Todd-themed birthday party and I've never seen the musical or the movie. Google image it and you'll find a lot of Mrs. Lovetts in corsets and gothic clothing. I always sort of wanted a corset so I sort of decided to purchase one and wear it with a combination of my old goth stuff, some of my mother's wackier clothing items and black things I would normally team with something colourful.

...aha. Just a funny aside: my sister just got busted for claiming to be at a Cosi rehearsal (her high school's current production) while actually- now here is a shocker- being out with the boyfriend. If only I thought this would encourage my parents to discipline her. Ah, well.

So anyhow: Sweeney Todd costume. I bought the corset, assembled the outfit and made a pie before heading out to this party. I get there and am apparently one who took the theme a bit more seriously than others. I suppose the bright side is I have a pretty new corset.

Another hilarious occurrence in relation to this party was when I was covering my eyes while we actually watched Sweeney Todd on DVD and thought everyone was moaning and uncomfortable and covering their mouths and noses because of the gore. No, the film did not disturb them (which sort of disturbs me). An intoxicated youth of the "wasted" variety had emptied her stomach all over the floor, her costume and (most unfortunately) some of her hair during a particularly hectic throat-slitting montage of the movie. Silly me for thinking the most unfortunate thing I would see that night was gallons of faux blood shooting out of a poor extra's throat toward the unsuspecting camera.

I could describe Friday's loverly Beatles-themed party but it was quite a charming affair and, if we're honest, there is never much to report when a party goes perfectly to plan. We giggled a lot? There was good music? I got a ride home? My, this sure is a dull paragraph. Oh, but let me tell you about the fingers we found in the pies on Saturday....

Edit:

Allison would like me to mention she is not a spendthrift or fashion-dependent bimbo. She brings her lunch to University from home every day (except for one, thus far) and has resolved to shop less. Allison, my dear, you are also a fantastic listener who puts up with all of my silly jokes and references as well as being an exceptionally talented student and settlements clerk. You have a fabulous sense of humour, are always smiling and I think you're a very generous, kind sort of person.

There's no Snoopy dance but...

2009-08-08T17:37:00.000-07:00

I guess that I'm making up for the last few weeks by posting every day. The subject of today's blog: my best friend in the whole wide world. She's coming over in a couple of hours so I started cleaning my room in preparation (I know, right; she's a lucky girl) and found some stuff. You know the kind. Nostalgia inducing, bittersweet memory stuff. I have a best friend who has bought me gifts all over the world, that I carried around with me until it became obscene. A keyring pen from Germany I used until I'd rubbed off the decoration on the outside. Another keyring from Seattle, as well as a pen (just to keep the theme) that lit up when you wrote with it. Evidently the only thing I've tidied thus far is my desk. I'm sure I'll rediscover more gifts shortly when I move onto my bookshelf. I remember how much I missed Kat when she went overseas when we were twelve. I spent over a month waiting for postcards and trying to fill my days. I should have known then that, at twelve years old, I'd found the best best friend in the world.

Kat and I were destined to at least be acquaintances far earlier than we actually met. We were both friends with a boy living around the corner from me, along with her twin and another girl, Lucy, and as soon as we all got the acceptance letter from our high school it was decided we would all be great chums. I'd like to say we had a lot to say to each other the first day we met but the truth is it wasn't that memorable. The four of us caught the train together in the morning, awkward little pre-pubescents in oversized uniforms, and one day something clicked. Kat and I had the same orthodontic equipment fixing our teeth and from the crazy random happenstance that helped us figure this out we suddenly had plenty to talk about.

Dinners, trips to markets and swimming pools, movie nights followed. Impromptu study sessions on the train (I holding the cue cards, Kat guessing the answers) led to gossip sessions and so on. Our mothers met and became close friends. Kat became a beautiful young woman far too cool to hang out with a nerdy misfit like myself. It didn't stop her from doing so, though. By the time we graduated high school we'd been through boyfriends (hers) and breakdowns (mine)and were completely different people to when we started. The only thing that still made sense from the time we were twelve was that we were friends.

Kat, fittingly, got a job at a swanky department store and six months later is already being promoted to supervisor. Her gorgeousness, intense work ethic and sunny nature ensured she could succeed wherever she chose to be. In between sleeping through lectures and having no life, I see Kat. Sometimes she's the only friend I see outside of University and work for a month. Somehow that feels okay.

The best friend is leaving me again soon, albeit briefly, to go overseas for about a month. I'm starting to feel twelve again. I wonder what I'll do for fun while she's gone...

I am Heathcliff.

2009-08-08T02:52:00.000-07:00

School seems to infiltrate everything. Especially with me. I can't live in the world without relating it back to what I was told by this teacher or that textbook. I quote everything. Nothing I say is mine. I'm made of other people's ideas.

I argue with my mother about Kyle Sandilands and it becomes a question of media censorship and the idea of uses and gratifications (I say there should be no editing or delay because people have a right to both hear and be heard when it comes to self expression, Michelle says that if someone is being thoroughly outrageous editing is important). I'm regurgitating other people's arguments: think Marilyn Manson and Michael Moore, among others, in Bowling for Columbine. Or, basically, the summary by Evelyn Beatrice Hall of Voltaire's conviction: "I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

I discuss the situation my father and I share at work with Annie and it becomes some revision of Goffman's Front stage, Backstage theory. I bring up Anthropology practices while shopping for vegetables at the market. I quote novels when people ask me how I feel.

I can't help but assume that I'll never say anything as well as someone else will. Why try and compete? Maybe T.S. Eliot had a good thing going with the Waste Land. If I beg, borrow and cadge other people's phrases, perhaps I'll seem brilliant and not just plain boring.

So when I try to explain how and why I always express myself with other people's words ... I'll use other people's words.

Restless.

2009-08-07T05:34:00.000-07:00

Friday night and home watching TV. There is a pile of textbooks taunting me on the opposite chair and I'm on my second cup of tea. I haven't bought my cats yet because I'm allergic- apparently because I wasn't breast fed- but I plan to overcome that obstacle and achieve my full potential.

I'm reading Rebecca at the moment and it is heartbreakingly passionate and romantic. It's the thousandth reworking of Beauty and the Beast (see: Jane Eyre) but the talent of Daphne du Maurier makes it all seem so specific and precise. Like, this story could only have happened at this time, in this place, with these people. Sometimes I wonder if, though love stories are eternal, my own will feel immediate and original like that.

The sister's boyfriend is staying over tonight which means he'll probably be around for most of tomorrow. Hence I have begun planning my getaway but all I can think of to do on a Saturday is go to a library and study. I know; "pathetic" as a general concept is embarrassed by my behaviour.

This post sucks. I guess I'll have to use my endless hours at the local library tomorrow to write another one.

Kitch Lit.

2009-07-25T20:07:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated in a while and I am uber tired so this'll be a rather untidy and possibly overlong post. Deal with it, hag. Yes, Annie, that last sentence was directed at you.

This is absurdly minute as far as irritating things go but I'ma blog about it anyway just because I can. I am a vegan and thus use vegan cookbooks. So far, so semi-good (I know I just lost most people at "vegan", let alone "cookbook", but bear with me). But every time the cookbook says "almond essence", "pine nuts", "peanut oil" et cetera I have to substitute stuff 'cause I happen to be allergic to nuts. And I can't help thinking I'm altering, perhaps too much so, the flavour or texture or general character of certain dishes. Like this batch of chocolate-raspberry cookies I made using coconut essence instead of the aforementioned almond. I couldn't taste the raspberry; I just got the added bonus of nervous worry about getting raspberry seeds in my gaping- wisdom teeth related- wounds. Don't get me started on the pesto issues...

Since workmates read this thing now I'ma give them a shout out. Sirpozedly I don't mention work in my blog much so here we go. Casual settlements clerk. Yes, I got an ENTER that assured my seeming attractive so far as young employees go but now I actually work there people know I'm actually a total ditz. But aside from my being a wee bit of a silly lass, I have some loverly friends there. If you're reading this guys, I really do appreciate you. I like Allison's shopping addiction and the adorable outfits that result (I really do love those shoes). I like that Annie walked halfway to the train station with me the other day so I wouldn't complain about her ditching me to go home to surprise her Mum. I like Jason's being uber smart and driven but also really modest so it takes half a day of me badgering him before he tells me he aced last semester at Uni.

I had another movie night Friday the other night, this time with Maddee, and it was great. Manhattan was a really funny and sort of creepy/sweet movie where this 42 year old guy is in love with a 17 year old girl. Sounds interesting enough until I tell you that Maddee and I watched Juno directly afterward where a 16 year old girl is hitting on her middle aged teacher; "I love Woody Allen". Hello?! I tried saying this to all these people and no-one really got my point until I finally told my Dad (who loves Woody Allen films, actually named me after one, but thinks the guy himself is a total creep) and he did that cheeky grin he does. Great guy, my Dad.

So speaking of this weird film immersion thing I've been doing recently- seriously, it's basically been my life of late- I'm rather sorry I paid to watch Baby Mama. Only $1, mind, but it was still a waste. Note to self: never, ever, go watch a film just because Tina Fey is in it unless you're completely sure she wrote it herself.

On that note, I'ma go do that white, middle class girl thing I do so well where I have the absolute best time shopping at Officeworks.

Heard:

"That's generally what happens next in an argument between males." - Maddee.

"Ass-tet-ick... is that the word?"- Annie.

Music's in my soul.

2009-07-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

I ditched the Austen plan rather quickly this week due to the amount of awesomeness flooding each day (sandbags just weren't working. And when in Rome; do as the characters in Housekeeping do). So splashing around in all the good times I kind of ignored the literature and embraced the adolescence.

Last night, for instance, I had friends over. They enjoyed my cooking, I enjoyed their company and one stayed over. Yes, you guessed it, sleepover shenanigans ensued. Remember Michelle? Well, she's a massive fan of the crappy movies. It's like we're soulmates. That or teenage girls. We kind of spent the night eating cupcakes and watching High School Musical 2, Camp Rock and lots of Gilmore Girls. And when we woke up in the morning, we did some more of the same.

You see my dilemma, don't you? And thus, other than a brief comparison of my parents to Mr. and Mrs. Bennet (kindly meant, I assure you) in conversation, I haven't spent an awfully significant amount of time reading Jane Austen's masterpieces. I may or may not try again (which is an attitude I should probably apply to this lazy and inconclusive blog post) so stay tuned for that one.

Oh. Um. I sort of showed symptoms of a slight crush on Joe Jonas during Camp Rock. Don't worry, I called my Doctor and he recommended that, at this stage, what we should focus on is what quality of life is possible.

Picture this:

2009-07-11T00:52:00.000-07:00

Hannah sitting at home in an oversized boys' t-shirt and old, baggy school trackpants. No, not sitting, crawling on all-fours across her bedroom floor like a ferret excessively interested in DVDs (the ones she's arranging and searching through). She decides to look up a vegan brownie recipe online and pulls out a piece of paper. Needing something to lean on, she finds a small notebook in one of the many wooden tables/dressers/desks she has cluttering her room. Finishes writing out the recipe and flicks open the cover of said notebook. Finds three pieces of writing from two years ago. Gets on her laptop to post one online.

I've watched you mourn the loss of your best friend for two years. I've only begun to mourn the loss of mine, and you won't even notice until I am so torn at the seams that I stop being your cushion against the blows the world gives you. It's just the same truth I relearn all the time; no one catches me when I'm falling. It's when the crack of me hitting the ground wakes them up that they realise they need to scrape me off the pavement and rebuild me. But they settle for superglue and awkward smiles instead.

And there you have the early part of my Saturday evening. Emo, innit?

Let's get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France.

2009-07-10T04:15:00.000-07:00

Here's your headline: Hannah lets workmates harass her into admitting her online obsessiveness.Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue but it is what happened.

In fact, they're probably reading this right now.

...bored now.

Anyway, my major social breakthrough is of no interest to the people who've signed up to read about the inane details of my life. You'd much rather read about the time I met Megan Fox. Too bad. You read about the first thing.

I think I'm having a thought.

2009-07-05T04:22:00.000-07:00

Reading snippets of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in between birthday parties and anaesthesia has inspired me. Starting next Sunday (it seems a fitting time) I am going to attempt to read, in a single week, all six of Jane Austen's completed novels. I know she has around three unfinished works but who can be bothered? I think it would be a nice way to spend some of my midwinter break and you know I'm a screwed up teenager when, upon reading of a country dance interrupted by zombies, I think "But what was Mr. Darcy going to do next?!" I've read Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice before, and have read the first parts of Sense and Sensibility and Emma, but I think the re-reading will be good for me. Be prepared to be utterly bored by me next week. Well, moreso.

In other news, Maddee came over today which was loverly. I am still amazed that after being ready to have my jaw amputated on Thursday I can possibly be feeling this good now. Still in pain and very aware and proud of my stitches, but I was all cheeriness today ('cept for mealtimes... I bear a distinct resemblance to Homer Simpson at that point. Food should be revered in silence.) and I think we had a nice day. Watching Buffy, making BBQ tofu and chatting about weird adolescences. Yay for Sunday.

I better go read a fantasy novel with a cliched cover. Yes, that is the criteria by which I am judging it, shut up! I promised to indulge Trina and Sarah. Watch me be a mediocre friend and grumble while reading it. No, really, do. I'm something of an exhibitionist.

I wanna come down and walk around your mind.

2009-07-04T01:56:00.000-07:00

Aha. So the ridiculousness of the sister's Friday night basketball reached new levels recently when they found out that next week's game is at a holiday town. That's right, somewhere people often vacation at because it's far enough out of the city to be a novelty is the location of an early evening basketball game. Can you hear all the working parents saying "yay"? I love the optimism of my cousin's wife when Mother said "So next week we're going to Corio Bay...": "Oh, are you going on holiday?!" Just thought I'd start the post with that because I'm the only member of the family not into the basketball thing so I am laughing- perhaps a little harder than I should be- at the misfortune of my kin.

I feel I should finish some of my afore-posted-about stories of birthdays and pain. Very separate topics, mind, which is a nice change considering my experiences of previous years. So we had the "family" birthday gathering last Sunday (the prophecy predicted I would meet my doom on Monday so it doubled as a "take a good look at her now" sort of deal) which was nice and heartwarming and all that. Babies were everywhere, as were gorgeous presents (among my favourites: a vegan cookbook, a JB voucher- they seem to be my kryptonite- and a ring from a makeshift Aunt that she bought for herself when she was newly 18).

And then there was surgery. Can I state for the record that I hate general anaesthetic? My reasons are many. The first: I don't cope well when I'm not allowed to eat. The second: I cope worse when I'm not allowed to drink. A mug is basically an extension of my arm when I'm home but I spent all of Monday morning lying in bed watching DVDs, terrified to get up because I knew I'd absentmindedly make myself a cup of tea. The third: the anaesthetist was so casual about the amount of things he was sticking in my arm. I wasn't sure if I was being executed, getting high or being put to sleep because he was so bloody neutral about it all. The fourth: I woke up someone who was fascinated by my IV. The nurses just sort of smirked knowingly at me while I rediscovered my inner stoner. Oh, and now, a week later (though this is probably due to my likely current state of iron deficiency) I still have track mark. Singular. Yep. Hannah = worst junkie ever.

I will say for this whole experience, though, that Mother is a Goddess. Sometimes I would have trudged out to the kitchen to take painkillers and she would see the grimace that was practically painted on my face: "Do you want to come and sit with me for a little while?" "...yes." I guess the comfort of your Mum's hugs never really wears off. And on Tuesday when I was absolutely starving and hadn't been able to eat anything not bearing a striking resemblance to gruel, I held out a recipe book open at the page for potato and leek soup and she just said "okay". And damn, if it weren't the best potato and leek soup I ever ate. Last night we sat and watched an old musical on DVD together. What's funny is that we never would have done it if I hadn't been so debilitated, and Alice hadn't been out, and Michelle wasn't too tired to do anything else, and basketball hadn't been on hiatus etc. etc. But we both agreed it was the best Friday night we'd had in a while.

I'm liking this post thus far. Someone said recently that they couldn't keep a blog because their life was so boring and they wouldn't know what to write about. But I guess I like having a blog, and knowing at least one person is reading, because it's encouragement to look at your life creatively and try to find positive aspects of it. I mean, it would be arrogant to assume my life is so very interesting that you should take time out of your own to read about it. But you do, for whatever reason, and I suppose for my own sake and yours I try to edit my experiences into something pleasant to read about. And, really, life is quite pleasant. So wewt for blogging, for the perspective it gives me, and for my inflated sense of self importance that inspires me to write such fluff.

Um, my legs hurt as they normally would the day or so after exercise. Having been basically bedridden for a week, I say "huh?"

EDIT

Heard:

"I'm a little vegetarian."- Erin (one of the wee bonnie lasses I call "cousin").

The cheque from the Tooth Fairy must've got lost in the mail.

2009-07-01T03:18:00.000-07:00

Note to self: don't watch funny shows when your mouth hurts. Laughing doesn't cure everything and just because Rebel Wilson is normally a terrible performer doesn't mean this won't be the time she showcases a spasm or two of wit. But let's rewind.

I haven't posted anything recently which is partially due to my getting my wisdom teeth out on Monday. Since then I've been drugged up quite a lot (my current status: drowsy and dizzy) and/or in sufficient amounts of pain and thus this is my first post in a while.

We were given instructions about medication that led me to believe I'd OD or something if I had any more than one painkiller (extremely strong, mind you, and capable of sending me to sleep for hours at a time)except that I was still sort of -how you say?- extremely uncomfortable. One phone call later and I found out that despite the ever humiliating act of having to be weighed at the hospital (leave me alone; my middle class, white femaleness is allowed to rear its ugly head sometimes) the nurses/doctors/anaesthetist had forgotten to mention that with my weight I could be taking another two painkillers on top of the sleep-inducing mega-drug. Since then I have been much merrier and gratefully rediscovering the ability to chew.

While I would love to write more, my head is currently protesting my semi-vertical seating position so I'ma go sleep off some of this dizziness and come back later to talk about the rest of my fascinating, cookie-cutter post-op experience. I know, wisdom teeth + pain = unusual and interesting reading. Stay tuned to see if Hannah makes it, kids.

My position is tragic.

2009-06-27T05:25:00.000-07:00

Dear you,

Do yourself a favour. Don't talk to me. Don't love me. I've been known to- in jest- make people promise not to fall in love with me. This time I'm serious though. I suck people in with the crazy and that is exactly what makes people wish they could get out. Here's me trying to explain: I manipulate people emotionally without realising I'm doing it. And when, once in a blue moon, someone genuinely does love me: I tend to push them away and/or screw up their life at the same time. Don't come to me for advice, don't joke about wanting to be with me and don't let me cry on your shoulder. Somehow all of those things lead to me emotionally sucker punching people. And your emotions have such a nice nose. I'd hate to make it bleed.

All this sounds incredibly conceited. I don't think all that many people love me, and fewer people still allow me to manipulate them. The ones that do are usually too loving and trusting to see me coming which makes me feel just wonderful. I guess you only need to see one person who distances themselves from you due to residual hurt and resentment in order to feel the need to warn others. Especially others you feel strangely connected to after a really short period of acquaintance. Am I being too specific? Silly me. I forgot it was "Vague, non-descript, ambiguous" day online.

Whenever I try to write about emotions I always end up sounding like one of Joey Potter's angsty monologues and I hate that. I just like you too much. Way, way, way too much. You have an amazing personality. You're friendly. You're pretty. Oh boy, are you pretty. You're fond of me. You're everything I'm missing. And everything I don't deserve.

Do yourself a favour and don't love me. Because I already love you way too much for your own good. And probably my own, too.

NB. I am really, really tired. This won't make any sense in the morning, will it?

And you're not invited.

2009-06-21T23:09:00.000-07:00

So I'm trying to study for Democracy exam (entails 3 essays over 2 hours and counts for 50% of my grade. Are you as flustered by all those numbers as I am? Good.) and I'm sort of thrown by the sudden disappearance of the wankerous vocabulary I've come to rely on. Exhibit A: a sample from the essay I wrote earlier in the semester; "The Charter's internal sexism and external reliance on representation could not negate its significance as a document capable of revealing democracy's susceptibility, as a concept and a reality, to evolution." Exhibit B: someone's annotation on my Creative Writing draft after workshopping "...I know you like using big words but would [insert character's name]?" So where the hell are my freakin' big words, I ask you?! I hope I come up with something better tomorrow.

I've been living off the baked goods I made for the party on Saturday so at the moment I'm on my third cookie of the day. Don't even get started on cake, birthday or cup. It's a sickness, really. But I'll be baking some more next Saturday on account of the "family" Birthday gathering my mother wants to have which, I must admit, I am rather tickled by for a number of reasons:

1)I've always been a bit unimpressed by the concept of cousins. You know, people talking about/hanging with/abiding their cousins. It all just seemed odd to me because my father's side of the family kind of didn't exist to me for most of my life and my mother's family, while nice, are very different to us strange, complex, liberal city slickers. But, of late, we've been doing the whole solving-issues-with-estranged-relatives thing and one of the casualties of this process have been my cousin Bernie and his family. He has a semi-vego wife who is nice about my cooking, a nine year old daughter who likes to talk to me about school and a four(ish) year old daughter who draws me pictures. Oh, and Bernie himself is uber nice and charming. What's not to love? So yeah, I find myself enthusiastically uttering phrases that used to make my skin crawl like "My cousins are coming over!", "My cousins called to wish me a Happy Birthday!" etc. Needless to say, the new favourite relatives are coming over next Sunday to celebrate my newfound old age.

2) I'm getting my wisdom teeth out the next day. So the little shindig doubles as an "in-case-you-don't-wake-up-from-the-general-anaesthetic"/"good-luck-with-the-whole-eating-old-people-food-for-a-week" party.

3) I am actually really sick of baking right now. It was sort of a marathon measure-whisk-pour-cook fest last week. But nobody in my house can really cook like I can (I know, don't you love the exaggerated sense of self importance?) and I abhor most things store-bought. So I'ma bake some cupcakes for the littleys and scones for ... everyone else.

I better go actually study. Oh, I guess I ought to add this next thing as a new section of le blog.

Heard

"My mother has a problem with my Monday night drinking." - Marlowe.

"It makes me sad when they sweep up the leaves."- Ash.

"Your Dad's really funny."- every young woman I work with *sigh*

'til next time, children.

Beautiful garbage, beautiful dresses.

2009-06-20T18:19:00.000-07:00

So I'm 18. And technically have been for around 24 hours now. I was born at 11:30am on the dot (caesarean sections are all about the punctuality). It is currently 11:44am. I feel basically the same.

Here's a breakdown of yesterday. Woke up at 10, made lamington muffins while I should have been eating breakfast and just cooked like crazy for ages. My family gave me a cheque for enough money to make me blush so I made a work-related joke to my Dad ("you'll have to help me with the banking!" *wink*) which received a poor response. Got everything ready for a couple of hours before being surprised in the act of making the world's worst playlist by guests/helpers arriving. They helped me decorate...okay, they did the decorating and I watched. The party got underway and was lovely, some of my work and Uni friends were a little tentative (Tamaly grabbed my legs until I fell over at one point. I was wearing a mini-skirt and thus was absolutely mortified). But still, t'was good. People drifted in and out until after cake when the remainder of the party headed down to the train station (we were "going out").

No sooner than I had walked away from the bar to sit down than I spilled some of the cocktail on myself. It seemed fitting for my first legal drink to be adorning my coat. We drank for a while, one of our party left us and then we headed off to pretty much the only club we could think of. We paid a thoroughly exorbitant cover fee just so Kat and I could dance (I love that my best friend thinks the same way I do about what we want to do). Marlowe protested ("I don't dance.") but finally agreed so for about an hour we danced to awful techno music in a dark, loud, overcrowded club and it actually felt good (Side note: Marlowe was the cutest dancer). Oh, another highlight was the security guards at both the bar and the club begrudgingly wishing me a happy birthday after checking the date both in their head and out loud while studying my ID card. It seemed like every single girl in le Club was exactly the same person in the same outfit with the same hair and same demeanour. I felt both under and over dressed. In a comical way, I assure you ;)

In summary, my 18th was both under and over whelming in the best possible way. I got home shortly after 1am and saw a wrapped present on my dresser. A small card with it, from my sister said "Happy Birthday Hannah!!! Hope you enjoy your gift and the rest of your life Love, Aly xoxoxoxo". Above this note, hastily scrawled, "I walked into your room to put this in there. I discovered that you already have what I am giving you. I have included the receipt so you can exchange this present for something else that is equally desirable xoxo". Taped to the present was a JB receipt for a Russell Brand DVD that Ash just recently leant me. My heart warmed at that moment, so I hopped into bed to read Maidi's gift (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) and went to sleep feeling rather smug.

Oh, my Dad's getting counselling. He and my mother talked for a while, he cried and he's agreed to get help. Just thought I'd let you know.

Do I wanna throw away the key?

2009-06-16T02:23:00.000-07:00

Rewind my life a day or two. I was so happy. For instance, my Sunday kind of kicked arse.

I woke up around midday. I know, great start. Picked up the newspaper, saw my favourite cinema was showing a preview screening of the Proposal and decided on my plans for the day. One phonecall, a leisurely afternoon breakfast and a train trip later; I met Michelle in the city ready to show her 'round my hood. We stopped in the supermarket to stock up on sugary snacks for the cinema before getting a train to Northcote.

I should take a moment to talk about how great Michelle is. She's a rural student living in the city on a scholarship so she lives in a room off campus the size of my thumbnail and she has back problems to complicate things further. And she is the nicest, most upbeat and easy-going person I have met. She says adorable stuff like "the only thing I don't like about international students is that they leave" and when asked whether she has preferences for dinner she says "I'm open to new flavours". And when I call her at midday on a Sunday asking her to a movie that afternoon (which I prefaced with "it looks deliciously awful") she gets just as excited as I am.

So Michelle and I went to this movie and actually laughed with it, not at it, and got all mushy (as girls tend to) when it's all over and walked down the stairs from the theatre raving about our favourite parts. I took her across the road to get a drink and chat and we covered pretty much everything from school to family to friends. We giggled and chatted at the train station until her train came to take her back to the city. And then, because the train station was dark and quiet and forboding, I started dancing on a bench to Walking on Sunshine.

I had reached dangerously high levels of psychitude. I was ecstatic. Assignments were behind me. My birthday's coming up. I'm young. Woooo!

So writing about this gave me a sort of thought. Let's pretend Monday didn't exist. Ditto Tuesday. All there is: a phenomenal Sunday afternoon.

Oh, amusing moment recollection. When Ryan Reynolds removed his shirt, the cinema was silent until a particularly obnoxious teenage girl in one of the back rows (who was boldened, perhaps too much so, by large amounts of sugar and hype) called "Oh yeah." One clue: it wasn't Michelle.

Like tryin' to tell a stranger 'bout rock'n'roll.

2009-06-15T02:46:00.000-07:00

The order in which I do emotions:

1) Experience them.
2) Write about them online.
3) Deal with them.

A very set order these days, it seems.

I would use neutral language and all that except it seems everyone everywhere knows about my life so what are a few online readers?

So let's start at the very beginning. My Dad's been doing property settlements for over thirty years. He's like the Yoda of a very small industry where everyone knows each other. Seriously, it's a very backward and inbred community. I say this with love because I work in the industry too, as of a few months ago, and I'm actually quite fond of it and my job.

The one problem with such an incestuous community, though, is that everyone knows everyone else's business. All the time. My Dad and I didn't go into work due to H1N1 related issues for a week and everyone knew about it despite there being a very boring, non-descript party line about us just taking the week off.

So now you have three clues. I work with him. It's a small industry. And everyone knows everyone's business.

So the next piece of the puzzle is that my Dad likes to drink. To an embarrassing degree. Like, long winded stories and falling over and needing people to help him home and smelling like those aliens from the Simpsons hosed him down with alcohol so no one would believe he was abducted.

People at work like to make jokes to me about said drinking. And about the way my mother guilt trips my Dad about it. And about how he'd rather hit the pub to drink alone for an hour or two than come home with me at night.

Occupational hazard, I guess.

Tonight my father came home drunk again. For the first time this week, granted, but it is only Monday. My mother lost it at him considering she'd only just gotten off work (he finishes at least an hour earlier than she does) and she'd walked the dog, tidied the house and cooked them both dinner. My father, the eloquent speaker he is when he's intoxicated, started repeating the "F" word over and over again as loud as he could, threw his work bag to the side and stormed out of the house, slamming the door and calling "Goodnight" as he left. I presume he went back to the pub, probably to tell his workmates all about it. Or, at least, to infer it with his very subtle body language. I don't know if or when he's coming home this time.

I'm horrified, naturally. But the worst part of all this? Definitely that I'll have to go into work on Friday and there will be more jokes. Or worse, concerned whispers. I was hoping the thing they'd all be talking about is that I'm finally 18 this weekend. But hey, I've figured out that you don't get to choose why you're this week's gossip.

I need a change of skin.

2009-06-11T04:26:00.000-07:00

So I barely managed to get one of my assignments done this semester which sounds harmless except it was worth 50% of my grade and it's the Univeristy of Melbourne so the standard is offensively high. I'm truly appalled by the quality of work, really. Like, overachievers not-so-anonymous much?

In the spirit of resenting my classmates' success, I'ma do the truly Uni student thing and change my mind about stuff. Constantly. Originally I wanted to major in Anthropology and Social Theory. Then I was double majoring in Anthro and English. Then Anthro and Sociology. Keep in mind, by the way, that I have yet to take a single class in Anthro or Sociology. And now, without a shred of information, I'ma try Cinema Studies. What can I say, Dawson Leery has nothing on me. At least I'm not a radical Liberal or experimenting with heterosexuality. I mean, really, put my standard, adolescent changeability into perspective.

9-5.

2009-06-10T05:27:00.000-07:00

Or, more accurately, 9:30-4:30. Working every day this week which is proving interesting.

I am so tired I have started making very stupid mistakes. Embarrassing, ridiculous mistakes. I spend half my time at work blushing. I'm flushed the other half of the time due to the over-heating in solicitor offices. So basically I'm just always red in the face.

I have no idea what I will wear tomorrow. I run out of "business-y" work clothes uber quick due to my having a very limited wardrobe mostly consisting of ill-fitting, second hand or cheap men's clothing and/or mini skirts. I know, I'm an enigma. Either way, practically nothing I own is appropriate for settlement rooms. Today I wore red tartan tights with knee high boots, a fugly black skirt I bought to portray an indie wanker in a school play and several layered black tops to try and look like something resembling a shirt or blouse (or at least something fashionable enough to suffice). Luckily, people thought my style was somewhat inspired. Now I know how fashion trends like bubble skirts or ankle boots get started; people get desperate and think "this will have to do". Shudder.

There is a shop on Bourke St between the office and the Commonwealth Bank that I always pass on my way to and fro. It's very cutesy and commercial but it has gorgeous cards and toys and parasols and one day I would really like to buy something from there. I could use a parasol. How else will people know I'm a lady?

I am so tired but I need to finish this essay and submit it (one day late, mind you) so that I can feel free for 5.7 days before the guilt grows too intense and I start studying for my exams. 'Til then; Huzzah.

That's the way it is in Minnesota.

2009-06-06T23:48:00.000-07:00

I guess the idea of not revealing personal information online is kind of ridiculous, especially in a blog. What do I write about if not the personal? And if I'ma start with the personal, I suppose I better write about the uber personal as well.

I blew off a party last night partially due to schoolwork. But that's not fair; I don't spend enough time doing schoolwork for that to be a valid excuse. I didn't go because sensitive, heterosexual males trust me too much.

But I digress. I spent the day trying to study and failing. So around the time it started getting dark (which is around 4, admittedly) I decided I couldn't be bothered going. There are too many things to deal with there. A friend I haven't seen in a month or so who at the best of times is awkward with me. Another friend who got dumped by a long term partner recently and needs some support from little old me. Too bad I'm emotionally bankrupt and unwilling to deal with the - quite reasonable- need for a friend right now. And then there's the final friend.

I've met one just like him recently. Someone who likes the look of me, befriends me and learns to trust me more than is humanly natural within a very short space of time. I mean, of course the feelings are reciprocated but that doesn't change how perilous it is. I'm great fun, sure, when all you want from me is friendship. I guess that's all I can say. To all the heterosexual male friends I have out there; don't want anything else from me. Don't see me as your only confidante, the only one you can trust, strangely perfect in a completely unattractive but safe sort of way.

So I blew off the party. And tried to keep studying, failed and then didn't sleep.

Tell me what to do, I'll find all the answers.

2009-06-05T06:11:00.000-07:00

I don't like irritation. Kind of the definition I guess. But it appears I am easily irritated.

Things that irritate me:

* No matter how much my friends adore him; I can't seem to see Ville Valo as particularly profound. Nor Bam Margera.
* When people use the anonymity of the internet to be cruel to others.
* My own hypocrisy (see above).
* Dirty tissues. If I see them anywhere other than in a bin I am deeply upset.
* That soy milk costs extra. Lactose intolerance isn't a consumer preference. It's an allergy. Yay for the free market.
* In that vein; the four hundred thousand calls we have gotten in the last week from people wanting us to change our gas bill provider. That's right, not the gas provider, the freakin' bill provider. Ugh.
* That I thought this list blog worthy.

Party tomorrow night. Maybe. If I can finish my homework. How pathetic is that?

The girls (le disko).

2009-06-01T00:52:00.000-07:00

When it's wintry and rainy; every afternoon at home feels like a Sunday. My whole family were home today which didn't ease the resemblance to the weekend. It feels like we should all be tired and grumpy which is dangerous because it means I get no study done and eat a lot and don't exercise. I am sensing the triumphant return of Fat Hannah.

Having said all that, I just sat here very contentedly for hours and ended up sipping tea and eating cake. If I'm honest, I really love Winter in many ways. Which is good, because today is the first day of Winter. I love the coats. I love the boots. I love the warm, fluffy things we wrap around our exremities to keep them warm. I love the slippery wet leaves that stick to each other and the ground (though they will all wash away very soon, leaving the carcasses of trees and bare pavement). Now I think about it; maybe our semester ends now for a reason. The university looks so gorgeous in Autumn with orange leaves decorating the campus and the wheels of our bikes (there are so many people on bikes at Uni!). Perhaps having class in Winter when the leaves are gone and we're all cold would ruin the gorgeous illusion. I don't think I've really paid attention to the campus in Spring. I will have to, next semester, and see if it is as picturesque :)

Oh, what else do I love about Winter? I love hot beverages (obviously). I love the way people's faces go red in some places and uber pale in others. I love the extra weight everyone gains by default. I love the various forms of physical and emotional hibernation we endure while we save all our strength for the trying times at school or work or whatever that strain our intellect.

This was fun :)

People keep asking me what I want for my birthday. Which, in the spirit of this wintry post, is the day before the Winter equinox. I keep saying cookie cutters. But there have to be other things I want. Hmm. I'll have to keep brainstorming. Aha. Brainstorming, get it? 'Cause it's winter?... Yeah, ignore the terrible pun. I'm not great with themes; once I pick one, everything seems to stick to it. Whether I mean it or not. I do it with everything. Like, if I decide that I'm going to wear something black and white then everything else I wear has to match. Like right now. I'm wearing a black top over a white one, a black and white skirt, black tights and black sneakers (with that weird white trim stuff). I had to co-ordinate everything. It's a sickness, really. Luckily sometimes I choose to be eclectic. It's hard to be a perfectionist about that. Well, unless you're Frasier Crane. But let's not get into my obsessions just yet...

Have you ever been alone in a crowded room?

2009-05-31T03:03:00.000-07:00

I like to re-use teabags. Like, one teabag to two cups of tea. I am a fan of refills, okay? I also try to take short showers (and fail miserably). I love cheese but I've been vegan since September - I miss parmesan like crazy. I'm a fan of self-righteous sacrifice, I suppose. Poor Earth, poor children in Africa, poor homeless person etc.; I'ma cut back so in some weird way they can have what I have. Affluence, boredom, a propensity (and ability) to over-eat. Yeah, likely.

Somehow I never managed to make much of a difference. The world and its inhabitants are still dying. And I ain't no skinny bitch, for all the vegan dieting and bike riding places.

That being said; I need new clothes. I want to go shopping which COULD prove difficult considering the recent quarantine of my sister with the whole swine flu pandemic. Work don't want me for a little while; how will I pay for my vanity? Granted, my accidentally giving swine flu to the pregant women and old men I am frequently in contact with at work could tarnish my image; no matter how trendy my new skirt is. But I really wish there wasn't such a strict budget considering just how dire my wardrobe situation is lately. I finally outgrew my "nothing but t-shirts!" phase but shirts with defined necklines and tailored seams cost a wee bit more. Damn my curves.

Shopping with me is an activity akin to a specifically awful kind of Chinese torture. I am so fussy. Even when gift shopping for other people I'm a perfectionist. And clothes shopping; ugh! I have a particularly frustratingly odd figure so I am always complaining. And, as in this blog, no one will or wants to listen.

So there're my thoughts for now. Fascinating, right?

Of innocence and experience.

2009-05-16T23:52:00.000-07:00

Everyone now and again I hear a song by one of the artists you introduced me to. It's when this occurs that I stop and wonder if I'll ever be able to breathe again. And then I do. It's then that I remember that this is the first time in a long time that I've missed you.

That's what happens, right? You love someone so much that being without them for a week, a day, an hour, feels unbearable. And then, a few months or years later, you're reminded of that feeling and you miss it so much. You miss the mutual obsession. But you also remember why the obsession ended.

I have so many memories of friends and ...others... that are like that. It's been so long since I thought they were worthy of being my whole world. The problem is; worthy or not, they were. And they still make up part of who I am.

Some days I pick up the phone to call you, or I laugh at something only you could recognise, or I crave the way we fit together when you hugged me.

Maybe one day you and I could be healthy. And we could be you and me again. I don't think so though. I can't be sure of this, but I think I'm right;

you've never missed watching movies with me in your room,
you've never missed late night, forbidden conversations online or on the phone
and
you've not really missed me.

No day but today.

2009-05-13T05:05:00.000-07:00

My little sister has a new friend who lent her Rent on DVD which is lovely. However, my little sister also has a new friend who is a boy. You know the kind. Oh, and to complete the happy picture; he's the best friend's older brother. Yes, I said the word older. How did she inherit my Aunt's rebel gene? I mean, as I write this I am watching Rent, drinking tea and contemplating which homework to do first.

I turn 18 in a little over a month. I keep telling myself that as soon as that occurs; I become a more interesting and outgoing person. The ingredients for disappointment, I know, but if nothing else I am an experimental cook. Who knows, maybe I will make a good party girl. More than likely though it'll just mean I'll be buying the liquor for my sister and her friends. And the older boyfriend who may or may not be mysteriously neutered in his sleep by then.

I have a Tash fringe right now but I'm getting a hair cut tomorrow. Problem is that my hair dresser can be a wee bit unpredictable. He's been known to give me a side fringe and curl my hair when I go in wearing a band t-shirt and cargos. So I'ma wear really neutral stuff tomorrow so whatever hair do he gives me won't make me look ridiculous when I go directly to Uni afterward. Oh, who am I kidding? All hair styles look ridiculous on me.

And it rains in your bedroom.

2009-05-01T23:52:00.000-07:00

I could just hide under the swollen pile of clothes that continues to gorge itself on whatever gets dropped on the floor. Which is everything.

My family is kind of screwed up. But then I know that is kind of a superfluous statement, like "chocolate is yum" etc. It is a truth universally acknowledged that everyone's family is screwed up. So yeah, mine is like everyone else's, and people don't get along and it gets awkward and stuff. However, today we had a decent chunk of the extended family over which was really, really nice :) I got to hold babies and make tea for people and it was just all-around-middle-class-white-family pleasantness.

Now I am avoiding doing my homework, which BTW I should start calling "assignments" since apparently University is different to High school. It's all just school to me; whether you're learning to read Ancient runes or learning to read Shakespeare or just plain learning to read. School, learning, hard. All non-distinct terms. Which is how it should be. Speaking of how it should be, I should get back to work.

Lectures, libraries and lingering.

2009-04-27T01:16:00.000-07:00

I seem to have an unnatural fascination with and/or propensity for all three. Today, despite nearly falling asleep in Democracy, Ecological History and Modern Lit lectures; I still really enjoyed them. I'm that geeky kid at the back of the class that laughs at all of the lecturer's jokes and takes note of the totally irrelevant stuff because to me it's the most interesting.

I didn't manage to get to any of the three libraries I was planning on visiting today because both the weather and I are crap. I'll go tomorrow and get resources and study and write my essays. I promise.

I keep on planning to go home right away so I can go to the aforementioned libraries but end up hanging around and buying food and talking people's ears off. Literally, I mean, Nick had to tuck his into his back pocket and sew them back on when he got home to some peace and quiet. Sorry, dude.

Here's to be being better at life tomorrow.

the First.

2009-04-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

So I am midway through first semester
of the first year
of my first University course.

It seemed like the right time to start something.

I always complain about being too busy to get anything done.

I mean, this is my first year out of highschool,
I've started my first adult job
and I'm trying to get ready for my first independent overseas trip.

So why not create a new blog?

I don't know if I will post every day or not.
I don't know if anyone will read it.
And I don't know if after this first post I will lose any sense of having time to do this.

But while I'm here, I guess I should post about something, rather than my lack of experience.

I need to do my assignments but I've been watching vlogs and reading blogs all morning. All I want to do right now is sit on my couch and watch a My So-Called Life marathon. What is scary about that show is that the characters verbalise stuff no-one I know would ever actually say. It's exactly how we all feel but there is confrontation in that show. That ugly thing we all avoid. At least, the people in my so-called life avoid it.

My tutor called our class the "Harry Potter" generation the other day. I wonder why we classify our generation that way. "iPod" generation, "OC" generation, "Cellphone" generation... Why not just call us what we really are? "Cyber bullying" generation, "Climate change" generation, "Same sex marriage" generation, "Nuclear testing" generation etc. etc. Because the other stuff might be superficial but it's also safe. The real things that will define us; the neo-McCarthyism of the "War on Terror", 9/11, the fear of North Korea, childhood diabetes and obesity en masse, high school shootings ... I want to throw in some positives there but all I'm thinking is Earth Hour and the election of Barack Obama. That's something I suppose.

I am the same age as Harry Potter was when he faced Voldemort. Harry Potter had one enemy. I have more than I can count and many more that I'm not even aware of yet. We all do. Go go, Gen HP.