I just want you to be happy.

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.

Maybe someday you'll ask for me by name.

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.

I am displaced.

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.

Let the spirit move me.

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.

My position is tragic.

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?