The tightest embrace

First Year:

Back in the days when we didn't realise that it was okay to leave your washing alone in the laundry room while it was washing or drying, we used to sit on the driers (ahem, I mean, on the plastic chairs provided) and wait for a load of washing to finish first cleaning itself and then drying itself in the gigantic barrels of heat we transferred them into.

You could sit in there alone, with your headphones on, and a book in your hands. Or you could end up sat with another person you'd never met, chatting away about nothing in particular.

First year is amazing like that.

Look. There I am; being a good girl and washing my clothes, reading my book, not listening to music because I don't have an MP3 player yet. My big jumper swamps me, keeping me warm. It's the first few weeks of term, and I'm bored but overcoming that by devouring the novels we're studying. I turn a page and glance across at the timer on my washing. 11 mins.

Enter cute boy: carrying a bag full of laundry.
His hair is dark and curly, his eyes are blue behind rectangular glasses, the hoody he wears looks well loved (read worn in going on worn out) and there's something about him that makes me want to smile. I try not to look at him - people like privacy if they're washing their underwear or 'delicates' - and feel a slight colour creep up my neck and spread across my cheeks.

He sets the washer going and hops up onto the tumble driers. Ready for the long long wait of washing, rinsing, spinning, drying. His height and slim build make me think he'll be clumsy - like all the boys I know back home - but he's not. There's nearly a touch of grace in the way he jumps playfully onto the driers and gets comfy.
I glance up from my book. I'm still being a good girl, sitting in the plastic chair. I smile...


I bump into him a few times - often in the lift or in the laundry room. I'm too shy to ask his name; but we chit-chat, small talk. I go to my room thinking hard about my boyfriend.


After the devastation of November 2009, my boyfriend returns with me to University. I'm not good at being on my own. Still a bit shakey on the inside. He's proposed. I've said yes. My fiance helps me carry the washing down and sits with me for the long hall. Wash, rinse, spin, dry.

The boy with the curly hair is there again. It's getting to be a little joke of ours that we always do our washing together. If it were true, we'd hardly ever wash our clothes in fairness.
My fiance talks with him. We all laugh. We comment on the size of the driers. He sits in and I take a photo - his hood hiding his face out of embarrassment.


I agree to go to the Chinese new year festival with a friend. We're the only English people approaching it. We subtly change course and end up at an open party in the Student Union. I call the fiance and tell him to come.
The cute boy with the curly hair turns up. We finally learn his name, and that he's as bad as me on the Wii. He and I both offer to stay and tidy up - our friends either want to help too or feel obliged to stay. We all go for drinks with one of the organisers. The first night out I've had since my one trip to the pub in freshers week.


I start bumping into him more often. He comes over to mine for the first time and we play with a glow in the dark Frisbee. We start talking lots. We meet up more and more often. We play games. We stay up late all the time just talking. We chase each other up (or down) stairs tickling each other until neither of us can breath from the laughter. I try to help him with his girl problems. I sit behind him in the big chair by his desk and tickle him gently, or play with his hair, or just wrap my arms around him while he types and we talk. He agrees to help with Oxjam. He helps me with my boy problems. I meet his best friend from his course, she's awesome.

In essence, we become best friends, and I love him.

I'm there for him when things go wrong in his love life. I stand shocked in the door way when he turns up with his hair cut off. I argue with him when he upsets his best friend. I stick up for him when people say rude things about him.
He helps me through the hard times with my fiance. He treats me with respect even when I've forgotten what that means. He looks out for me. He makes me laugh when I'm sad. He goes shopping with me. He talks to me all the time.

Second year:

He meets me at my new halls of residence with roses and chocolates. I nearly squish them while hugging him as hard as I can. He helps me unpack, and meets the vast majority of my family. He stands in line with me and the ex-fiance while said ex tries to get housing sorted.
The list of things he does for me, with me, is extensive and insane.
We go to salsa. We get pretty good.

We go for a walk and get drenched. We curl up in towels and play video games. We perform seances and protection spells together. We watch so many films it's crazy. I sit in his room and we do work together. I end up learning his essay off by heart with him.

He's my best friend, he helps me through everything, he's always there: I love him.

Third year:

Life explodes in a ball of friends falling out with each other, and mistakes upon mistakes upon misunderstandings make everything so tense.
We argue. We make up. We nearly fall apart.
He gets frustrated with me. I get upset with him. We argue... then cuddle. We go to everything Demon TV under the sun. We slowly stop going because of the social issues.
We start blogging.
We start being more of a 'we' than a 'him and me' - especially to other people.

This year something's not been right, and it's hard, and I don't like it - but I still love him.


Never let things get in the way of your friendships.
They're some of the most important things in the world.
Love openly and often - try not to get hurt.


Blessed Be xx

The Lover

For one of my modules (Writing the Self - a study of autobiographies) the Assignment includes an 'Experiment'. In other words, we get to write a brief autobiographical peice in the style of one of the authors we've studied.

Now, the autor I was most enamoured by was Marguerite Duras. She writes in a feminist prose style called Écrituré Femininé  (I've probably got the accents in the wrong place... but oh well). Basically, this style is fluid (literally in terms of movement through disconnected thoughts and times, but also in terms of imagery) and supposedly 'feminine'. It's classed as writing 'from the body' (yeah, I've studied feminist criticism... can you tell?)

So, in order to complete this assignment, I thought I would test out her style in my blog. This will probably get copied and pasted into my work, so for once my blog will be productive!

Here goes:

His hand cups my chin and he looks at me with eyes that are clouded by emotion.

"Your face is so lovely." he tells me.

I don't see how he would know. He's never seen my face. 
This face I wear isn't mine - my face is captured in a photo.


I'm four years old, crouching by some pots as I play hide and seek. The smile I give the camera is genuine, cheaky, and completes my face. One finger waves at you, pointing straight up, perpendicular to my face. My eyes sparkle with childish fascination. I'm happy.


I'm eight, and I know that this is the best time of my life. 
My mother looks on me fondly and agrees with me. So proud of her smart daughter.
I spend three years worth of birthday cakes wishing to stay eight forever.
The slowly increasing number of candles mocks me with each attempt.
I don't tell mother incase she thinks her daughter stupid for trying.
I fear getting older, but look forward to being Old. 
I look at myself and try to imagine what that will look like. Old me.
All I can picture is wrinkles and short brown hair.


I'm nine, and the boy who wants to play Mum's and Dads is pinning me down in my tent.
His body rubs against mine, his groing against mine. Our clothes rub.
I don't understand. His logic of mothers and fathers making children is clever I suppose.
Dad gets mad at him for closing the tent. Fears for his daughters dignity.
Though Voyerism is a form of participation...
My lips are swollen after the boys rubbing and kissing.
The swelling never seems to go down.


The feeling evoked wasn't pleasure - nor was it pain. It's curiousity.
I was always curious. You can see it in the photo. It still lingers in these eyes.
Alone, I explore my body - looking for that womans hole they tell me a baby will come out of.
I find a pee hole, and a poop hole. Guess I haven't grown the baby hole yet.
Mother always uses the term 'child bearing age'. That must be what she means.

Later, when I've more than found it, I still can't use it's correct terminology. Boy's have P.P's, girls have Ver-J.J's. The anatomical names - Penis, Vagina - make me blush. The slang terms make me feel ill. 


I don't know when I lost my face. Maybe it was in the tent. Maybe it was in a bed. Maybe not.
Either way, I'm sixteen, and the woman in the mirror is a stranger. 
Certain features linger. The eyes don't sparkle anymore, but they're the same colour and shape. The chin still protrudes like a ball from the end of my jaw. 
The girl stands there, looking for herself and finding only fragments.


My mother always complains that she looks in the mirror and sees her own mother looking back at her. She doesn't look at me through mirrors, and I begin to wonder if I'm adopted.
My sister says she sees mum looking back at her in mirrors. 
I consider that maybe it's age that does it. My sister is 12 years older than me.
The little girl adds another reason to her list of 'Reasons to Never Grow Older' - loosing your face.




Well, it's only supposed to be 250 words... don't know how many that is, but it's a good start.
I think it's possibly too linear for an accurate representation, but oh well.


I'm going to go on with blogging about recent affairs now.


My best friend is giving me the silent treatment. 
I'm not sure I deserve it, but oh well.


Let me explain a couple things:

• The worst punishment I ever recieve from my best friend is the silent treatment. It's the one thing that hurts me the most. It makes me panic inside, and I don't know why. I used to think it was because of the abandonment issues, but now I'm not so sure.

• What I did wasn't so bad in my eyes, because it wasn't hurting anyone. Well, it didn't appear to be at the time - though since last night I've started to think it might have been hurting him...

 So, you can probably see why I feel unjustly reprimanded. 


The thing is, he always says he'll be by my side - no matter what. So when he calls me an idiot and tells me to clean up my own damn mess it hurts a lot. 


But I have cleaned it up.
So why am I still getting the silent treatment?




There's part of me that wants to scream so loud. It's so frustrating. Because I just don't get it. 
Then again, it feels like there's been something he wont tell me now for ages, which has also been driving me insane. Paranoia?




--Rant Over--




I'm still really missing Mathieu. 
The weirdest thing about this is that I class him as a best friend already. Not the sort of best friend who you tell everything to, or that you always go to for help, or that you share every moment of happiness with... but the sort of best friend who you just want to spend all your time with. Who just understands (even through a god damn language barrier!) what you mean when you say things that other people can't seem to grasp.


In a way, he made our friendship circle complete. 


Seeing him sad tares me apart.
Seeing him AND Li sad makes me want to cry.


They miss each other more than Mat and I miss each other. You can just tell. 





---blows dust away and runs in a different direction---




I've been making dificulties for myself lately.
I call it activating self destruct mode.


There's more than one way to hurt yourself. There's two main categories though: Conscious, and subconcious. I'm good at the second one. 


You see - the way that it works is you do things that seem fun - like staying up late on runescape instead of doing your work, or seeing a friend who wants to play dirty games. It's a laugh and a joke... but then the work doesn't get done in time and you don't pass your degree... and your friends game ends up hurting you deep inside where you swear your heart is supposed to be... 
Thing is, you kid yourself that you're not doing something that hurts you.
You say "No, I'm having fun. I'm doing what I want to do. I'm happy."


Sometimes you just need someone to grab you by the shoulders, shake you, and tell you to stop. Sometimes you need a kick up the arse. Sometimes you need someone to tell you off before you can see that you're hurting yourself.


The conscious type isn't as easy to pretend isn't happening. You cut yourself 'by accident' while shaving your ... arm??... You scratch yourself till you bleed, but insist it still itches and carry on through the layers of dermis. You burn yourself on the iron when it falls on your leg... were you even ironing? You can only claim clumsiness so far. Then you have to accept that it's on purpose. 


We all of us go through rough patches. 
I just haven't found any soft ones yet.
Maybe I had them all when I was young.
No wonder I wanted to stay eight.




My dreams are strange, unhappy things lately. A blossom of hope will ploom outwards on occasion - to be squashed by others.
The man of my dreams kisses me, tells me he loves me... I'm so happy...
Then someone else walks by and he wont stand close to me. Wont acknowledge me. Leaves.


I guess that sort of thing is highlighting what I feel all the time around this one guy.
He'll hold my hand. Lean in close. Cuddle intimately. But if anyone walks in he lets go of my hand. Leans away. Lets go of me and moves over slightly.
It's like he's been caught doing something naughty.
You would think I'd confront him about it - but I don't know how. Don't even know if he realises. 
Don't know if he realises that he gets all huffy if I get with other boys.
Thing that's really annoying is that I quite like the guy. Closest I've come to fancying someone in a long time if I'm honest. The mixed messages, and the almost teritorial protectiveness, is kinda confusing.


I just want things to be simple again. Just want to be able to understand what's going on in my own life for once. 
It's seriously like living in a daze as life rushes past me. I try to grasp on to something so I can look at it long enough to get my bearings, but they never stay still. They slip through my hands like water.


****FRUSTRATED**** dot com




Anyway, I'm gonna sign off.
Hope you're having a better week than me! 




Blessed be xx

And thus, my heart departs...

It's always hard saying goodbye.


Now that Mathieu's gone I feel like there's something missing in life. As if a bubble of happiness has floated away on the breeze. Things felt so right with him here.


It doesn't help that my best friend is also missing him like crazy. 
We try to cheer each other up... but... I'm not Mat, so I can't make Li happy; and it all goes poop.


There's some stuff I need to get out that's totally unrelated to our Frenchly departed friend.
But I don't know how to say any of it.


It's this emotion, that just wont be expressed in words. 
There's a rushing river - a waterfall down my throat; but the water fall is frozen in place - hurting as it tries to fall down, down, down; clinging to my insides with icy tendrils.
There's a heat on my skin like hot water; it feels as though it constantly sluices over me - coating my skin with salty heat, then evaporates off leaving me in cold shivers. 
There's a pain in my chest that seems to be a dagger protruding all the way into my heart. The hilt pulses in time with my heartbeat, slowly turning, making me want to cry as the wound grows.
There's a roaring in my ears like a plane landing, or taking off - but it never stops. The sound envelopes me, making my ears ache, my brain buzz, the world slide into a grey fuzz.


My hands clasp my sides as I lay in bed. Arms wrapped firmly around me, knees drawn up tight to my chest, pressing on the other side of my arms, I lay on my side and try not to cry. Deep breaths are gulped up in near sobs as my face burns with shame and hatred.
The giant bed seems to swallow me with its quilt and pillows; I'm drowning in a sea of silk.
I rock slightly to try and comfort the child inside. She's the one that's hurting so much.


His words mingle and fade through my consciousness, his face warps slowly in my minds eye - transforming from one person to another; again and again.
The pain inside my lower parts intensifies as I try to move away from the images now assaulting me, and I convulse slightly. I feel beaten, bruised, demoralised... and nothing I can think of will make that pain go away. It's knocking me sick.


The thing is, what I don't tell anyone, what I can't seem to admit is that the reason I'm here... the reason I'm hurting so bad... is nothing to do with what I say. Isn't to do with not being able to say. It's to do with wanting to want to say yes. It's from wanting to feel something for someone. 
Something other than this pain.
Something deep inside my heart, returning affection, giving freely... feeling so much for someone other than ...


I roll over, ignoring the stab of pain to my abdomen. 
Damn it all to hell


There's nothing I can do for now. Ride it out. Put on a happy face and pretend it's all okay.
Again.
and again...


I can't keep track of my own thoughts.
My mind wanders through clouds, hills, mountains, pages, films, words...


If none of this makes sense... actually, if any of this makes sense ...


The lights are on but nobody's home
The lights are off, but someone's still there - watching, listening...


I blame you, Picachu...


Just existing isn't enough. Yet... existing is hard. Your existence is like a flower that blooms before others with majestic beauty and wonder - but for you, you have to do the growing, the photosynthesising, the budding, the blooming... you even have to pick your leaves, and your petals colours and shapes... there's so much work goes into existing.
Better to be a silly girl with a flower, than a stupid boy with a horse and a stick.
It's called a lance... hello?


So, Plato, what do you think of mitosis?
Your toes are fine dear. 


The world shifts, re-arranges. 
And there you are. There you are in all your resplendent beauty, smiling at me, shining in the light of your own iridescence. Your arms open up to me, and I think you're about to call my name. The word that forms on those immaculate lips isn't my name though, and the one behind me moves forwards to you. Her own beauty matching yours. 
Turning away, I see hands held out to me. 
Dark hands of hopefulness. All offering what I offered you. I can't take there offers any more than you could mine; though I fall into their embrace unconscious, unable to accept life, love, 42...


I look up through the spiral of self-hate, loathing, darkness and wonder how I fell here again. I didn't even feel that slight sensation of weightlessness. Living too long in zero gravity will do that to you.


Nothing feels real. 


I have a dream. They've locked me up, forced drugs into my system, made me think I'm crazy. You're there, looking on with pain in your eyes at what I've become. 
I beg for your help. 
"Save me... please..." They're trying to kill me... they're trying to make me kill myself...
I can't say the rest. You'll think I really am crazy.
There's tears in those blue eyes of yours as you nod your head.
The unspoken "You have to be here - it's what's best for you." stays in those traitorous eyes though. Behind the pain, the sympathy and the longing; it's there. Keeping everything at bay. Keeping you from lifting me up and marching out of here with me. 
Keeping you from fighting your way out with me.
Keeping you from stopping them.
Propriety.
I know this is a dream though. Must be a nightmare.
You wouldn't just sit there in real life. You'd either tell me to get better or else, or you'd save me. My hero. My best friend. My comrade. My partner in crime...
I glance at the notes. 
Long words ending 'icine' are scrawled across it with big numbers next to dosage levels. 
They form an across-stick spelling 'Not Good Enough'


A hand pushes up my thigh, another pushes my limp hands towards an already erect member. My eyes are open, but I can't see. Complete shut down. 
Two hands guide my head down, and I half hope my gag reflex makes an appearance. I don't even feel the end as I half swallow it. 
Part of me wonders at him not thinking I'm dead - brain-dead at least.
Nothing stops him though. Plough on. Plough on...


My mind is a tangle of half finished thoughts, most of them bad. 


I sign up for flirting/sex sites... I don't know why...
Never visit them again...


I read, then stop, the re-read. Still don't get it. Move on. 
Read more. It's just words. Words, words, words...


Gonna stop now.
In a round about way, I've tried to say:-
I do stupid stuff because my head wont work straight right now.
I do stupid stuff to get over him.
It doesn't work.


Anyway...




Blessed be xx