That loving feeling

"You can't say that!"

He's leant back on the bed, laptop still on his raised knees, phone to his ear. I'm trying not to eavesdrop - but it's hard when I'm laid so close to him. I try hard to focus on my own laptop.

"You can't hate relationships though - I don't believe you."

A pause while the other person tries to argue. I know this tone of voice though - the voice of the true believer. I'd tell him that relationships are hard and painful... but I'm not listening!! Honest!

"No, cause like - where else are you going to get that comfort from?.... No, not friends - that's different. I mean, yeah, you need it from friends and everything - but I'm talking about, like, cuddling up with someone while you watch a film, falling asleep with them in your arms, waking to them kissing you..."

Now I really wish I could have not heard.
I'm glad that my eyes are watering constantly because of the coughing and sneezing; it hides when they start watering for other reasons. I'm lucky enough to be sniffling constantly just to try and breath - no one would suspect a thing. Heck, even I can't tell if I'm crying or not.
But it hurts. It shouldn't - but it does.

The conversation moves on to something else, and I can finally stop listening, because my own mind is stuck on those thoughts.
The thing is, I've got that being offered me. I've got someone practically throwing the offer of that comfort at me... and I just can't take it. Not from him. Does that make me a bad person?
He loves snuggling up to me, falling asleep with me, waking up with me...
... but I don't love it. I find it frustrating. You know those times when people have hold of you and you just want to peel them off and step back, brushing yourself off? Yeah - that's the one. That feeling of "Gerroff willya?"
It's not fair on him... but at the same time, my mothering response has kicked in. The whole "There there, come to mummy - she'll make it all better." He seems so hurt by everything at the minute - I just want to help. Why is that always twisted into something I don't want it to be?

I suppose it's just the position you put yourself in at times though.
I put myself into the position of being the carer - the lover - and then bitch about it. I shouldn't complain really. To be honest, I'm getting better at not complaining. Getting better at not hurting too.

Like - when we were filming for Dan, I was supposed to break down and cry. I thought - that's fine, heck! That's great! I'll get to let out all the pain that's just clinging to me, hiding beneath the surface behind a thinly held line of will.
But when it came to filming it, I just couldn't find the pain. I dragged memories to myself, wrapped them around me, let the feelings they had evoked wash through me. But that's all they did - wash through me.
It's as if I've learnt to let everything go in a wash of  understanding. It doesn't really hurt any more. The pain is more like a shadow - a memory.
Part of me wonders if I just didn't feel safe/comfortable enough to let all of that raw emotion out alone with Dan and his camera. But then again, I barely cry any more. I go through the stage of nearly crying - maybe even loosing a few tears - but then something gives way in my mind, or my chest, and I just pull back together. I'd say I pull myself together - and sometimes I do - but mostly it does it on it's own.

The only thing that really cuts deep lately is the boyfriend/girlfriend thing.
I miss the comfort.
It's not the being held exactly - not the kissing - certainly not the sex. It's the knowing that the person you love with all your heart loves you back just as much. It's knowing that no matter what time of the day, you could text them, or they could text you, and it'll make you both smile. Thinking about them almost all the time, and knowing they're doing the same about you. It's walking into a shop, and being accosted by the absolute need to buy something, just because they'll like it. It's being surprised with flowers. It's...
It's all the things I've taught myself not to believe in.
Because I've taught myself that love isn't like that. It isn't romance, it isn't flowers, it isn't smiles and holding hands... it's just two people using a word to hide their fear behind - it's just an excuse to be with someone physically.

I always thought that I had a practical view on life, on love.
I thought that relationships were just give and take.
Then I met Li.

It's hard to think of myself as having my eyes opened; but I suppose that's what he did. He showed me completely by accident that "chivalry isn't dead"... no, more than that. He showed me that cynicism wasn't the only order of the day - and that true, real, actual caring and love was still real. Not just a fairy-tale.
In a way I'm jealous that he still has/had that. It's like a new-ness... like a flower that's only just blossomed and hasn't yet wilted under the heat and pressure of the sun.
I envied his ability to believe in happiness.
Now I'm just as hooked on the idea - if not as hopeful.

I'm scared though. Scared that this is just another ideal - another build up to a let down.
Even more scared that it IS real, and I'll just never get to experience it.
There's part of me that's so sure I'll watch my best friends find that perfect person -their Muirn Betha Dan - their soul mate - and that I'll be left behind, watching them in their glow of happiness, never able to find my own.

I used to believe I could feel my soul-mate you know.
I believed it so hard that sometimes I'd be laid in bed and it was as if he was holding my hand.
It was so real that I thought I could see his eyes when I closed mine. Feel his short dark hair in my fingers. Hear his voice call my name...
But it was only dreams. Those blue eyes don't really exist; though I'm sure I can convince myself another set of blue eyes are the ones I dreamt of years ago...
You know, I used to go all day (when I was younger) just waiting for the evening where I could curl up in bed and listen to him hum, imagine his hand stroking my hair, watch his hands pick up a guitar and start to play. He'd sing me to sleep. Now I don't even remember the sound of his voice.
All I remember is those eyes, and the sure knowledge that I had of recognising him through those eyes.

Part of me still clings to that dream.
Part of me wished I'd never had it.

I sound like such a pessimist!!

I shake myself in time to hear him hang up, and we resume our gaming.
It's odd, but part of me wants to say that apart from the 'waking to being kissed' thing, he just described his own relationship with (not only me, but) a hell of a lot of people. I don't though, because he'll say it's different, and I don't want to hear those words.
I want to be comforted like that, and for this moment my mind makes Li that comfort. He's the only one I feel comfortable enough around to actually want to snuggle up to and fall asleep. The only one I feel safe enough around to let go of those barriers... I don't want reminding that it isn't the same as love. It's the closest I've got, and right now I'm not ready to let go of the illusion.

My head is pounding now from more than just the head cold.
It's not just the longing for comfort that's making it throb, it's the non-verbal lashing my mind is giving me for feeling so weak as to need someone in that capacity.
Putting it like that makes it easier to push to one side.
Warrior Sophia does not need anyone. She is strong, and able, and independent!
For some reason it doesn't totally dispel the illusion, but the meaning behind it shifts in that subtle way, back to just friends. It's strange how it does that. I don't even notice it at times. I'll be with a friend, and I'll suddenly start thinking of them as a friend again - and it's only then that I realise that, for however short a period of time, I'd been assigning a different role to them. Often it's the role of boyfriend/girlfriend (dependant on gender) - but sometimes it's even pushing the terms 'nemesis' or 'challenge' or even a character from one of my novels onto them. As if my mind wanders and reality drifts away slowly, until it shifts back into a real perspective and I see the person again as they are, not just as I view them.

Maybe that doesn't make sense. Maybe it does. Maybe you've experienced it.
Either way, it happens; I glance sideways at my best friend and try to think of him as a boyfriend.
The comfort level is there... and thanks to drunken nights out I know he's a good kisser... he's also rather attractive... but...
I half laugh, half sigh. There's a point of friendship that you go past and past that point you're either friends for life, or you're lovers. We've passed that point, and I can feel it. No matter how attractive he is, and no matter how much of a crush I used to have on him, it's different now.
The reality of him as something other than a friend just doesn't quite compute.

It's right here - right in that moment - that I finally realise this.
Three years of fluctuating between 'we're just friends' and 'I want to marry you' - and they culminate right here, in this second, as I poke around at my own feelings, in a knowledge that we really will be friends forever. It's as if that love and longing has turned into something that's just... eternal.
I shake my head at my own flowery thoughts and return to the pressing issue of my Quest.

Part of me wants to share the revelation with him... but the slow clap I'd get for taking a year to catch up on  what he already knew isn't worth it. It's not like I wasn't being as smart as him - but that's how it'll turn around; because feelings about each other are just not something we talk about. Not without laughing them off, or tucking them under a rug somewhere.

Not to mention part of me is sure this is what's known as a false epiphany.
Give it three weeks and the old cycle is sure to kick in. I know my life, and my hormones.
What's the betting that if I expect the cycle it wont happen, but if I don't it will?
Sod's law SAYS:: it's a definite. All bets are off.

The weirdest part about being Li's friend is how I've never really seen him as... well... human?
You know how some people just seem to glow with an aura that just makes them somehow amazing, or better... it's kinda like that. Almost unreal. Yet he's the realist person I know... does that mean my reality is skewed? Probably.
So it's hard to imagine him failing at anything, or not having everything he wants, or even thinking of him doing bad/wrong things. I mean, I know he does. I'm often there when it happens... but... somehow, it just doesn't sink in?
I mean, come on - he's The Doctor! He's fricken' Superman! (or, Generic Super Hero Man)... everyone know's Dr. Hurt is super-human.

I mean - did you see the lvl 62 spell he just cast?

Okay, maybe we've been spending too much time gaming. Maybe my reality was never stable in the first place. I don't know. Either way, when he says:
"In real life, I'd just cast a spell to do it..."
I have to giggle. It appears I'm not the only one with a skewed perspective on life.


I still have the boy issue to deal with... but it can wait.
There's also the whole insecurity about being unloved to deal with...
but again, it can wait. Exams and Coursework and Dissertations are looming.
Time to concentrate on the work, and let the social life take care of itself.


Blessed Be xx

So you think you're crazy

So, lately I've been feeling a bit crazy... and I may have worked out why...

Over the last week or three many of my friends have been filming for their final year projects, attempting to get as much footage as possible then spending days (and nights) at a time in our Queens Building editing until their brains practically collapsed inwards on themselves while a final file failed to export...

How does this affect me?

Well, several of them required assistance (holding equipment, doing make-up, acting, running around screaming... well, not the last one, but you get the idea) and so, being the non-media-production student I am, and not needing to do my own filming, I offered to help them out.

But what's that got to do with being crazy?

Well!! One friend needed a couple of people to act out a love-story type thing. Naturally, Libor and I were asked to do it. I say naturally - that boy can be coupley with anyone and so can I... but people seem to think of us as some odd couple lately (I guess cause Kaydee isn't around often enough for them to see it's a total three way relationship... without the relationship part... yeah, it's complicated) so there you go. Me and Li, on-screen couple.

Libor and me singing in the park - happy couple scene 1

Now, there's all sorts of reasons that could theoretically have aided my insanity... but there's more - so much more.

The thing with this film was that - though we started out as the perfect couple, something was to go dreadfully wrong. Cue the scary music.
No, he doesn't cheat on me; no, I don't lower his CoD stats or refuse to make him a sandwich... worse - far worse. While I go to the shop for chocolate surprises, he gets stabbed...

Dead Libor - stabbed through the chest with a broken glass

Naturally, I'm devastated...

I mean, just look at all the blood still on my mattress from where he died!!

...and naturally I go insane...

... for instance, drawing in my own blood on the mattress next to his 'blood stain'... of course, on this photo you can see the clear distinction between my dried blood (brown heart) and the still vivid red of the ink that we used as fake blood on Li. Yeah - because of the black sheets I never thought about the white mattress underneath would be just as soaked with the ink... 

... yeaaah, that's pretty darn permanent now... whoops.

 Now, this would be fine. I can pretend to be insane without actually going insane...

But I didn't stop there - oh no! I decided that what we really needed was some props!

my crazy writings

So here we have some of the 'props' that I made. They're mostly just scribblings of repeated phrases like "bring him back" and so forth. The only thing is... I wrote a majority of them while sat in the pub...

Note to self: Best way to make people think you're crazy - write in the pub... 

I don't think you even have to be writing anything as insane as this stuff (which, yes, includes a detailed explanation of how to perform a ritual sacrifice in order to bring a beloved back from the dead...) you just have to do something other than laugh, smoke, drink, talk or watch the TV... it's something to do with social norms I guess - but I was breaking a majority of them. People laughed it off thankfully. I suppose it helped having a friend there, reading it as I went along and laughing saying I looked crazy. 

That's not what's sent me mad(er) either though.

No, no, no! 

Then you take a look at what we did to my room...

We wrote all over my walls in chalk. Mostly using the phrases that I'd coined in the scribbled writings further up, and writing the title of the film in the centre of the wall.  One of the scribblings is part of a line from a song that I actually wrote for Li last year... so maybe it's a bit personal in its craziness...

Sound of broken glass anyone?

This is the remains of a glass that we smashed against the wall. It's also the broken glass that we used as a prop to 'kill Libor' with (hence the blood splattering)...

... it's also the broken glass I used to cut my finger open and draw on the bed with... but that was after smashing it and leaving a beautiful dent mark - as well as a red line of fake blood - in my wall. I really hope I don't get charged for that tbh...

... I haven't thrown it away yet, and I'm not sure why...

...lazy? Me?... naw...

So I went a bit nuts - and am only just getting my room back to some kind of normal. And I think that's what's been pushing me over the edge...

"Crazy? Me?? Nah... Ok maybe a little"

... what you can't see is the white chalk on all my other walls... it doesn't show well on the photo's (see right)

However, a majority of my walls now have some kind of mad scribbling on them.

Now, waking up to that - when you're already kinda unstable - isn't the best of things to do. However, I've been so bogged down with revision for my exam that I've not had time to do more than tidy up the glass and other far-flung items. Which means that I haven't been able to do more than hide the writings behind stuff like my mirror for a few days.

Can you say crazy?

    "Loving you is like breathing;

    I can't live without it, and I can't

    stop it for long - but sometimes

    it can really hurt...

 ... it also doesn't require you

      to love me back -

         - that would just be nice"

 Now the exam is over, I plan on scrubbing the walls clean. It's not just because I'm going insane reading and re-reading my own insane scribblings, it's because I just want this place to be really clean now.

Though, I have to say; the insanity people display by writing on the walls isn't just impounded by the action itself, it's perpetuated by it. I can see that now. The jagged, incoherent words that they surround themselves with acts as a manifestation of their own inner conflict; but instead of removing it from themselves, they only deepen it - allowing it to be cultivated and harboured deeper inside them.

I have to say - if I could recommend one thing to anyone feeling a bit crazy it would be this:

Don't write on your walls - not only is it a pain to clean off, you normally scrape your fingers and hurt them too.

So, that's been my week of madness.
It's been interspersed with constant revision... and by constant I mean several all-nighters pulled both in the library and at home. I was revising up to the second I left the house to go to the exam - and I still feel like I didn't remember any of it.
Fingers crossed I didn't mess up too badly.

Though for some reason, while writing my timed essay in the second half of the exam, I double spaced my entire writing. It was the only way I could concentrate. I'm starting to think that I've written too many essays double spaced in the past - it's as if it's the only way that I can write in continuous prose (unless I'm rambling in a blog of course).

I've also had an awesome cough over the past two weeks.
By awesome, I mean that it sounds as if my entire lung is attempting to force its way out of my throat at times... but all that comes up is (okay... tmi... shutting up!)
No blood though - so it's all okay really.

Now that my exam is over, I'm able to sit back and realise it's the end of term.
Easter time.
My best friend has already left for home. My niece actually asked me today if I was coming home now - which kinda choked me up a little - but I have so much stuff to sort out here first (like my room) and I really want to get a big chunk of my dissertation done ASAP - since it's due in so very very soon.

I'm disappointed in my own poor work efforts this year.
I honestly didn't realise the depression was back in full force - but oh well, nothing left to do now but try and salvage a grade that isn't just a fail (or just a pass - which to me would be kinda failing... since I'm apparently supposed to be getting a first). I think the thing I'm most worried about is what everyone's going to think.
Check me out - the girl who doesn't care about anyone opinion but her own getting worried about what other people will think.
I mean, I can just see it now - the disappointment.
I'll be the first person in my immediate family to finish a degree... I should make it count. I should make it the best degree I can do... not some lame ass - half hearted - lack of attempt that gets me a piece of paper that says "could have done better" at the end of it.
I'm worried my tutors will shake their heads and talk about my 'potential'.
I'm worried my friends will go - Awww, no! Really? that sucks! I suppose it's understandable though...

Too late to worry now though. I'm going to graduate in 3 months time.
Me. Graduate. It seems wrong some how. Like I haven't earned it. Like I haven't done any work. Like it's false, or fake...
Yeah, it's getting me down that I've done so badly this year. I looked over my notes for revision and my first few weeks worth were immaculate. They were in-depth, clear, highlighted... they had notes for extra reading... notes from extra reading... then after a couple weeks it just stops. No more notes. No more anything. I didn't even read the texts.
I suppose my down fall this year was the reading. I just couldn't read the books. Not just read them in time, I just couldn't get myself to actually turn the pages and absorb the information.
Now it's a race against the clock to try and get the minimum done and make it look like more.

I'm not sure why the crazy post turned into one about work. I guess it's on my mind a lot right now.

Either way, there's now a box of chalk sat here, and I'm determined to make everyone sign part of my wall at some point. I'll probably wash my walls then get everyone in to re-decorate them...

      ... then get bored of it again and wash it all off again!!

Yeah, I'm like that. Not in-decisive; oh no, I'm very decisive -just not particularly consistent...

Anyway, I'm going to finish up here and get some well deserved R&R for the night (before starting with the work again in the morning)


Blessed Be xx

Feminism

Feminist prose is confusing; so I'm going to ramble about it to you in the hopes that it'll start making sense to me.
I'm a woman - to me, that is pure logic. [See: Kaydee] 


I'm looking into gender and 'gender boundaries' right now for my dissertation. It's supposed to help me show that the androgyny of Vampires helps to dissolve (or even just disillusion) the gender boundaries that our society constructs around us. 


Things that I already kinda know/understand:


Écriture féminine is a form of writing distinguished by Hélén Cixous as women's writing 'of and from the body'. It is supposed to connect deeply with the unconscious, and have a movement to it that mimics the unconscious. Water and other 'female' images are supposed to be used, and if the structure is hindered from this it is normally shown as the outside force. Many early works written in this style are littered with other peoples thoughts - normally men (normally husbands). The female is often portrayed as instinctive, mutable, emotional and unconscious - in juxtaposition to the male logical, direct certainty. 


Binary Gender opposition is basically where we define Men as 1 and women as 0. We are total opposites according to this - the one being phallic and the zero being vulvic (or yonic, if you want a couple cool words for the female "phallus"... yes, I had to look it up) we women fall under the nice little heading of 0. This means that men become the 'it' while we women become the 'Other'. That which is defined via absence/opposition. The in-y to their out-y. The lack of dangle to their angled dangled dongle... I dunno where I'm going with this, I think I got lost in a tangle of angles and bangles and dangles and... there I go again! 
So yeah, basically - binary gender opposition is what sets men up as the be all and end all. They are the definition - the definers. We become only the defined - the lack-there-of... 
Which is why Feminist writing is so reactionary against male writing, and standardisation. 


Which leads me onto Phallogocentrism. I love this word. It's a combination of logo-centrism  and phallo-centrism.
I quote (from my own essay... cause I'm cool like that...)
" ‘“phallogocentric” tradition,’ (a merging of logocentrism, the focus of power being on words, and phallocentrism, the focus of power being the phallus, to create phallogocentrism) The Awakening, Francesco Pontuale (1996) "
(though I would now argue that the focus of power concerned by phallocentrism is more on the phallus bearer in 9 cases out of ... well, 9 really... but.. we'll be conventional and say out of 10)


So, we basically have men being the definers, the controllers of language, the ones who own everything and displace women through their general differences and 'Otherness'. This means that it's practically impossible for women to become their own definers.
Think of it this way - not only are you already defined (from birth) in a particular way; you also have no tools beyond the masculine language that's enforced on you consistently with which to define yourself. It's like being the colour blue, and only have red crayons to show what that means. Can you do it?
There's been talk of a new 'feminine' language, though I can't remember where on earth I read about it - and I'll be damned if I'm going to read through every tiny thing again just to find some vague mention of something that probably never materialised.


Guys are probably thinking - well, it's not as if it matters anyway. In what way is the language 'masculine' anyway? It's not gendered!
Well, actually - it is. Especially English. Instead of adopting the gendering of objects like in languages like French, we simply reuse the masculine words to describe women. 
Think about it. What words have we got to describe a girl? Woman, female... the only one that isn't masculine orientated - that isn't a deviation from the masculine, is 'girl' - which is applied to the young, or those we wish to condescend. As a child we don't have much sexual gender differential, so there is no real gender to convey. 
Hence, our own language defines us as 'Not-man' - or 'Not-male'. We are defined by what we are not rather than what we are. 

Now, I know that I sound like I'm being petty or pedantic... but can you imagine how crap it is to be defined by what you aren't?
It's like something my mum said to me once. We were talking about perceptions and disability. She was in a wheelchair a fair while, and people have weird assumptions about you if you're in a wheelchair. Did you know over half the population believe that if a person is in a wheelchair they're mentally (not (just) physically) disabled? Well, as silly as that seems - at least to me - they do. People would talk to who ever was pushing my mum instead of her - as if she wasn't even there. She said "People see you and instantly think about what you can't do. You don't judge anyone else that way. You see a plumber, you think 'that person can fix pipe problems'; you see a doctor, you think 'that person can make people better'; you see a carpenter, you think 'that person can make stuff with wood'... you think about what they can do. It's just not fair to be instantly judged as 'incapable'."

That's what being a woman feels like at times. Like you're instantly seen as less in some indefinable way.

(w/o - man... without man... f/e - male... ?? I dunno - random thought/aside...)


Maybe I just relate to pallogocentrism so much because I'm a word person. I love words. I love understanding them, and where they come from, and why they evolve... Etymology is really important to me; and I can't explain why. 


So, where does that leave me in relation to Gender Boundaries and Androgyny??


I have no idea cause I've not really covered Gender Boundaries yet, have I? Whoops...


Well, I'm going to leave it for now, and return to this later.
For now...




Blessed Be xx