i am in love.

being away makes me know what i have.

and i won't deny the appeal of man from a town that agrees dinosaurs are cooler than unicorns. behold the maidstone crest, home of the first discovered iguanadon in the world:



fucking sexy eh?

karma

last friday Julie and I had our first congregation as SMEC - the secret meat eaters club - at the Buffalo Grill (a kitchy place with Native American chief portraits on the wall and the best peppercorn steak this side of the Atlantic). In our revelry, we shared fantastic ribs and decadent desserts to top it all off. And in the communal feasting she totally gave me a hideous virus. the bitch.

Serves me right for gorging on animal carcasses in Liam's pure vegetarian absence I guess.

But worst of all, this does not bode well for my Saturday morning flight to Geneva for a weekend getaway with Jennie and Chrissy.

Lord knows I am not missing out on a minibreak holiday to the continent though. Especially if I spent $500 on a two hour flight. Europe is fucking expensive and I am not wasting it god damn it. So I am taking every herbal suppliment and drug in the cabinet on a complete overhaul.

If I don't overdose into a coma, I'll be sipping beer on a mountain this weekend. Hallelujah!

I feel like I can breathe again.

With deadlines as they are, I've been working 16 hour days (including half day saturdays), then go over to Liam's for a rushed dinner and then collapse into bed for a restless night of worry for the last couple of weeks. Add his chronic illness and course ending simultaneously and we've pretty much been a wreck.

So I'm holed up in bed, on my first real day off, with a fabulous book and my chocolate bunnies (left for me to enjoy in Liam's absence, he's away to Kent this week) while i recouperate. Mostly involving ice cream cones, sunny walks and organizing the lipsticks I never wear by shade as a cathardic excersize.

well, that and fantasizing about my fantastic mini-break weekend excursion to the continent with Jennie and Chrissy and then an easter holiday to die for. Did I show you yet? We're going here: http://www.uniquescotland.com/rock/index.html . Just us and the wilderness. I'm counting the minutes.

babbling about bottles

so we all i am big pile of girly mush deep down. i've hidden it well. the masculine tentendcies and need for power certainly help. but sometimes i just want movie ending gushy kitten cuddles and pretty dresses.

which is why i perhaps didn't make a thing of valentines. 1, it is lame 2, i don't understand it as a holiday and 3, god forbid i did manage to convince myself it is both valuable and the epitome romantic, i'd never live up to my own expectations and that would be pathetic. like stab my own eyes out sad.

so i couldn't really be bothered or disappointed when I opened a hot water bottle.

the hot water bottle is indeed and archaic british thing, and new ones do smell a bit of institutions and clean rubber.

to be fair, as water bottles go, it's cute. if gap made a perky stripey one this is totally it. but they are so old ladyish I felt kind of blah to be honest. (dowdy is a good word.)

but now, a couple weeks later I am here to sing of my conversion.

I take it all back. The hot water bottle is the bestest most romantic valentines gift ever.

lordy, that swashy warm goodness wrapped up in cheerful knitwear on a pms day is the best thing. ever.

Its kind of like when a baby all cuddles into your side like a warm gooey happy thing except that if you roll over, you can't kill it. Plus, I feel gross and unmanagable and completly unfit to be near human life, but the bottle doesn't mind. It just let's me spoon it with it's cheerful pompom ties, radiating calming warmness and watch Persuasion again until the pain goes away.

It wasn't immediate, this love of mine. And it's not always necessary. But when things are bad, and I feel my absolutely worst, it's there to take care of me. soothe away my ickiness and i feel better. It's a rainyday, chips are down, end of the world sort of reminder. And I love it.

Liam is a fucking god.

i was going to write how you know you're in a couple when you stay home from work sick and you go to put in a favourite dvd, you have to eject Civ III and it makes you smile.

but not only is that a grammatical disaster, sadly unfunny, it is also a vaguely Jeff Foxworthy type cliche.

but i still think it's sweet.

looking back, moving on

last weekend something possessed me to label all my old entries into a series of vague usually useless categories no one else will ever use.

i think my OCD tendencies played no small part (my co-workers have begun to notice i clean my desk every night before i leave and systematically tap the desktop while composing important emails). but more than that, i was in the mood for a little retrospective.

suddenly i catch myself so completely enraptured this life. a life that i never imagined or could possibly have thought was mine not so very long ago. little moments where he tucks me into bed as he gets up so no drafts get in. or as i quickly sign off on my taxi account in the back of a cab, late for a board meeting. or when i tell him i love him and know that i mean it. fleeting moments of some other pretend life. like scenes from a movie or more appropriately, some other twenty-something with a job and a partner and none of the things i ever really considered to be part of my reality.

from the outside it seems so unlike me, so impossible to be here, that when i suddenly see it, the shock is overwhelming. and it never completely disappears. or it hasn't yet anyway. i do realize 5 months isn't really a forever by any means. frankly i have my doubts about me and forever too. but i guess that's part of my point. when i am suddenly jerked out of this misty haze of contentment and day-to-day and see myself from a distance being comfortable with a hand on mine and giving presentations without my tell-tale right knee quiver, I see someone else and wonder how I got here. How i can still feel and be me and yet have grown into something I never could have dreamed for myself.

i guess it's that i've so quickly become accustomed to a life wholly unconnected with what came before in so many ways. that i already take it for granted when only six months ago i was the same, but everything else was different. and that necessitates admitting i have no idea where the next six months will lead.

so, in this oddly worrisome and yet entirely unburdened mood, i wanted to look back on how i got here. as if seeing my moody scratches would give me a retrospective map of my path to her and now. to shed some light on what has become an utterly unbelievable journey.

suffice to say, i didn't tell me anything i didn't already know. i did grimace and wonder at the things i used to say and feel about him and me. i am still uncomfortable with our awkward past i guess, but better at now and trying to undo the things i did then. it's a miracle we happened the way we did i think, but somehow i am not surprised i did that backwards too.

and it's easy to see how desperately unhappy i was at my old job, as it slowly ate into me and my tone. and worrisome how the content changed from friends and escpapdes to a chornology of coupledom and ranting. and a relief to see the trickling away of wild desperate adventures just screaming out. clutching at need. and doubt.

i don't have any reason to be writing this. you don't care gentle reader. frankly, whether you read them or not, it's all still the rubbish in my head at the end of the day.

i guess suddenly the newness of it all struck me this morning. timely, what with my first valentines just past and our birthdays both next week. i'm marking time, noting change and assessing. like always, i overanalyze. the content may change, but the system stays in tact.

today seems like a day of trivialities.

of french pastry and mangoes in bed.
of languishing naps in the afternoon.
of kissed scars and bruised secrets.

and perhaps the silliest thing of all, i got a friendster update in my inbox. the kind you get every two seconds and promptly delete. i think i was last properly on friendster somewhere in 2005 , but it was my cousins birthday and i thought i'd drop him a line.

and while i was in , i did something daft. i changed my profile to state "in a relationship". a pointless excersize, possibly even a curse, now a ticking timebomb over this little love affair of mine. but somehow i wanted to see it in print for a minute. to claim him. to declare us. it's nothing really. a pointless act. a silly impulse. frankly i might just go change it back because it makes me uncomfortable, us being out there in that stupid slightly sad context.

uncomfortable. perhaps just a gesture of proper acceptence i've avoided. friday night we were out with a mutal friend and it was weird. that is to say, i was weird. it's still not right; being out in the world and being the us we have cultivated at home. like i don't fit in my skin. feeling watched and judged. and somehow finding the space for the rest of the world in my vision means i lose focus of him and we fall apart. or i walk away, i'm not sure there's a difference.

it's strange it only happens out with friends. sometimes i think we could have sex in front of strangers and i'd be unphased (rest assured, the v is not wholly dead). but somehow people knowing us before means i have trouble being us now. of marking the change. of performing this role for them. for me. for us. that somehow it's none of their buiness. it shouldn't affect my other relationships. it's so apart from the rest of life.

like i am proving there is still a me outside of this. but who am i proving it to?

it's cruel a little i think, being so seperate out there. like i'm hiding. like it isn't a big deal. like it can wait. mostly that i feel so awkward and distance myself for refuge. like i can turn us off. as if being with him is so segregated from my normal life i am incapable of doing both. it's something we still fight about. this otherness of ours. my lack of concern for us when others are about.

and perhaps today i am just deciding, in a virtual tickbox fashion, i want to be there. to be comfortable enough with me and him to exist together. here and now, no matter what the context.

like i say, a trivial thing.

someday

I'm getting pretty crap at this.

The oh so glamourous career move has (temporarily?) put a damper on my social life, my sleep patterns and my ability to while away entire evenings on the internet.

Mostly all I live and breathe is logistical nightmares and trying to get my head around the burocracy of arts funding in the public sector. It's a completely other planet.

But all that aside, it's starting to be those crisp clear winter days that make me happy to look out the window, but loathe to leave him in bed. One of these mornings when he begs me to stay I just will, damn the consequences. Oh how I miss the casual schedules of student life. Carpe Diem feels a world away lately.

I just keep holding my breath for the day we can hop in the car, drive to our cottage, and unplug the phone for a whole week. A holiday in the country seems idyllic; all long walks and cozy nights and bright stars. Cable knit sweaters and babbling brooks. Homemade soup and log fires. It's like an 80s Lands End catalogue, except the whole dirty sex part.

(Of course I want to stay in an ancient cathedral turned flat in the wilderness because that's fabulous and weird (and has a gothicy wrought iron bed), but his Catholic sensibilities make it difficult to do what I plan to, there of all places. le sigh. But perhaps the private island scenario will work out after all. There no one will hear me scream.)

But today it just feels forever away.

More than 2 months. More than 300 miles. More than a list of print deadlines and proof reports.

More like a lifetime.

stranger than fiction

life is at its best when you see the cogs turning.

when you can feel the hum of life, the ins and outs and ups and downs that made today, right now, what it is.

my mother always told me it took 14billion years to make me. Every evolutionary step that could have been to elsewhere. Every sperm down the line that was the one, bringing me here. As I am to this place and time and life instead of someone else.

and in the moments I feel its truth, this unending string of conincidence and luck and choice and reason that go back to the beginning of time whichhave made my life what it is today, is such a gift rather than the burden it sometimes seemed as a child.

Today, where I can lie in bed and run my fingers through his curls. Today, where I can have cookies for breakfast because we can't be bothered to go to the kitchen. Today, where I can see the shadow of my brother in the cinema. A year ago, a world away, but it's a hazy grayness of him that makes my heart skip a beat. Today, where I can fret over laundry and argue over dishes. Today, where I can feel ready for tomorrow.

It truly is remarkable I've been given this life. An odd one, a mad dash, a random collection of incidents, an unknown. But it's mine. And it's a wonderful thing.

i have become a domesticated british octogenarian version of my mother.

so i'll give you the little update:

new years has come and gone. we spent it curled up in bed with champagne and cheesecake. it was a shame they cancelled the fireworks here due to destructive weather, but all in all I think it one of one my best in it's simplicity.

i've left my old job (which i could rant on about, but frankly it's over and i am glad) and begin a new one on monday (which i am not really ready to face with all its lifechanging big step exciting terrifying butterflies of death connotations).

so i'm revelling in a long weekend of limbo

this morning liam and i went for tea and scones at a cafe overlooking the castle...and to see a flat. i am not ready to move in together. but still, the temptation of looking in other peoples homes is overwhelming. i love househunting, especially when i have nothing at stake. so we went for the fun of it and found the picturesque riverside cobblestoned village of turreted flats and windowboxes we may someday move into. (good lord don't tell the gradys.)

tomorrow i think will be a jaunt to a watercolour exhibition and possible the shore, fitting for our drippy gray skies and my fluid lackadaisical moods.

and that my friends, is about all i've got. not thrilling, not even news really. but there you go. i'm here. and it's a little bit random and a little bit odd and usually quite scary and weird, and sometimes just so very perfect. and i am okay with that.

so it's been an upy downy kind of week. i am reveling in the small things and blindly ignoring the horrors of the big picture. okay, it's not that bad but i didn't get the job and work is unbearably bad and my stomach has gotten worse - something i wasn't sure was possible a week ago.

but, possibly as karmic balance for such ick, my regular life has been beyond compare.

thursday night was a brilliant thanksgiving. even though i still managed to fling a mixer of cheesecake batter all over myself and sonja and over bake the sweet potatoes. but i did make the best stuffing of all time and the soporific effects of turkey soothed my ragged self.

and this was the first weekend liam didn't have to work sunday. so we had a lie-in and cafe brunch and wander through a beautiful graveyard holding hands at sunset. granted, not the normal sunday for someone else but so nice and so right for us. especially when he got creeped out i wanted to crawl into a crypt. but still, a lovely sleepy sunday.

plus yesterday was the scottish childrens book awards so i spent most of the day blathering with friendly publishers and librarians over too much champagne. ooh, and a 2nd grade class acted out the winning picture book which was so cute it almost made me cry. suffice to say it was a cowboy cyotote who "bumped his bottom" on a cactus. ridiculously cute if badly written and a little psychotic. (ps the baby pangs are fucking scary. start worrying. )

actually, total baby related sidenote; sunday night (while moving furniture in a fit of coupley domesticty) we started naming babies. right now he is inclined to the classics while i am rooting for oddment words. so far kaleidoscope ann and anemone fugit will be joined by the twins rampart and meniscus in my mad lady house over run with scary children probably in pinafores. it is a frightening future. thank god i am on the pill.

news

so things are the same.i hate my job, my inards are having a battle of epic proportions (although the doctors say i am fine), it rains all the time and i totally have gross out dry skin.

but somehow it feels okay.

this is in no small part to my employment prospects (there are two jobs i totally want up for grabs). or that i am on new meds and can see a real highly paid doctor in america who might be able to fix me. or that i will be home in six weeks (i think tom and i should go away for a few days before chrismtas - perhaps to neferiously scope easternseaboard schools? don't tell him i said that. if only kate would be home too). or that my mother has totally joined myspace (which i find endearing and completely weird). or that i am addicted to cheese on toast.

and of course, it does't hurt i had an amazing weekend. in three days liam and i managed to do nothing but somehow the kind of nothing that makes you feel better. and gives me hope. maybe we're not so broken as all that.

it's funny how playing domestic and having regular naps can change the color of the world.

Seasonal

I know it's been awhile.

We've been without internet, and frankly life is simultaneously too fast to substantially record and so unremarkable and trudging I don't have much to say.

Without sounding cliche, the coming of fall and the impending winter find me rather cheerless lately. Things are just a little flatter, duller. And it takes more and more effort to bother with the day to day.

But enough. Today I am going to make a concerted effort. So, here I am. And as always, I will be probably descending into a vague and varied list form at any given moment.

Liam and I are still rather up and down. But we're on the same ride. Together. Which feels like progress. Actually, things have been quite good in all honesty. But last night he whispered "why do you like me?" and I dont yet have a satisfactory answer. I just do. We are trying to decide where to go on holiday. Probably to a remote cottage in the Lake District.

In other news, life is turning fall. There was the musk of fox this morning and red leaves litter the street. Jules and I are making lamb stew and pumpkin cornbread tomorrow to celebrate.

Oh, and I've started eating cheese. Nibbling a platter at my sister's began the long decent to normalcy and dairy loving madness. Monday night I couldn't be bothered to cook so had cambazola on charcoal crackers.

It's the first fall of my life where everything is staying exactly the same. And I don't like it. So yeah, I am okay, but ready for change.

some things

so it's been a while.

i know. i got distracted.

and this morning i woke and instead of jumping into the fray of uncertainty, i refused to get out of bed until i'd actively thought through some shit and now i feel better. on this list, with no concern for importance are the following:

- i hate my job
- ergo, i will look for a new one
- i miss school
- therefore, i will pursue the long awaited return to academia. for real.
- (i can't wait)
- i am glad i revamped my fall wardrobe in california with pencil skirts and lace. It's a nice look with tweed.
- i miss home. in a big way. like maybe i won't stay here forever way.
- i kind of have begun a relationship which simultaneously freaks me out, makes me retarded and has the potential to take over my life (in the best and worst senses)
- i am coming to realize i adore him. (not only because he says he will move to boston with me to do my phd.)
- jane eyre part two is airing tonight. things like this make life worth living.
- cheese platters are a new found source of happiness. it's good i am growing out of my food phobias. i ate an olive this weekend, to an aghast liam who lauded my bravery. i ignored the condescention, but welcomed the congratulatory kiss.
- i am coming home for christmas even if it means quitting my job. i'd like to hope by chrismtas i wont be working there anyway.
- i miss my siblings more after i see them.
- i need hobbies. my sanity cant take the silent meaningless tranquility of retail
- i am ready to settle down. not like barefoot with babies or anything (though can it be far off?) but, like, get a job I want to have. for a long time. invest in real estate. buy china. have a life i made, not just floating around. and it really wouldn't hurt if that life had an upper middle class income with a partner, a brownstone, and possibly a volvo.

done me in

so i've finally crashed. all that stuff that's been freaking me out? well, it ate away at me until there was nothing but acid and bile left and last night i almost fainted in a jacket potato shop.

rewind. let's review shall we?

monday was tired (sunday day with liam then midnight roof picnic tuckered me out) and had a goodbye with mandy. she left for greece and now her room is empty and i miss coming home to bitch together and watch costume dramas.

but, then had fabulous bookfestival party. lots of champagne, amazing dress and everyone i know. in fact, ended up with keith and hot scot, like so many nights before, where keith decided hot scot's girlfriend, who isnt george glass of leeds after all, is so not good enough (she is a little on the dowdy school teacher side) and his personal mission is to do her in and convince him i'm much better. which of course i am, but it is still sweet of keith to say it. still, another night of no sleep.

tuesday was work. wretched. it's become so corportate we are no longer allowed to carry pens that aren't blue black or red. seriously. soon i wont be able to have decent novels either.

then that night had to have people round to see the flat. seriously, i had to advertise online and everything. it blew. but they were all nice and sonja came for emotional support and apple crumble, and now Catriona is moving in next week to grow herbs in the garden and take walks with.

then liam called (his family is in town and that stress of hosting plus incongruous limbo of tourism at home freaked him) so he came over and we cuddled until we both felt better. better than sleep, but still, no sleep.

wednesday work was equally crap and i didnt feel well. i rallied tolerably for girly movie night (newsies!!!) but when we were watching the extras after and he called, i suddenly wanted to be home in bed more than anything.

so jules and i left, i called him back, he came over and we spent all night curled together whispering secrets and feeling the edges of each other.

but, i was so stressed about leaving and movings and work and kate and everything all at once my brain was going a mile a minute. plus the added anxiety of someone next to me. to feel my every move. to ache to hold. generally i have been of the up and out mentality and this whole togethering thing threw me for a loop and rest illuded me.

and (and if you ever tell anyone this i'll deny it) in the safety of the dark i admitted the only thing that makes my brain shut up is really loud sex. and although we had decided we aren't ready for full on sex, he was certainly more than obliging. i almost screamed and after that felt much much calmer.

i called in sick to work thursday. i hadnt slept, my stomach was being worse, i might be starting my period, i'd just spent the night on pretty much a mental roller coaster and the last thing i needed were more office dramas and corporate bullshit.

i slept and made lists and lolled about in bed. in the afternoon he came back, better rested, and we napped and goofed off and planned on going to a friends leaving do.

we were hours late. we hadn't eaten all day. i was feeling worse.

with kate and julian we decided to get dinner. a foursome i've grown accustomed to. one i will miss now he is leaving. but i looked at my jacket potato with vegtable curry and was ill.

my hearing went, my vision was spotted, i blanched and couldnt hold my head up.

i went out to the fresh(er) air of cockburn street and liam rubbed my back and plied me with water until i could see straight.

i said my forever goodbye to julian with my head between my knees and his hand on my shoulder. it was ridiculous. but overly dramatic and retarded seems to be my calling card. they went on their way, back to his party, and liam stroked my back until i could stay upright.

then we caught a taxi where i slept with my head in his lap, until i got home. he put me to bed and insisted he go get bread and important things i will need. he came back later with beautiful flowers and my favourite juice and rubbed my back til i fell asleep.

he says he loves me. and he's been so wonderful i am inclined to believe it for all of our weirdness. and i woke up this morning missing him.

i don't pretend it's not weird. and broken. i know we both really need somebody right now in all the ever changing mess. and have no idea if it will stay this way when he goes to school and i sort out my bullshit.

but it is so wonderful to have someone to hold and to hold me. and the promise of us is so very very good. so, i know i'll deserve flack. but right now i am happy. like it'll be okay.

so wait to shoot me for being blind and mushy. wait until i'm ready to give this up.

i haven't written because mostly i haven't anything to say.

work is utter hell, but then i am actually actively applying for others, so it seems silly to moan on about it.

festival season is gearing up but i am too tired, poor, and hormonal to book any tickets.

and the general nebulous discontent with this deadend life seems to really just be a gap year gone on too long and no plan for a legitimage future.

not to mention i am so incredibly horny it's hard to see straight.

so yeah, i am walking around in a distracted daze hoping by some miracle to wake up with a better knee (so i can wear cute shoes again), a better job (so i can afford them) and a better (or arguably any) man (so i can have wild raucous sex very very often).

yeah i know. it's not like we are together. not really. not when it counts. he may bring me flowers, ask me to meet his mother and pet my head, but when the chips are down, i'm still not getting laid.

but i am so starved (and we are so weird) a goodnight kiss turned into a sleepless frustrated night and scratches he still bore the next day. i am equal parts embarassed, unsatisfied, and pure lust.

it's sick. it makes no sense (jesus ask jennie. what am i doing?). and part of me really has to ask, what the fuck is he waiting for? he must seriously be asexual if the vixen in heat still gets nothing. i give up. and worst, i just don't get why he wouldn't want me. he is obviously retarded. and i can't take it.

i want sex. now. and for the forseeable future. at my beck and call. until it hurts to move. is that so much to ask?

looks like i need to get a move on.

stories

my new friends (aka the ones who met me in a professional capacity and have not yet (or at least rarely) been exposed to my drunken lunacy, vixenish mania, or general idiotic frivolity outside the office) have begun remarking with regular frequency how all my stories are weird, ridiculous, and sometimes frightening.

fair enough, the hole in the picture of my brain i don't remember getting because my sister hit me on the head with a hammer is weird.

or the dog running away from the boy in the bodycast and the lady with no memory not knowing how to pick him up, so calling her high school best friend's mom (the only phone number she remembers) can be uncomfortable (but very funny).

the time andy got drunk and complained how drew got laid more than him is a good one too, but only when one explains the entire andy-andy height comedy value.

or when bridget and i smuggled greasy mozzerella sticks in to see the hours under my shirt and i burned my stomach. that's classy.

soon Cruella (her heavy make up runs when her eyes water. a lot.), the psycho flatmate who hates me for kicking her out (she took it kind of personally), and slept with all my friends, will be in regular rotation too, but not til she actually leaves.

even small everyday occurances like how the special ed kid proposed to me in the lunch line everyday for a year or i broke my arm playing gym class soccer and my teacher didnt believe me or even just the fact i used to be a butterfly swimmer gets a chuckle. these are now hilarious anecdotes well and truly out of the scope of these tame british people. i am like a sitcom without the studio audience.

i was mostly amused at my novelty act, that any awkward pub conversation or bad encounter can be salvaged by a sara-story is a handy weapon when one knows mostly tools.

i was getting used to idea that i was just a better storyteller than i used to be, and the fact that i laugh through most of the horrific and sometimes gory memories of my childhood and beyond i thought was a step forward from the cowering and crying that occupied my early years.

julie once said (i think i was in the midst of the broke-the-arm-falling-off-the-vaccuum-cleaner story) "don't you have any normal stories?".

i don't think i do, and i am totally okay with that. at first i thought maybe this was just my schtick, but turns out i was wrong.

jennie came last weekend. and she told the bat story and mentioned both the time i passed out and threw up jungle juice in our dorm and the time she puked on our kitchen floor. in fact we did a lot of reminiscing and at our picnic i missed my lady death strike nails a lot.

and it could have been julie again, but i don't remember, anyway someone said "god, don't your friends have any normal stories about you either?".

and then i got a letter from my brother. a real hand written ledgible letter (i know. i got all weepy happy) and the whole first page was a story about how mom was excited to see the strangers with candy movie and the only interview with amy sedaris was in playboy, so she bought it. not only bought it, bought it from the 7-11 at jolly and okemos so now the kid behind the counter (who tom went to school with) gives him the shifty eye all the time because he knows our mom buys porn.

and although this is a very funny story, especially if you know mom, it made me realize the storytelling isn't just my thing. it's how we all are. it's how everyone at home i know is and is possibly one of the things i miss most.

maybe it's my secret password, this ability to have ridiculous embarassing things happen and then laugh about it later. lord knows no one would survive with me very long if they couldn't laugh at kate's double broken feet or being cast as the lover of your arch-nemesis in the school play. (especially that time my skirt fell down in the school talent show). i break, ruin, or screw up a lot. and it's funny.

lordy, if jennie hadn't been amused or at least tolerant of my destroying the car, being convinced we were going to be raped in a cornfield, and positive obsession with fazolis within the first 24hours of our roadtrip, i don't think we'd be friends. but she did. and we are. and i am glad.

anyway, you may wonder (if you are still reading) why i am ranting on and on about stories and screw ups and silliness.

because, yet again, i have done it.

i am bedridden.

last night i helped liam move - from one 5th floor flat to another - and all the stairs and heavy boxes were too much for my knee. my patella tendon is so seized up i can't move my leg without grating pain not unlike the staples that used to hold it together. and i had to call into work because i could not stand up this morning. seriously. no good deed goes unpunished indeed.

so here i am, stuck in bed, writing an email to my boss since i cant reach the phone, and all i can think is, she will so not appreciate the hilarity here within.

worthy

i had always believed, or rather, hoped, adulthood would come with some degree of self awarness and possession.

i find i was yet again desperately wrong.

of course i also used to believe i would only have one overpowering feeling at a time.

today i find i am entirely tranquil, pleasant even, after a morning at the van gogh premiere at the dean and a lazy afternoon nap.

but neither of these glorious things has negated or even balanced my thick black anger-disappointment double header. It is unreasonable I can care so much when the last thing in the world I want is this unbridled attachment. It is unfair. It is bullshit. I want out.

I want to believe me.

perhaps jean grey wasn't a total cunt

didn't you ever wonder if the phoenix was really jean grey just snapped? she was sick of the fake and the wimpy and the dictation and the lame sweetness and just fucking flipped and went on a rampage? that the whole suspended animation thing was just a flimsy cover up?

because scott wouldnt put out and the professor wouldnt let her use cerebro and the team shunted her to recon and research. that she fainted at every breath and constantly had to fend off logan. that 20 years in that school and she was still just an assistant. that she had to wear nude colored cargo pants. i'd have done more than a poorly executed apocalypse, that's for sure.

today it feels like that.

like the well of frustration is running over and this tub of me has no overflow drain.

i feel in a rage. or rather, like in the very near future i soon will be.

granted, part of this will be it is the morning of my last day of vacation and i have done absolutely nothing. and part of me is still a whinging toddler who hates the end of things.

but it is seriously more than that.

i bit liam saturday. hard. he was mad at me for something i hadnt done and stormed out of a party. i left soon after in a drunken rage of disappointment and libido. i ran into him on the street, my mind too fuzzy to know if it was on purpose. i didnt have words. i had what equates to pg angry sex. standing on a street corner. hot and fast and rushing and a little bit violent. i felt caged. and it felt great. and if fucking scares me.

sometimes he is so terribly frustrating. harsh. cruel. cold. and most the time i am yoga-goddess weatherer of storms. but every once in a while he gets in and tears me apart and i flood like the hoover dam. and it makes me hate both of us. and i dont know which frightens me more; that we got ourselves here or that when the chips are down and i've lost control, i hurt him.

it also doesnt help i was in a mood that whole night because it was phils goodbye party.

and for all our mess and his silliness and everything we have ever screwed up between us, he was so easy. to be with and not be judged or used or feel compelled to talk. he was a guy in the very best of ways and i will miss him.

plus, he gave me his return of the jedi pillowcase. i have no words for how much this means to me. he has had it since 1983. it was always the one i used. on drunk nights when i crashed on the sofa. on the infamous walk of shame morning i was too hungover to go home and lay around his all day, grateful he didnt ask. as a seat cushion for arrested development marathons. my arm rest for blue jays games. my pillow that one night we "napped". and he gave it to me. he was always a sentimental guy. and now it sits on my chair, and i dont have the heart to use it.

and of course there should have been a party to see him off. he always complained he had no friends but me and jack. and truth be told it was sarah's friends and my co-workers and random neighbors. girls he'd slept with and pub aquaintences. the party went on for hours after i waved goodbye to the taxi. but a little piece of me wanted to say goodbye to my boys - for jack took him to the airport - on my own. not with strangers passing a fag an armsbreath away and my own drama waiting for me upstairs. it felt rushed. cramped. amputated. and he was worth more than that. i hope he knows it.

sorry, i am just full on whinging now.

last night having to talk on the phone right before bed was horrible. which dont get me wrong, it can be lovely. but it can be so full of heavy silences and pregnant phrasology i rarely have the energy for much less sleepy hung over and lonely. plus, it is infinately worse when it is all just flippant chatter and errands i dont want to address from bed on a sunday. sometimes it only reminds me how far away you are. i know i am a freak about the phone, but it put me in a mood straight away today.

anyway, i should stop. cut myself off before i say something really horrid i dont even mean. just to feel it in my mouth. let me watch the dominoes fall. pick at the scabs and watch them bleed.

i am going to have breakfast and pay my council tax and play my violin and then i think take a bath. and hopefully this tar, this thick creeping bile, will be seeped away. gently excreeted from my every pore until my insides are clear again. i am clear again. i am clean.

the salisbury steak of life

i am tired a lot.

but only just recently have a hit a level of fatigue that negates all other life.

i am tired of pretend. of everyday taxing. of anticipated monotony.

i don't want this pseudo-life. with will-they-wont-they relationships, and mediocre careers. cute work outfits and wild work nights-out. the routine of disappointment, distraction, and denial.

ready made life packets now available in your grocers fridge. it's so easy, so mouthwatering and tempting. so cheap and lo-carb. promising you can be sated in minutes, the e-numbers veiling the lifelong regrets that will follow.


i have a week off starting tomorrow.

a week on my own. no holiday. no flatmates. just an empty canvas. and i want to come out the other end sure of something.

it might take a spirit guide in the woods goddammit, but i am not going back to that.

i am unwilling to settle.