...console yourself with the fact that, by technicality, everyone's a freak.

Psychopath:  Also called: sociopath.       A person afflicted with a personality disorder characterized by a tendency to commit antisocial and sometimes violent acts, and a failure to feel guilt for such acts. Since I've been taking psychology as one of my A levels, I've found myself attempting to categorize the people around me, trying to attribute their current self to events in their past, making theories about how their upbringing has shaped them and the choices they make, and the person they are now. Needless to say, it quickly becomes apparent that, in practice, psychoanalysis is a lot harder than it looks. There's a guy I know from drama, who I met about three months ago. I consider him to be a friend, but at the same time, he confuses me so much. The second time we met, he seemed to open up a lot to this intrigued, almost-complete stranger, and basically told me that he adopts a different personality for different people, and constantly lies to those around him to maintain the front he wants them to believe is genuine. It took longer than you'd probably think for me to wonder how much he was lying when he said all of that, but - despite the obvious danger you find associated with any pathological liar - I was inclined to believe him. Helped by my gullibility and his skill as an actor, but still. Earlier tonight, I was talking to him about why he lies so much. It's... just weird. I honestly believe, and I am able to produce examples to back this opinion, that he's a genuinely nice person - and yet he seems to do everything he can to make people think otherwise. It's usually the other way around, when you find a dick from a long line of dicks pretending to be a decent human being in order to get what they want. Why would he do that? Deliberately, voluntarily worsening himself, to a person constantly seeking to better herself like me, is literally incomprehensible. I said as much, and he started saying that it's not necessary to be friends with other people in order to find happiness for yourself, when, I quote, "you can manipulate them to find the same result". He then went on to tell me about how he's relatively indifferent to his current girlfriend, but appreciates her in that he now gets invited to better parties - at which he can find his next, more popular, girlfriend. "So, you're socially ambitious?" "Yep." About five minutes later, he said, "It's getting to the point now where I don't even know what's real. I think I've been lying for the last half hour." Consider yourself mindfucked, Katherine. Quote of the day: Actors are able to trick themselves into treating anything as if it's fantastic. It's a kind of madness really. [Tom Baker]

...take it out on the famous.

The English are fantastic at jumping to assume we know the difference between “right”, and, “so wrong it should be illegal”.

Take Katie Price [Peter Andre’s ex, Holy-Crap-Would-You-Look-At-The-Size-Of-Those, Jordan] – a woman on a hedonistic mission to make the world a worse place. Famous, to put it bluntly, for having a tiny waist and consisting of two parts plastic for every one part human. The extent of Britain’s pure, infuriating idiocy where it concerns celebrity culture is epitomized in the knowledge that she was voted Celebrity Mum of the Year 2007. The stupidity blows my mind.

Going off topic, I consider myself to be of relative intelligence. Nothing special, but not stupid – smart enough, on the rare occasion I find myself bored enough to flick through a narcissistic piece of barely-literature such as Hello at the magazine section of Tesco, to realize that at least eighty per cent of the bollocks I am reading is just that. Lies, mensonges, deceitful articles of utmost dishonesty – call it whatever you want, it's still just bullshit. Why is it, then, that so many of my female peers eat that stuff up like nothing else? Too many times have I walked into a classroom and immediately witnessed a sea of peroxide girls in varying degrees of hysteria, weeping with jealousy over Cheryl Cole’s new hair.

Celebrity culture has never been bigger, nor has it ever been as easy, nor as apparently desirable, to enter into. From the talentless winner of last year’s Big Brother to the legions of “Amiee-Louise, 21, from Manchester”s on page three of the Sun, it seems everyone wants a finger in the proverbial, disgusting pie that constitutes fame.

So, what of the effect this bullshit parade is having on the youth society? How about, I’ll rant about a problem becoming more prominent amongst Britain’s young adults today and preach about its connection to celebrity culture, and you nod in all the right places.

Anorexia nervosa, the relentless self-hatred that accompanies inaccurately believing oneself to be overweight, and an issue somewhat close to my heart for a few years. NHS statistics show this condition has been becoming more common over the last decade, with more people averaging at age sixteen being admitted into hospitals dangerously underweight and still insisting they’re too fat.

It’s a depressing fact that the constantly changing fashions have always, to an extent, dictated what body shape is “right”, dismissing any other as disgusting and wrong. It’s the year 2011, and, unfortunately, bell-bottoms haven’t been cool for decades. This is the era of the skinnies, of the camel-toe-inducing jeggings, of cropped tops to show off the inevitable bellybutton piercing, of pinching non-existent flab on our own upper arms and wailing about uncontrollable bingo wings to garner obliged compliments. [That said, I am guilty of the last one. Maybe I should shut up. Oh, wait - nope, not happening, I have more to rant about.] All the skinny models we see on the catwalk, in everything they wear, seem to be saying: “I am walking on a runway in these clothes, which makes them cool. Copy me to be so.”

It’s annoying – who’s to blame, when a normal size teenage girl turns on the telly and sees Victoria Beckham with her beanpole stature, Keira Pretty-Cow Knightly prancing around with no clothes in the Chanel adverts, any scrawny victim of fashion advisor Rachel Zoe and immediately begins to hate on the horizontal line that appears on her stomach when she stands up after sitting down for ages?

Think about it. The materialism and selfishness and individualism of teenagers today, in most cases, are directly affected by celebrities acting the same. This idea that a person is nothing unless they’re exactly like them starts when someone influential with a fanbase strikes a pose, does something new, something daring [when you think about it, it must have felt weird to be the first person to wear tights with short] and says, “I’m right. You’re so wrong it should be illegal.”

Really, when you take a closer look, this delicious pie of fame everyone’s desperate to take a bite of is the quintessential Fruit of Eden. Initially delicious, satisfying, everything you thought you could ever want – before it turns and bites you on the arse, saying, “Haha, I won, fool.” How many celebrities are really happy, and wish nothing had turned out differently? Very few, I’ll bet.

At the end of the day, it’s people who make give celebrities their definition. Regardless of their talent [or lack thereof], people are made famous because someone sees them and says, “Hey, look over there! They’re cool,” and someone else says, “Oh yeah! So they are!” and then another person joins in, and another, and another, until eventually they’re one of those faces people enter competitions and pay extortionate amounts of money to meet. It’s an odd thought, isn’t it – without us, there would be no Michael Buble, no Adele, no MJ – and no Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, no Jedward. Oh, where would the world be without their maddening, Irish, charmless idiocy. Anyone would think it’s not possible to get decent, famous role models without the inevitable bad eggs coming in to ruin it for everyone.

Maybe we should just choose our celebrities better.

Quote of the day: Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. [John Lennon]

It's been too long...

It really has been too long. Sorry about that. I guess I just became more and more busy and, the longer I went without writing, the harder it became to bother.
And now I'm bothering, I have nothing I feel secure enough to write about.
Sorry :/
Quote of the day: Whenever he thought about it, he felt terrible. So, at long last, he came to a fateful decision. He decided to stop thinking about it.

...hope for the best to happen.

On thesaurus.com, the only antonym for the word "utopia" is "hell".

I've been thinking about that a lot recently. Perfection and all. What is paradise, really? Is it being in an Eden-esq setting, somewhere warm where there's apple trees and honey bees and snow white turtle doves? Is it the feeling you supposedly get ten minutes after a spliff, lolling on a vodka-soaked beanbag with a lazy grin and a dream to conquer the world? Is it being halfway up a tree with friends somewhere in Suffolk, high on cheap Coke and strawberry laces, joking and jamming on a battered guitar and refusing to think about what life has in store for us? Because, to be honest, I'm craving any of the three.

Don't get me wrong - life is good, right now. The school I started about a month ago - so far it's the happiest I've ever been at school, and I hope and pray every day that things will only get better because, to be honest, up 'til now school has never been particularly good and I want my break. [I KNOW, I KNOW - compared to some people, my experiences are nothing, but twelve years of dreading going to school in the morning, even if you're not being mugged/hazed/knifed during the day, gets very tiresome.]

So, that got me thinking some more - how do we know when our "break" has come? Is it when you feel as if you're in paradise, in your own personal Never-Neverland, even if it's only having coffee with someone you know you're going to be with forever, or skydiving, knowing you'll never feel freedom like it again? Because, as good as school is now, it's all relative - if I'd had a better time at my old schools, I probably wouldn't be that impressed, and there is room for improvement. I don't know whether I'm waiting for a revelation, an epiphany of sorts, that will just never happen. Maybe it's more gradual - like Amy said about meeting Rory, "the more you get to know them, the more beautiful they become". I'm not just talking about meeting your soulmate, because not everyone finds happiness in another person, but as much as I like my own company, I know I personally prefer being with others, if they're not dicks. But anyway - more gradual. I'm waiting on a thunderclap of realisation to hit me, when it might be more of a gentle breeze pushing me in the direction of something or someone that will, one day, complete me. And then I'll know.

Maybe.

Quote of the day: One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. [Anon.]

"If I touch a burning candle I can feel no pain; if you cut me with a knife it's still the same."

There's this guy... For now I'll call him Dan. As of late, I've been becoming painfully aware of the fact that I think I love him. Which is a whole lot more crap than it sounds.

Dan is the most volatile, enigmatic, weird, insane, amazing dickhead I've ever met. He changes his tune as often as his clothes, I can't ever really know what he's thinking, he messes me around all the motherfucking time because he knows I'll always go back for more like a weak little puppy, he lies to me, he promises he'll stop hurting me but I know he never will - these are honest facts, as much as I hate them, but they fade into insignificance when he pays attention to me and stops being a dick for a short while. Why is this?

If it isn't obvious enough, I'll spell it out; I don't know why I'm so drawn to him. There's no denying it, he's nice to look at - but there's no way in hell anyone can be hurting so badly over something that's only skin deep. 

Roy Orbison said that love hurts - and, "like a stove, burns you when it's hot". It's true. Every time I think I'm happy on my own, something happens and I end up turning into his bitch yet again. Sometimes I wonder when I'm going to have the balls to end this constant cycle of friends -> attraction -> more than friends but not quite enough -> fighting -> awkward -> barely friends -> friends - but most of the time I'm avoiding confronting the fact that the only way for the cycle to end is to remove him from my life - for now, at least, an unthinkable option. Not even considerable for a minute. It can't be a coincidence that the times I'm at my most happy are when we're more than friends, still in those blissful first days of seeming paradise, before he does something to piss me off and I confront him and immediately regret it but know I need to grow a spine so refuse to take any of it back and he says/does things and I get more angry and dig myself into a deeper hole and he ends up furious at me while I'm banging my head against a brick wall, literally despising myself for ruining everything yet again, rendering any backbone-therapy useless in my refusal to blame anyone but myself.

We're currently hovering somewhere between the fights and the awkwardness, and this time really does hurt more than the others - because, instead of being interested in making up asap like he usually is [despite how I've managed to portray him thus far, I'm pretty sure he's a good man who does genuinely care about me... or maybe that's just the pathetic submissiveness talking], he's busy in the early stages of dating someone else. Call me selfish, because I know I am, but even though knowing he's happy usually makes me happy too, I can't help but resent both of them to the point where I know I'm miserable and bitter to be around and should really let it go before it consumes me completely - but is that something I can hope to control when I feel my heart breaking a little bit more with every passing day I know he's talking to and laughing with someone who isn't me? When I know [or just deliriously hope] I'm a million times better for him than anyone else he's ever going to meet? When a tiny tiny tiny part of me is convinced that he loves me too?

I suppose the wisest thing for me to do now would be to slap some sense into myself, even if I continue to wish with all my heart for him to drop everything and come to me begging for forgiveness he's unsure I'll give him, saying he'll stop being a bastard because I make him want to stop being one. Because I'd say all that and more if I knew he wouldn't stop speaking to me. I wish, so much, he could enter into my head for one day, just to see himself through my eyes and realise how much he means to me.

...come out. Makes everything better.

In my infinite wisdom, I left my nice, warm closet and came out to mum, and now I'm like... what, in the name of Frond, possessed me to do that???

Here's how the conversation went:

Me: I'm thinking of going into town tomorrow.

Mum: Cool. Why?

Me: I want to see Ben and Rory and Stefan.

Mum: Okay.

Me: I'm bi.

Mum: ...

DUDE.

Quote of the day: Homosexuality is God's way of insuring that the truly gifted aren't burdened with children.  [LOVE IT - Sam Austin]

...forget about them.

While the title might suggest that I'm feeling happy and carefree, I am the opposite. I'm confused, annoyed, and a little bit pissed off.

I asked a friend what he thought of me a couple of days ago, and while what he replied was largely positive, one thing stuck in my mind, and remained there for me to mull it over and become steadily more furious.

"It's nice to talk to you and forget the world."

Ugh! I am so sick of people saying stuff along those lines to me! Why do they seem to think I'd ever take being compared to an anaesthetic as a compliment?? Yes, I struggle to deal with my own reality, how good do they think it makes me feel knowing I'm just a means of escape to them? Okay - at the end of the day, maybe I make them feel a little bit better, knowing they can "seek respite in me" or whatever, but then, once they're gone and there's just me on my own, then what do I do? I'm good for more than making people forget about the world

What lemons?

You know what?

It was actually really, really good :)

The atmosphere on the first day couldn't have been more different to that of my disastrous first day at my old school. Maybe because it's not a private school, maybe because the people are just different, or maybe because I'm less brickwall-esq than I was two years ago, but there was minimal awkward idiocy that's always been so characteristic of me. I was able to open my mouth and form comprehensible words and, even better, no one's had me done for harassment yet! How cool? 

English lang was good. The teacher's awesome. She's one of these people who, you can tell, is really passionate about their subject - and not so ready with soul-crushing one-liners like "you're all going to fail and it will not be my fault", like the old one. I got talking with someone remarkably similar to me, in preferred writing styles and hopes for where it'll take us. I think that's great - there's totally not enough people wanting to write nowadays.

And something else - I've just discovered that the word "singsonging" exists. How bloody cool?

Quote of the day: Homer: Wow, your paintings have brushmarks! And your statues have wieners!

Fat Tony: Your words honour my family. [The Simpsons]