Remind me how this works again?

Hey, there. It's been a long, long while. A lot's happened, clearly. Too much for me to keep y'all informed. I'm sorry.

In this post, I'm going to talk about myself a lot. As usual. (Let's be honest. Who writes a blog to write about other people? I don't know why I feel guilty every time something I post something personal on my personal blog that I created for my personal use. Sorry, anyway.)

I am, officially, a student. English Literature with Creative Writing. University of East Anglia. Scary stuff.

The strangest realisation has been that I am only really inclined to make a record of my experiences, and share them, when there's nothing actually happening to me. And even now, when there's more happening to me in the average week than in the sum total of the year prior to my coming to uni, the first thing I'm compelled to inform you about is my sticky "h" key.

I have a sticky "h" key. It gets stuck. 

And now, onto less relevant matters.

I'm at uni. I'm at uni. Fucking university, I'm a student! Who let that happen, oh my goodness.

Freshers' was insane. The day before I was due to go, my sister called to see how I was doing:

Liz               Hey, Kitten. How are you doing? 

Me               [Incoherent noise of terror] 

Liz               You'll be fine. Don't sleep with a flatmate.

Long story short, whoops. (We stopped a long time ago. We're cool now. We take care of one another. The previous sentence was not a euphemism. He holds my hair back when I'm sick and I give him food when he's sad.)

In general, university is the best thing I could have done. I'm more social than I've ever been. I'm studying things I want to study. I'm independent, poor, idiotic and I've got an incredible bunch of independent, poor idiots around me to help me along. I've got a boyfriend who is neither dull nor stupid. I've got a place established, and people here know me for who I am rather than who I was when I was a child. I'm strong enough to make choices I want to make, and intelligent enough to defend them. I didn't know how trapped I was, in a village in Suffolk, until I got out - and it's terribly cliche, but I'm free, and I'm happy.

If I don't post again for six months, a year, and things have gone to pot - I've fallen to drugs, I've been kicked out, I've been disgraced, whatever - then let this post be a static memorial of a time when, truly, I have never been happier.

Mermaid Avenue

Do you ever have an idea that's so good it scares you? As in, the responsibility of taking an idea and nurturing it into a complete work of art for others to enjoy and appreciate (as opposed to a series of interconnected brainjumbles indecipherable to anyone but yourself) is too much, so that you end up with a great idea but with little to no intention of seeing it become something more?

Ah, cursed spite!

To vote or not to vote

Local Elections are up 'n' coming, and the whole thing is just an increasingly irksome reminder of how far there is for this country to go before it becomes a place for anyone to be proud to live.

First up, the candidates. Look at all the rich, white men, with their indistinguishable manifestos and unreliable promises. Their pseudo-tolerance, their visible smarm, their self-interest, their shameless brown-nosing. Bless their little lying hearts, look at them go.

Deciding who to vote for is like sifting through the scum to try to find the least shitty. For sure, the easiest way would be to not vote at all, but why give the extremists an easy path to victory? We need to crush these fuckers like the poisonous snakes they are, and have as many people voting for parties other than the ones at the very tips of the wings.

I firmly believe that everyone who is eligible to vote, should vote. Good luck choosing.

This made me laugh. Especially the "invasion of France" bit.

Lookin' back

Fourteen years in The Midlands followed by five years in The East has left me with this dumb amalgamation of several dumb accents that now makes up the dialect and my idiolect I'm probably stuck with for life, and it's so effing dumb.

I don't often think back further than is necessary - like, there's no need to dwell on my childhood and early adolescence unless it's relevant to what I'm doing or saying at the time, so I don't. Is this anomalous behaviour? I don't get it, is it normal for people to relay words said and people met and time spent in their heads, over and over, until the memory warps into a crude approximation of reality? Because that's what happens whenever I can't stop thinking about something/someone, and it just feels like setting myself up for disappointment. So, I prefer not to think about what's happened before, because while I have lived a relatively privileged life so far, the things that jump out to me when I think back are the unhappiest of times - and on the odd occasion when I'm reminded of something good - like earlier today, when I passed by a bus stop where I used to meet this guy I was once close with, I thought about how we used to go into town, and talk for ages, and shop, and drink smoothies, etc etc - and that was nice, in a way, to think about. But the guy and I are not friends anymore. We're less than strangers, and I cannot think of him without remembering how we stopped being friends. So obviously  - obviously - I don't think about him. He is forgotten. Erased. I think I'm lucky, like that, that I can forget, and do forget, so I can get on with being distracted by my current failings and how they will impact my future.

Now I worry that I am cold. Is it right, to go Ctrl-Alt-Del on things that I don't want to think about? I mean - I'm talking about people - not just "the twat who spread rumours" and "the bitch who lied about me", because in this three-dimensional world in which we live, the twats and bitches that we hate so much have entire lives distinct from our own, and even if they are twats and bitches, is it really okay, even ethical, to just erase them from your canvas?

On the one hand, is it not akin to forsaking the lessons you learned from them, when you choose to forget how you know that people who bitch to you are the ones most likely to bitch about you? Is it not then possible to end up with a set of morals and precepts you just kind of have, with no greater idea as to how you got them, no memory of evidence to back them up, justify your decisions, develop your personality and your persona?

On the other hand, who the fuck cares. Forget them. You don't need them. Move on. Chop chop, we haven't got all day. 

As afraid as I am of change, sometimes I think that moving on is what I'm best at. Forget what's past, what you don't need to know. 

Of course, then I end up insulting a lot of people - but for crying out loud. Yes, I forgot your birthday. Why? Because it wasn't fucking relevant. It's nothing personal, I just didn't need to know. Fuckin' sorry. 

I don't know. People, man. They're wacky. When I say that my cat is my best friend, I'm not joking as much as everyone seems to think I am. He doesn't have an agenda, he just wants his belly rubbed. I wish people could be that straightforward. In stories, the most "interesting" characters are the ones with labyrinthine backstories and thousands of utterly unique quirks that make them into this romanticised kind of complicated, and so people want to be complicated and misunderstood - but it's so, so exhausting, trying to keep up with people like that.

Maybe I wasn't meant to have friendly, platonic relations. I'll flit from fuckbuddy to fuckbuddy, and I'll acquire an extensive collection of cats, and I'll live alone with my cats, and then I'll die alone and they can eat me, if they want. 

This blog post took an unexpected turn. Forgive the self-absorption, again. Please

Tomorrow

I'm just tired.

Oliver

I am uncomfortably, acutely aware of my own mortality. If existential questioning is my main reaction to death then I suppose it could be worse.

That said, it could have been much worse anyway. We hadn't talked for about six months prior to his illness. We had no reason to. I stopped getting on the same bus as him, left the school he was at, and these things happen. To everyone. I regret that we didn't stay in touch, and I feel guilt at not having been more proactive. Other than guilt - and it feels awful to admit it - with regard to the pointless, pointless death of a seventeen year old with everything to live for and everything to achieve, I'm just... numb. There's an uncomfortable knot of ambiguous feeling in my stomach. I don't know how I'm supposed to feel, I certainly don't know what I am feeling, and I'm willing to bet that I'm not feeling what I'm supposed to.

If I sound cold and impersonal it's because I don't know how else to be.

Coming to light

Is anyone else really, really sad about the Alex Day/Tom Milsom thing? I'm fucking sad about the Alex Day/Tom Milsom thing.
I dunno. It's not my place. It's not as if I'm among those directly hurt by them, but it just seems so... sad. I wish I could think of a better word for it.
I looked up to them. Just, fuck.

"Holy moly, Batma-" "Shut the fuck up Robin no one gives a shit"

Long time no speak.

I wish there was an excuse, as I always do, but I think I've figured out where the problem lies: in a society growing to accept "communication" as a term more abstract and unlimited than your bog-standard face-to-face conversation, the norm is beginning to swing too far in the other direction. Whereas the all-encompassing deity that is The Internet used to be considered (and still is, by the older generations) an inferior substitute for "real life", it's becoming apparent that, actually, learning to communicate using the internet can be a most pragmatic investment and is becoming the new norm.

And that's great. Why should any kind of relationship be hindered because it is sustained, or even initiated, through a screen? It shouldn't, and I believe that, I really do. I see, every day, how beneficial the internet can be in the day-to-day life of anyone feeling troubled or lonely. The internet as I see it is a great platform for communication, which is just as relevant as the face-to-face communication favoured by technophobes and, as it transpires, myself.

Basically idk how the f I'm supposed to respond to a "hey, how are you? :)" because any way I attempt to respond feels insincere. I need the pressure of face-to-face to keep me interested. Lately I don't know if I'm: a) unable to empathise in the basic ways necessary to master any casual conversation, b) just uncomfortable being blind to a person's reactions, or c), a cold bitch. Sometimes I really, really feel like one.

Therefore, I would like to belatedly apologise to everyone who has ever attempted online conversation with me - with special regard for the hardy souls who haven't stopped trying yet. I'm sorry, and thank you.

I'm going to uni in September, which I imagine will resolve some of the problems I have regarding my infinite, endless loneliness and downward spiral into certain madness. Everything that terrified me a year ago, when I was caught up in planning to leave home at eighteen, now genuinely excites me in a way that feels right. Meeting new people? Bring it, there're bound to be creeps like me. Excessive study? Not as much of a problem as it might be - I love literature, and I cannot wait to get back into learning. Living independently? Caw caw, motherfuckers: I can make something delicious from the shittest of ingredients; I'm thrifty as all fuck; I know how to work to maximise my financial gain, and heaven knows I am not above sucking up to the right people should the need arise. (Mind out the gutter, I'm trying to make a point.) So maybe I've grown up a bit in a way that's different to my peers already in uni, but that's okay. 

Self-awareness is a wonderful thing, and a terrible affliction, so I'm done caring about the opinions of others. I'm callous and mean and manipulative and lazy - but that friend I've known all my life could be a pathological liar, and that guy I look up to could be empty on the inside. Acknowledging my own faults, defining my faults, is something I have learned to do in these last six months or so, in tandem with accepting that no one else will ever care about me as much as I do - so y'know what? Face up to what makes you a bad person, and what makes you a great person. Don't overcomplicate yourself when there's no need. 

You're probably a douchebag, but so am I. So is everyone. Let's be mean together ♥