So I'm writing this in bed, in the dark, typing as slowly and delicately as possible so as to not wake up Darcy, who is sleeping next to me. It's a little self-indulgent and probably boring, but I just had to make a quick entry to say, well, I think I had an evening of pure contentment tonight.
It's nothing of note to the casual observer, but I felt a teeny tiny but very distinct shift in myself tonight - just a little weight off the shoulders I guess. I'm a pretty slow burner, generally, so I'm not prone to huge immediate changes for the most part. I'm all about the gradual buildup of moments. And recently, I've had some pretty good moments, which add up to make some pretty good days, which add up to make nights like this where everything will be exactly the same, but I'll know, because of those little moments and the quiet warmth theyve been slowly building, I'm just that little bit more free to be happy. It's all about the quiet, seemingly meaningless moments.
Darcy is a big part of why I'm happy at the moment.
See a couple of months ago, that sentence would have terrified/nauseated me. Ive always been uneasy with the concept of your happiness being intrinsically linked with someone else. I don't know, maybe it's my issues with feeling in control, but that idea has always seemed a bit sinister to me - the idea that someone else is in control of your emotional state. Shouldn't you be happy in yourself, not because of someone else? Isn't that just co-dependence wrapped in a bow? But being with Darcy makes me wonder why I've been so suspicious. So much of life is about the people you spend it with, and the people around you should make you happy. Otherwise, what, surround yourself with people that make you miserable? Anyway, I'm not trying to get into a 'what's it all about?' post, mainly because I'm very much not a philosopher (a table is a table, alright?), but also because it's 2am and I'm fucking knackered.
Anyway, I'm lying here in the dark, watching telly in bed, nestling into the shoulder of a man who I adore, and that makes me happy. Why was I so afraid of this?
Monday, 30 March 2009
Saturday, 28 March 2009
A Taste Of My Childhood..
..In the form of some 90s Nestle choccies.
As a very messy person (note: messy, but not dirty - there is a very distinct difference. Although right now to be fair, Im pretty dirty) it's necessary for me to completely overhaul all of my belongings every once in a while, as I also seem to accumulate a lot of tat. And a lot of clothes that either aren't mine, or don't fit me - all of which of questionable origin. And as Ive also found somewhere to move into in September, I figured I should take stock (ok that one might be a bit metaphorical, as I also mean take stock of my life generally. But let's focus on the closet for now).
Anyway I'm half way through, having a ciggie break and just had to write this down before I forget.
So I'm rocking out to some old Kings of Leon, happily tossing clothes into those giant Ikea bags which I'll shove in storage somewhere later, feeling quite reckless and getting caught up in my self-induced Spring Clean fever, when what do I spot from behind my old school uniform (yes, I keep my primary school uniform in my wardrobe) but Vice bloody Versas! They were my all-time favourite chocolates growing up, they used to be my Saturday treat when I'd finished ice-skating club in the morning I would buy them from the tuck shop, and in my hour break between Judo and French class (aggressively pushy mother, what can you do?) I used to sit on the swings at Paddington Rec and eat them. This used to take me at least 20 minutes, as I ritualised it to the point where each Vice Versa would be eaten a different way - the first would just be gobbled up, the second I'd eat the outer layer, then let the inner layer melt on my tongue, the third I'd split in half like an Oreo, the fourth I'd eat one of the white ones with the dark centre, the fifth I'd eat one of the dark ones with the white centre.. and so on. Then, in the few years of growing up between Judo club and smoking behind the bike shed, Vice Versas were taken out of production. Now because of the imminent nicotine addiction, I didn't really notice, or care. Until today.
I saw this packet of Vice Versas, and suddenly realised that all these years of growing up, going to school, dropping out of school, falling in love, falling out of love, being in the depths of despair, surviving adolescence and the teenage years only to reach my 20s and realise it's exactly the same but in better clothes - all of this experience would have been spared had I just had a supply of Vice bloody Versas! Then I would have just strolled happily through life, chomping on my yummy chocolate.
So I yelped with childish delight, and fished them out from beneath my Gym socks and plymsolls, tore open the packet, and gobbled them down. So giddy with excitement and candy-related joy was I, that I entirely overlooked the ritual, and before I knew it they were gone. Before I could even savour the sweet taste of my childhood properly, it was gone. And now I'm left with a sense of regret for my giddy greed, and shame for my excitement over weird little choccies.
Come to think of it, they were probably taken off the shelves for some New Labour politically correct reason.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
When I close the fridge door, my food has a party.
Alright, so its midnight and I'm more than a little worse for wear, having spent last night with Mystery and several bottles of wine. He had just gotten back in town and needed a friendly face, having just discovered his fuck buddy of over a year had been seeing someone else. I'm his tell-it-to-you-straight girl, which basically means I have carte blanche to point out in no uncertain terms exactly when and how he's being a cunt. So I found myself dribbling off the side of the bed into a strategically-placed plastic bag laced bucket at 2am, wondering how exactly I was going to explain to Darcy that I had to cancel our breakfast plans as I'd gotten hammered with my screwed up ex boyfriend and spent the night discussing, in great detail, what the sex was like with my current boyfriend. To be fair, I was very complimentary. Darcy is great in bed.
Anyway I managed to drag myself into work (got a great deal on some gorgeous Stella McCartney 'vegetarian' shoes. What the hell are 'vegetarian' shoes?) then met Pickled Lily and The Stig for a coffee and a drink before making my way to Darcy's for dinner. It takes me roughly an hour and a half to get to Darcy's on the bus (bloody London Transport makes getting south of the river near impossible at rush hour) so I usually get some good thinking time in, and get through at least half of my ipod 'Travelling Music' playlist. 10 minutes and several I Am Kloot tracks into the bus journey, my hand shot out and pressed the emergency exit button and I found myself jumping off the bus (ahh for the days of the Routemaster, when one could just flit in and out of buses willy nilly with none of this 'emergency button' nonsense). So I found myself in the arse-end of Kilburn High Rd, wondering why I'd just jumped off a bus - and wondering why I didn't know why I'd just jumped off a bus. And that's when I realised. I actually didn't know why I'd jumped off the bus. Seriously, I paused, I waited, I lit a cigarette, I looked around a little, but nothing. My thoughts didn't catch up with me. Or they ran away without me, or I left them on the damn bus or whatever. The point being, I'd just jumped off a bus for no apparent or emergent reason. It may sound like nothing, but I'm a born and bred London girl - bus and train journeys are more ingrained in everyday autopilot than brushing my teeth, so it shook me to the very bloody core! So I walked home, texted Darcy that I was still hungover and needed some couch time, and spent the rest of the night bemused and puzzled.
Ok so in re-reading that last paragraph, I realise I come off as a drama queen and a bit of a lunatic, but I don't know how to phrase it to correctly portray the Twilight Zone-esque unnervingness of discovering that when I'm not paying attention, my body veers off autopilot and just does its own thing, without consulting me! And now I feel like I'm waiting for that to happen again, like a child who thinks that when you leave the room your toys all come to life, or that when you close the fridge door all your food has a party. I keep trying to trick my body into thinking I'm not paying attention, so I can catch it in the act, you know?
..oh my god, I've gone fucking mental.
(I'm going to slowly back away from the computer, and blame the hangover.)
Anyway I managed to drag myself into work (got a great deal on some gorgeous Stella McCartney 'vegetarian' shoes. What the hell are 'vegetarian' shoes?) then met Pickled Lily and The Stig for a coffee and a drink before making my way to Darcy's for dinner. It takes me roughly an hour and a half to get to Darcy's on the bus (bloody London Transport makes getting south of the river near impossible at rush hour) so I usually get some good thinking time in, and get through at least half of my ipod 'Travelling Music' playlist. 10 minutes and several I Am Kloot tracks into the bus journey, my hand shot out and pressed the emergency exit button and I found myself jumping off the bus (ahh for the days of the Routemaster, when one could just flit in and out of buses willy nilly with none of this 'emergency button' nonsense). So I found myself in the arse-end of Kilburn High Rd, wondering why I'd just jumped off a bus - and wondering why I didn't know why I'd just jumped off a bus. And that's when I realised. I actually didn't know why I'd jumped off the bus. Seriously, I paused, I waited, I lit a cigarette, I looked around a little, but nothing. My thoughts didn't catch up with me. Or they ran away without me, or I left them on the damn bus or whatever. The point being, I'd just jumped off a bus for no apparent or emergent reason. It may sound like nothing, but I'm a born and bred London girl - bus and train journeys are more ingrained in everyday autopilot than brushing my teeth, so it shook me to the very bloody core! So I walked home, texted Darcy that I was still hungover and needed some couch time, and spent the rest of the night bemused and puzzled.
Ok so in re-reading that last paragraph, I realise I come off as a drama queen and a bit of a lunatic, but I don't know how to phrase it to correctly portray the Twilight Zone-esque unnervingness of discovering that when I'm not paying attention, my body veers off autopilot and just does its own thing, without consulting me! And now I feel like I'm waiting for that to happen again, like a child who thinks that when you leave the room your toys all come to life, or that when you close the fridge door all your food has a party. I keep trying to trick my body into thinking I'm not paying attention, so I can catch it in the act, you know?
..oh my god, I've gone fucking mental.
(I'm going to slowly back away from the computer, and blame the hangover.)
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
The First Draft.. Completed.
So writing about Canada makes me feel the need to write about Janus, as he was such a massive part of why I went in the first place.. but every time I sit and try to tell that particular story, the words just escape me and it becomes too big a task.
I could just start where I ended the Mystery story (as the Janus era started literally within a month of the Mystery breakup) but that makes it seem all a bit too Carrie Bradshaw-esque, you know writing continuously about lovers, when I'm really not. I'm writing about me, and the vague semblance of life I've lived, thus the people therein. So to make it clear, I'm not in any way, Carrie. But there, see I'm digressing from the Janus storyline. I wanted to write it as a run-down, like the Mystery entry, but I can't seem to wrap it up in that tidy a package. Maybe because of some residual anger and hurt, but more likely because it was all a bit too messy and I can't collect my thoughts to form a proper flowing storyline with any coherent timeline. Well, that and the fact that thinking about him, to this day, makes me raging mad at myself for letting him into my life, and even more raging mad at him for accepting my well-meant invitation only to throw it in my face. But hey, we'll call this my first draft.
So I was a bit of a state after the whole Mystery debacle. I'd moved back home to my mum's flat (thus destroying all the progress I'd made in escaping my mother, and the mess that was my childhood), I had no job, no real drive to do anything other than watch Buffy on the couch surrounded by fag-ends and mouldy cups of tea. But, I was basking in my new-found sense of freedom from the months of suffocation and drama, and felt I could finally breathe a little with the lack of Mystery's weight on my shoulders. So I coasted for a couple of weeks, reacquainting myself with my friends, and the pub, and society. From then, to be honest, it's a bit of a blur.
The transition from newly free and weightless to full-on Janus coupledom, is just a huge blur. Like I said, I have no real sense of a coherent storyline with this. All of the beginning was blanked out in my memory, probably because of the impact of the ending. I can, however, much to my eternal frustration and regret, pinpoint the exact moment I let Janus into my life. And, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I should've stayed home that night. Or taken a different bus. Or stayed a little longer at the pub, or done any of the multitude of things that could have prevented the one sentence that invited him into my life.
"If you're still looking for a place to crash, you're more than welcome to stay at mine."
If there was one sentence in my life I could go back A Christmas Carol-style to stop myself from uttering thus entirely remove from existence, it would be that one. Because I know for a fact, that was the window. If it had been any other night, when he wasn't in need of a place to crash, or I wasn't in such a good mood to have offered, or we hadn't ended up on the same bus home, there would have been no other window of opportunity. We hadn't seen each other for years and barely spoke, even though we shared the same group of friends, and this was a chance meeting. If not for that sentence, we would have continued our non-friendship, maybe seen each other at random gatherings, made some pleasantries and small talk, and I would have been spared a year of stress and pain, and 2 consequent years of emotional celibacy. But then again, maybe not.
So he had been kicked out by his mother (for smoking, selling and growing weed in the flat. Although I'm not sure how aware she was of the last one) and had been crashing on friend's couches. I let him stay for a couple of nights, and within that time we became a couple. Seriously, thats how vague it is in my head. I don't remember any flirting, or propositions, or literal situations. I literally have no recollection of how it happened. It was all so quick - he stays for a few days, starts off on the sofa, ends up in my bed, and ta-daa! A couple is made. I feel a bit tricked, really. Maybe it was all too fast for me to give it any proper thought, and I just went with it til it was too late. Or maybe I was just a little bit slutty, and carefree with myself. (Come to think of it, I have some theories on my succession of bad relationships, but like I said, lets not get Carrie'd away. Oh god, a bad pun. See this is how easy it is to write Sex and the City).
So we were a couple, living together in my old flat, neither of us with any money. Well, what little money we had came from my savings and his dealings. He sold weed and was developing plans to grow it and become a high-on-the-ladder drug baron with an empire of well-designed and well-hidden weed houses all over the UK. He took great pleasure in hypothetically spending all the money he was going to make, and I found myself continuously finding "What I will spend my first £1million on" lists strewn all over the flat. He also was going to become a Premiership footballer for Arsenal (or for Man United, to please me). He was going to retire at 35, and live his days out in his own private island somewhere, surviving on the millions he'd made as a drug-dealing Premiership footballer. He was a deluded, immature, narcissist who thought the world owed him something - not just something, the world owed him everything. Despite the fact he never did anything but whine and bitch about how unfair everything was, rather than actually doing anything about it. I thought he was fantastic.
After the dark dank days with Mystery, the days of no hopes and no dreams, and never looking into the future except in anticipation of more dark dank days, Janus's eagerness to dream and dream big was like splashing cold water on my face. He was so refreshing, I let everything else slide. Like the fact he was wildly (if unknowingly) misogynistic, and how he did nothing but put me down and misunderstand everything about me because of his mother-induced issues with women, and how he somehow manipulated everything, from situations, to people, to words, with the utmost ease and subtlety. But he managed to get under my skin. Where Mystery was, well, a mystery, a web of disguises and secrets and emotion, Janus was an open book. His openness to reveal who he was made me so very curious about, well, who he was. I wrote this about him when I was in these first throws of infatuation.
You.
You are confident, to the point of egotistical.
You are hopeful, bordering on naive..which is charming, and part of what drew me to you
You have a temper that if sided with violence, would scare me
You love me so willingly and without doubt, and for that I thank you
You feel better than most, and I suspect that you are
You are smart and you know it, and place too much importance in it
You have a sharp sense of humour and like to make me laugh,
which says a lot about you
You have a messiah complex, which compliments my supposed superiority
and means we end up cheek to cheek or head to head
You're not afraid of getting your hands wet, getting as entirely involved as you do
An open book, an open target, an open wound
Your will and cheeky disposition remind me of a child
You are paranoid and continuously feel victimised
You feel no-one can touch you when the world's on your side
To be with you is to feel extremes, which is exhilarating and exhausting,
particularly when I am so weary
You can be so open with me, raw flesh laid out on the line
which scares me sometimes. Such exposure taunts my reticence,
which I concede as necessary
You are optimistic and not afraid to dream - you're
so refreshing in a world of defeatists
You aren't afraid to wear your colour outright
Even if it means dulling mine
You can be so soft, which I tend to forget
You are articulate, and use it to your advantage
(I would never dare say manipulation)
You are so very free with a ball at your feet
I feel closest to you when you admit a weakness
You have a tendency to be self-involved and a little antagonistic
And cannot see me as anything but woman.
It's funny, rereading that reminds me that it actually was good at the beginning, much as I hate to admit it. He did make me laugh, and he was very gentle sometimes, and I really did care for him. And, we made a pretty convincing couple. I was convinced, too, that I loved him. But that was partly my fault. I had my own reasons for being so eager to fall in love (but again, thats another story, for another time).
So for a few weeks we settled into a routine, until for a reason which escapes me at the moment, we found ourselves homeless. I vaguely remember him being the reason we were homeless - I had the option of staying in the flat, but if he was out, I was going with him. I had nothing else going on in my life, in hindsight. So, to give it the run-through, we spent our nights crashing on friend's couches, and our days in cafes making lists of people we could beg the next few days of couch-time from. It actually scares me a little to think how little self-respect I had, as is shown by the amount of people I begged, shamelessly, for couch-time, and even money. Believe me, I am not proud of that time - I wouldn't be so ashamed, or even ashamed at all, if I was doing it for me, but I wasn't - I was fine, I could live at the flat if I wanted, I didn't need the cash. I was doing it for him. I was begging family friends, burning bridges, stretching out my friends' collective patience with me, for him. But for some reason, I couldn't separate his predicament from my own.
We ended up living in the bedroom of a friend who was at uni, with his mum, who charged us minimal rent, under the condition we were tidy and kept to ourselves. We did so, and spent the wages of both Janus' part time retail job, and his dealing profits, on food and cigarettes. I vaguely remember that being the period of building up resentments on either side - he was constantly hinting at me that because we needed money, I should get a job, occasionally being supportive, but always looking down at me. I was still hoping to go back to college, and saw getting a job 'to get me by' as the shutting of the tiny window of opportunity I had, and the first steps in a path that lead to mindless 9-5 office work and eventually waking up at 30, realising I had wasted my chances at actually becoming something. Obviously, I had some issues with overanalysing my own decisions! But I couldn't understand how he, the Big Dreamer, didn't understand that I was scared of finally giving up on any small dreams of becoming who I thought, maybe, I could be. Alright, so I was a little naive, but to be honest I wanted to keep what little naivety I had left. I was, and still am, terrified of becoming genuinely bitter. But my weakness at the time meant that I took his judgement so much to heart that I felt like a failure. And because I had nothing to fill my time with, while he was out selling clothes or dealing weed, I would dwell on how useless I was in his eyes, and thus I became useless in my own eyes. I was living out a fight in my own head that I was too weak to live out in reality - between his careless judgements of me, and my own, sliding, sense of self.
We then moved in with Pickled Lily, my best friend who I'd lived with for 2 years before the Mystery debacle. She was also Janus's ex, and first love. He screwed her over too. Now I'm not at all a posessive person, probably because I'm so precious about my own space. But I was driving myself a little crazy with all my internal insecurities, that this just played on my inferiority complex of the time, adding to the long list of things I found to convince myself Janus was right - I was a failure. Pickled Lily was living proof of what 'Janus's girlfriend' should be, and I was falling way short of the mark. (Obviously, it wasn't like that at all. But you get my downward-spiralling sense of self-worth, and reality!)
Now here, the story blurs again. Weeks coasted by in this charade of a half-life, whereby I was playing the role of.. well, I never really was sure what, but I was playing a role of sorts and couldn't seem to fit into my own life at the time. Anyway, something within me snapped (or possibly the Great Escape Artist that is my emotional subconscious took the reigns) and I booked myself a flight to Canada for the Summer months. I needed to get away. I don't remember Janus' reaction to this, but I'm sure it wasn't the reaction of a supportive lover/friend. Oh wait no this I do remember, he pretended to be pleased for me, then gradually over the weeks leading up to my departure couldn't quite manage to hide his selfish annoyance and whiny childish "But what about me? But what am I supposed to do?' attitude that he usually reserved to aim toward life, but did occasionally throw my way. He hated that I finally had an out, that I had cut a well deserved break (in fact the only real break I've ever had) while he couldn't even admit that he needed one.
Anyway, Canada..
Canada was one of those times, one of those places that I don't think I could ever properly describe. It was 3 months that shaped my life, and I can't quite identify how. It's both crystal clear, and entirely foggy. To try and go halfway to explaining, I finally got far away from my life to look at it properly, and I both hated and loved what I saw. No, thats not right. I hated what I saw looking back, but finally had the chance and the peace of mind, to look forward. And to find out who exactly I was. When taken from my environment, from my stresses, from my mother, from my friends, from all the things I thought I needed.. what sort of person I was left with. And I think I was pleasantly surprised. Sometimes I have to remind myself that there were a few blissful weeks of clarity upon discovering I did, in fact, love the person I always thought maybe I was, before everything came crashing down around me.
From the first day I arrived in Canada, I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking, I stopped eating unhealthily, I just.. well, I stopped. It was as if time slowed down, and I took a big, long, cold breath. And when I exhaled, everything was clearer.
After a month or 2 of revelling in this feeling of being fresh and renewed, I took an impromptu road trip around America. It was as I'd always imagined a road trip around America would be, or what Hollywood movies have always lead me to believe - long dirt roads through dusty deserts, leaning out of the front window of a truck with sunglasses on, radio blaring, cigarette in hand, sun setting in the horizon while I sing along to some Hank Williams track, feeling free as a bird. I'd never noticed how huge the sky is until then, and nothing had ever made me feel as connected with the world.
We coasted through Phoenix, Tulsa, Las Vegas, California, even Texas - until half way we reached Los Angeles. The City of Angels. This is where the first half of my Canadian Summer ended, and a whole new chapter began. Flying into LAX, I was the free-est, most centred, most healthy physically and emotionally that I've ever been. I felt amazing. Flying out of LAX.. well, let's just say I was unrecognisable. If I arrived in LA as the Dalai Lama, I left as Courtney fucking Love.
In LA, I discovered I was pregnant. I discovered this whilst in the emergency room of a downtown hospital, naked but for a hospital gown, with no shoes on, with nobody I knew in the same room, or even the same state. I'd let the boys I was travelling with go on ahead, as I hasn't been feeling well so wanted to stay behind and get checked out before meeting them in Florida the next day. Plus, I had a distant relative I'd arranged to stay with if I needed to. Who, it turns out, was a nurse on a full-time schedule and was never at home, so I had the house basically to myself the entire time. This turned out to be not as brilliant as I'd originally anticipated.
I somehow got myself into a cab from the hospital and found my Aunt's house, unpacked and went to sleep, trying to pretend I wasn't in another country, alone, with basically no money, and no way of contacting anybody I knew, in 40 degree heat, in a stranger's house with no air conditioning and an ant infestation. I then spent the week with my head in the toilet as, funnily enough, it turned out my body was rejecting the pregnancy. I also discovered that I was so far gone that I'd bypassed the legal limit in America to get an abortion. The limit is longer in England (God Bless Britain - I can't tell you how much I longed to be on home ground at this point) but my flight home wasn't until a month away. At which point it would be too late. So, I was having a child. Yesterday I was on holiday, today.. I was having a child. And my body was rejecting it.
That week was like something out of a horror movie, in my memory. I spent 7 days alone, in a stranger's house, lying on the couch staring at the ceiling, throwing up any water or food I tried to force down my own throat, so hot I couldn't see straight, ants crawling all over me, lying in a sweat and tear stained pillow with barely even enough energy to sob. Helpless and terrified, I longed for London. I longed for Pickled Lily, and Looney Toon, and my cat, and my things - I've never wanted anything so desperately as I wanted home.
Starved of water and food, the thought of having to have a child, and all the fucked-up irony in this situation, on top of being violently incontrollably sick every 5 minutes, was too much for my dehydrated mind to handle, and I just broke down. 7 days my dehydrated body lay defeated on the couch, incoherent thoughts and emotions racing, stumbling through my mind as my eyes stared numbly at the digital clock, watching the time change. 2:22. 3:33. 4:44. A line of ants are walking down my leg. 5:55.
At the end of the week, my aunt found me and took me back to the hospital where I was put on a drip for 2 days. I slept most of the time, and managed somehow to convince the doctor to release me and tell my Aunt I'd just had a virus. On the way back to her house I picked up a phone card and called home. Pickled Lily was amazing as ever and we discovered that my flight home was actually within the time limit whereby you can legally get a termination. The word relief doesn't even cover it. Seeing the light, and giddy from having some form of control (even if in the form of an International Phone Card), I called Janus. I'd been praying to speak to him all week, in disbelief that he wasn't there to talk it through, to comfort me and make me feel more normal, and knowing that when I spoke to him, my other half in this situation, I would be less alone.
No phone conversation until then, or since, has ever shocked me that much. Disinterest, selfishness, coldness, these words don't even reach the level of outrageous inhumanity that he embodied during that phone conversation. I'd been longing with every bit of my heart to speak to him for 7 of the most gruelling days of my life, and I'd finally gotten the phone call - and it took him all of 1 minute for me to wish I'd never called him, fuck it - never met him.
He didn't give a shit. I told him, blurted it out, weeping a little with exhaustion, with relief and self-pity and pain and happiness to hear his voice, and nothing. One moment of silence, then..
Look Wednesday Girl, what about me? You don't understand, I can't deal with this right now - my mum's been driving me crazy, I've got so little money you know. Can you call your mum and find out if I can stay at your place, you don't seem to be helping me out here. You're off having your holiday or whatever, but what about me? What about me?
It was like slow motion. My eyes zoned out, the tears hardened on my cheeks, my brain froze and throbbed in my ears, and for the hundredth time that day, I felt like I was going to be sick. I let the phone slip out of my hands and drop to the floor. Just as I remember the exact window through which I let Janus into my life, this was the moment I closed it.
I flew back to Canada and spent the rest of my time there being proactive. I booked a hospital appointment upon my arrival (St bloody Mary's..), I let Pickled Lily know the times of my flight so she could come to the airport, I called my mum to find out how my cat was and if there was anything she needed from the family out here. I also managed to book myself into a college course that would start a few weeks after my return to my beloved LDN. Finally, I called Janus, and told him in no uncertain terms that were he to be within a mile of the airport upon my arrival, I would call the police.
At this point, all the headway I'd found in regards to self discovery and inner peace, was dashed to say the least. Knowing that I'd never forgive myself if I let this ruin my last few weeks of freedom in Canada, plus staying with family and not being able to talk about what happened in LA, I'd had to keep everything inside and pull myself together. This took a lot of out me, and keeping my cool when talking to Janus was too much for me to handle. So I blocked him. In my head, on my phone, in my email. Blocked.
Flying back to London, I should have been.. contented. Nourished. Instead, I was an emotional volcano held together with sellotape, ready to explode and fall apart at any minute - the word disappointed doesn't even cover it. The words crazy with rage and pain don't even cover it. I had just enough sense and presence of mind to sort my body out, which is what I focused myself on. I then did whatever I could to make sure Janus was out of my life. As soon as humanly possible.
..to this day, that's the furthest I can get with this story. So suffice to say, that first month in Canada I built up so much inner strength and calm that I had just enough left to provide the courage I needed to disentangle myself from Janus. From the last in what could have been a long road of disasterous emotional abuse, from the people I seemed to have developed a habit of letting into my life, and for the guilt trips I put myself through because of it.
There are still remnants where should be none - for example in the reaction of my friends at the time, who let me down in big ways - that one still stings.
But ultimately, 4/5 years down the line and he's just a blip in the radar of my past. But to this day (and I hate to admit this so I never will again) but when I think about him, there is an angry teenage girl inside me who pricks me with a pin, as if to remind me she's still there, and boy is she still angry.
Because she was there when, in trying to get him to go away, I kept my mouth shut and let him behave appallingly to the bitter end. Let him say some awful, awful things to me to try and get a reaction, let him scream and weep and throw himself around like a child having a tantrum, only ever saying one thing to him, calmy, quietly - detached. I need you to leave. And to be fair, it worked. He did. I got rid of the bastard. But there is a petty, angry, hurt little girl in me who will always want to run at him with a pair of scissors, screaming "What about ME???!!" And she will never quite forgive me for being too weak to let her say her piece.
It took me at least a year to get over the aftermath and everything that that entailed. I went through my lowest times in Canada, feeling more alone than I've ever been, but I have a sneaking feeling that that might just be me. Sometimes I need for something horrible to happen to shake me out of my funk, to force me to take charge of myself. To push me out of the mess that I've created.. But that's enough blame for now. I took my fare share of the blame at the time, and more. And I kept going.
And yes, I could have done things differently, I could have said the things I needed to say, that I needed to scream from the rooftops, but I bit my tongue, I did what needed to be done and clung on to what little strength I'd found in Canada. Outwardly, I pretended to be fine and waited patiently until the day that inwardly, I was.
It came, as it always does, and I got on with it. Simple as.
----------------
As with any story, there is so much more to it than can ever be told, but this isn't a story I particularly treasure. So I'll write down the bits that I can, and throw the rest away.
I found this quite hard to write. In fact, if I'm honest, I wrote half of it last year, then couldn't ever find it in me to finish it. Not because it hurts or anything to write, it doesn't. I just kept going back to it and could never seem to finish it. Tonight, out of nowhere, I was doing my laundry and getting ready for work and it poured out. And now I'm going to watch an episode of Arrested Development and go to bed. Weird how things turn out.
I could just start where I ended the Mystery story (as the Janus era started literally within a month of the Mystery breakup) but that makes it seem all a bit too Carrie Bradshaw-esque, you know writing continuously about lovers, when I'm really not. I'm writing about me, and the vague semblance of life I've lived, thus the people therein. So to make it clear, I'm not in any way, Carrie. But there, see I'm digressing from the Janus storyline. I wanted to write it as a run-down, like the Mystery entry, but I can't seem to wrap it up in that tidy a package. Maybe because of some residual anger and hurt, but more likely because it was all a bit too messy and I can't collect my thoughts to form a proper flowing storyline with any coherent timeline. Well, that and the fact that thinking about him, to this day, makes me raging mad at myself for letting him into my life, and even more raging mad at him for accepting my well-meant invitation only to throw it in my face. But hey, we'll call this my first draft.
So I was a bit of a state after the whole Mystery debacle. I'd moved back home to my mum's flat (thus destroying all the progress I'd made in escaping my mother, and the mess that was my childhood), I had no job, no real drive to do anything other than watch Buffy on the couch surrounded by fag-ends and mouldy cups of tea. But, I was basking in my new-found sense of freedom from the months of suffocation and drama, and felt I could finally breathe a little with the lack of Mystery's weight on my shoulders. So I coasted for a couple of weeks, reacquainting myself with my friends, and the pub, and society. From then, to be honest, it's a bit of a blur.
The transition from newly free and weightless to full-on Janus coupledom, is just a huge blur. Like I said, I have no real sense of a coherent storyline with this. All of the beginning was blanked out in my memory, probably because of the impact of the ending. I can, however, much to my eternal frustration and regret, pinpoint the exact moment I let Janus into my life. And, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I should've stayed home that night. Or taken a different bus. Or stayed a little longer at the pub, or done any of the multitude of things that could have prevented the one sentence that invited him into my life.
"If you're still looking for a place to crash, you're more than welcome to stay at mine."
If there was one sentence in my life I could go back A Christmas Carol-style to stop myself from uttering thus entirely remove from existence, it would be that one. Because I know for a fact, that was the window. If it had been any other night, when he wasn't in need of a place to crash, or I wasn't in such a good mood to have offered, or we hadn't ended up on the same bus home, there would have been no other window of opportunity. We hadn't seen each other for years and barely spoke, even though we shared the same group of friends, and this was a chance meeting. If not for that sentence, we would have continued our non-friendship, maybe seen each other at random gatherings, made some pleasantries and small talk, and I would have been spared a year of stress and pain, and 2 consequent years of emotional celibacy. But then again, maybe not.
So he had been kicked out by his mother (for smoking, selling and growing weed in the flat. Although I'm not sure how aware she was of the last one) and had been crashing on friend's couches. I let him stay for a couple of nights, and within that time we became a couple. Seriously, thats how vague it is in my head. I don't remember any flirting, or propositions, or literal situations. I literally have no recollection of how it happened. It was all so quick - he stays for a few days, starts off on the sofa, ends up in my bed, and ta-daa! A couple is made. I feel a bit tricked, really. Maybe it was all too fast for me to give it any proper thought, and I just went with it til it was too late. Or maybe I was just a little bit slutty, and carefree with myself. (Come to think of it, I have some theories on my succession of bad relationships, but like I said, lets not get Carrie'd away. Oh god, a bad pun. See this is how easy it is to write Sex and the City).
So we were a couple, living together in my old flat, neither of us with any money. Well, what little money we had came from my savings and his dealings. He sold weed and was developing plans to grow it and become a high-on-the-ladder drug baron with an empire of well-designed and well-hidden weed houses all over the UK. He took great pleasure in hypothetically spending all the money he was going to make, and I found myself continuously finding "What I will spend my first £1million on" lists strewn all over the flat. He also was going to become a Premiership footballer for Arsenal (or for Man United, to please me). He was going to retire at 35, and live his days out in his own private island somewhere, surviving on the millions he'd made as a drug-dealing Premiership footballer. He was a deluded, immature, narcissist who thought the world owed him something - not just something, the world owed him everything. Despite the fact he never did anything but whine and bitch about how unfair everything was, rather than actually doing anything about it. I thought he was fantastic.
After the dark dank days with Mystery, the days of no hopes and no dreams, and never looking into the future except in anticipation of more dark dank days, Janus's eagerness to dream and dream big was like splashing cold water on my face. He was so refreshing, I let everything else slide. Like the fact he was wildly (if unknowingly) misogynistic, and how he did nothing but put me down and misunderstand everything about me because of his mother-induced issues with women, and how he somehow manipulated everything, from situations, to people, to words, with the utmost ease and subtlety. But he managed to get under my skin. Where Mystery was, well, a mystery, a web of disguises and secrets and emotion, Janus was an open book. His openness to reveal who he was made me so very curious about, well, who he was. I wrote this about him when I was in these first throws of infatuation.
You.
You are confident, to the point of egotistical.
You are hopeful, bordering on naive..which is charming, and part of what drew me to you
You have a temper that if sided with violence, would scare me
You love me so willingly and without doubt, and for that I thank you
You feel better than most, and I suspect that you are
You are smart and you know it, and place too much importance in it
You have a sharp sense of humour and like to make me laugh,
which says a lot about you
You have a messiah complex, which compliments my supposed superiority
and means we end up cheek to cheek or head to head
You're not afraid of getting your hands wet, getting as entirely involved as you do
An open book, an open target, an open wound
Your will and cheeky disposition remind me of a child
You are paranoid and continuously feel victimised
You feel no-one can touch you when the world's on your side
To be with you is to feel extremes, which is exhilarating and exhausting,
particularly when I am so weary
You can be so open with me, raw flesh laid out on the line
which scares me sometimes. Such exposure taunts my reticence,
which I concede as necessary
You are optimistic and not afraid to dream - you're
so refreshing in a world of defeatists
You aren't afraid to wear your colour outright
Even if it means dulling mine
You can be so soft, which I tend to forget
You are articulate, and use it to your advantage
(I would never dare say manipulation)
You are so very free with a ball at your feet
I feel closest to you when you admit a weakness
You have a tendency to be self-involved and a little antagonistic
And cannot see me as anything but woman.
It's funny, rereading that reminds me that it actually was good at the beginning, much as I hate to admit it. He did make me laugh, and he was very gentle sometimes, and I really did care for him. And, we made a pretty convincing couple. I was convinced, too, that I loved him. But that was partly my fault. I had my own reasons for being so eager to fall in love (but again, thats another story, for another time).
So for a few weeks we settled into a routine, until for a reason which escapes me at the moment, we found ourselves homeless. I vaguely remember him being the reason we were homeless - I had the option of staying in the flat, but if he was out, I was going with him. I had nothing else going on in my life, in hindsight. So, to give it the run-through, we spent our nights crashing on friend's couches, and our days in cafes making lists of people we could beg the next few days of couch-time from. It actually scares me a little to think how little self-respect I had, as is shown by the amount of people I begged, shamelessly, for couch-time, and even money. Believe me, I am not proud of that time - I wouldn't be so ashamed, or even ashamed at all, if I was doing it for me, but I wasn't - I was fine, I could live at the flat if I wanted, I didn't need the cash. I was doing it for him. I was begging family friends, burning bridges, stretching out my friends' collective patience with me, for him. But for some reason, I couldn't separate his predicament from my own.
We ended up living in the bedroom of a friend who was at uni, with his mum, who charged us minimal rent, under the condition we were tidy and kept to ourselves. We did so, and spent the wages of both Janus' part time retail job, and his dealing profits, on food and cigarettes. I vaguely remember that being the period of building up resentments on either side - he was constantly hinting at me that because we needed money, I should get a job, occasionally being supportive, but always looking down at me. I was still hoping to go back to college, and saw getting a job 'to get me by' as the shutting of the tiny window of opportunity I had, and the first steps in a path that lead to mindless 9-5 office work and eventually waking up at 30, realising I had wasted my chances at actually becoming something. Obviously, I had some issues with overanalysing my own decisions! But I couldn't understand how he, the Big Dreamer, didn't understand that I was scared of finally giving up on any small dreams of becoming who I thought, maybe, I could be. Alright, so I was a little naive, but to be honest I wanted to keep what little naivety I had left. I was, and still am, terrified of becoming genuinely bitter. But my weakness at the time meant that I took his judgement so much to heart that I felt like a failure. And because I had nothing to fill my time with, while he was out selling clothes or dealing weed, I would dwell on how useless I was in his eyes, and thus I became useless in my own eyes. I was living out a fight in my own head that I was too weak to live out in reality - between his careless judgements of me, and my own, sliding, sense of self.
We then moved in with Pickled Lily, my best friend who I'd lived with for 2 years before the Mystery debacle. She was also Janus's ex, and first love. He screwed her over too. Now I'm not at all a posessive person, probably because I'm so precious about my own space. But I was driving myself a little crazy with all my internal insecurities, that this just played on my inferiority complex of the time, adding to the long list of things I found to convince myself Janus was right - I was a failure. Pickled Lily was living proof of what 'Janus's girlfriend' should be, and I was falling way short of the mark. (Obviously, it wasn't like that at all. But you get my downward-spiralling sense of self-worth, and reality!)
Now here, the story blurs again. Weeks coasted by in this charade of a half-life, whereby I was playing the role of.. well, I never really was sure what, but I was playing a role of sorts and couldn't seem to fit into my own life at the time. Anyway, something within me snapped (or possibly the Great Escape Artist that is my emotional subconscious took the reigns) and I booked myself a flight to Canada for the Summer months. I needed to get away. I don't remember Janus' reaction to this, but I'm sure it wasn't the reaction of a supportive lover/friend. Oh wait no this I do remember, he pretended to be pleased for me, then gradually over the weeks leading up to my departure couldn't quite manage to hide his selfish annoyance and whiny childish "But what about me? But what am I supposed to do?' attitude that he usually reserved to aim toward life, but did occasionally throw my way. He hated that I finally had an out, that I had cut a well deserved break (in fact the only real break I've ever had) while he couldn't even admit that he needed one.
Anyway, Canada..
Canada was one of those times, one of those places that I don't think I could ever properly describe. It was 3 months that shaped my life, and I can't quite identify how. It's both crystal clear, and entirely foggy. To try and go halfway to explaining, I finally got far away from my life to look at it properly, and I both hated and loved what I saw. No, thats not right. I hated what I saw looking back, but finally had the chance and the peace of mind, to look forward. And to find out who exactly I was. When taken from my environment, from my stresses, from my mother, from my friends, from all the things I thought I needed.. what sort of person I was left with. And I think I was pleasantly surprised. Sometimes I have to remind myself that there were a few blissful weeks of clarity upon discovering I did, in fact, love the person I always thought maybe I was, before everything came crashing down around me.
From the first day I arrived in Canada, I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking, I stopped eating unhealthily, I just.. well, I stopped. It was as if time slowed down, and I took a big, long, cold breath. And when I exhaled, everything was clearer.
After a month or 2 of revelling in this feeling of being fresh and renewed, I took an impromptu road trip around America. It was as I'd always imagined a road trip around America would be, or what Hollywood movies have always lead me to believe - long dirt roads through dusty deserts, leaning out of the front window of a truck with sunglasses on, radio blaring, cigarette in hand, sun setting in the horizon while I sing along to some Hank Williams track, feeling free as a bird. I'd never noticed how huge the sky is until then, and nothing had ever made me feel as connected with the world.
We coasted through Phoenix, Tulsa, Las Vegas, California, even Texas - until half way we reached Los Angeles. The City of Angels. This is where the first half of my Canadian Summer ended, and a whole new chapter began. Flying into LAX, I was the free-est, most centred, most healthy physically and emotionally that I've ever been. I felt amazing. Flying out of LAX.. well, let's just say I was unrecognisable. If I arrived in LA as the Dalai Lama, I left as Courtney fucking Love.
In LA, I discovered I was pregnant. I discovered this whilst in the emergency room of a downtown hospital, naked but for a hospital gown, with no shoes on, with nobody I knew in the same room, or even the same state. I'd let the boys I was travelling with go on ahead, as I hasn't been feeling well so wanted to stay behind and get checked out before meeting them in Florida the next day. Plus, I had a distant relative I'd arranged to stay with if I needed to. Who, it turns out, was a nurse on a full-time schedule and was never at home, so I had the house basically to myself the entire time. This turned out to be not as brilliant as I'd originally anticipated.
I somehow got myself into a cab from the hospital and found my Aunt's house, unpacked and went to sleep, trying to pretend I wasn't in another country, alone, with basically no money, and no way of contacting anybody I knew, in 40 degree heat, in a stranger's house with no air conditioning and an ant infestation. I then spent the week with my head in the toilet as, funnily enough, it turned out my body was rejecting the pregnancy. I also discovered that I was so far gone that I'd bypassed the legal limit in America to get an abortion. The limit is longer in England (God Bless Britain - I can't tell you how much I longed to be on home ground at this point) but my flight home wasn't until a month away. At which point it would be too late. So, I was having a child. Yesterday I was on holiday, today.. I was having a child. And my body was rejecting it.
That week was like something out of a horror movie, in my memory. I spent 7 days alone, in a stranger's house, lying on the couch staring at the ceiling, throwing up any water or food I tried to force down my own throat, so hot I couldn't see straight, ants crawling all over me, lying in a sweat and tear stained pillow with barely even enough energy to sob. Helpless and terrified, I longed for London. I longed for Pickled Lily, and Looney Toon, and my cat, and my things - I've never wanted anything so desperately as I wanted home.
Starved of water and food, the thought of having to have a child, and all the fucked-up irony in this situation, on top of being violently incontrollably sick every 5 minutes, was too much for my dehydrated mind to handle, and I just broke down. 7 days my dehydrated body lay defeated on the couch, incoherent thoughts and emotions racing, stumbling through my mind as my eyes stared numbly at the digital clock, watching the time change. 2:22. 3:33. 4:44. A line of ants are walking down my leg. 5:55.
At the end of the week, my aunt found me and took me back to the hospital where I was put on a drip for 2 days. I slept most of the time, and managed somehow to convince the doctor to release me and tell my Aunt I'd just had a virus. On the way back to her house I picked up a phone card and called home. Pickled Lily was amazing as ever and we discovered that my flight home was actually within the time limit whereby you can legally get a termination. The word relief doesn't even cover it. Seeing the light, and giddy from having some form of control (even if in the form of an International Phone Card), I called Janus. I'd been praying to speak to him all week, in disbelief that he wasn't there to talk it through, to comfort me and make me feel more normal, and knowing that when I spoke to him, my other half in this situation, I would be less alone.
No phone conversation until then, or since, has ever shocked me that much. Disinterest, selfishness, coldness, these words don't even reach the level of outrageous inhumanity that he embodied during that phone conversation. I'd been longing with every bit of my heart to speak to him for 7 of the most gruelling days of my life, and I'd finally gotten the phone call - and it took him all of 1 minute for me to wish I'd never called him, fuck it - never met him.
He didn't give a shit. I told him, blurted it out, weeping a little with exhaustion, with relief and self-pity and pain and happiness to hear his voice, and nothing. One moment of silence, then..
Look Wednesday Girl, what about me? You don't understand, I can't deal with this right now - my mum's been driving me crazy, I've got so little money you know. Can you call your mum and find out if I can stay at your place, you don't seem to be helping me out here. You're off having your holiday or whatever, but what about me? What about me?
It was like slow motion. My eyes zoned out, the tears hardened on my cheeks, my brain froze and throbbed in my ears, and for the hundredth time that day, I felt like I was going to be sick. I let the phone slip out of my hands and drop to the floor. Just as I remember the exact window through which I let Janus into my life, this was the moment I closed it.
I flew back to Canada and spent the rest of my time there being proactive. I booked a hospital appointment upon my arrival (St bloody Mary's..), I let Pickled Lily know the times of my flight so she could come to the airport, I called my mum to find out how my cat was and if there was anything she needed from the family out here. I also managed to book myself into a college course that would start a few weeks after my return to my beloved LDN. Finally, I called Janus, and told him in no uncertain terms that were he to be within a mile of the airport upon my arrival, I would call the police.
At this point, all the headway I'd found in regards to self discovery and inner peace, was dashed to say the least. Knowing that I'd never forgive myself if I let this ruin my last few weeks of freedom in Canada, plus staying with family and not being able to talk about what happened in LA, I'd had to keep everything inside and pull myself together. This took a lot of out me, and keeping my cool when talking to Janus was too much for me to handle. So I blocked him. In my head, on my phone, in my email. Blocked.
Flying back to London, I should have been.. contented. Nourished. Instead, I was an emotional volcano held together with sellotape, ready to explode and fall apart at any minute - the word disappointed doesn't even cover it. The words crazy with rage and pain don't even cover it. I had just enough sense and presence of mind to sort my body out, which is what I focused myself on. I then did whatever I could to make sure Janus was out of my life. As soon as humanly possible.
..to this day, that's the furthest I can get with this story. So suffice to say, that first month in Canada I built up so much inner strength and calm that I had just enough left to provide the courage I needed to disentangle myself from Janus. From the last in what could have been a long road of disasterous emotional abuse, from the people I seemed to have developed a habit of letting into my life, and for the guilt trips I put myself through because of it.
There are still remnants where should be none - for example in the reaction of my friends at the time, who let me down in big ways - that one still stings.
But ultimately, 4/5 years down the line and he's just a blip in the radar of my past. But to this day (and I hate to admit this so I never will again) but when I think about him, there is an angry teenage girl inside me who pricks me with a pin, as if to remind me she's still there, and boy is she still angry.
Because she was there when, in trying to get him to go away, I kept my mouth shut and let him behave appallingly to the bitter end. Let him say some awful, awful things to me to try and get a reaction, let him scream and weep and throw himself around like a child having a tantrum, only ever saying one thing to him, calmy, quietly - detached. I need you to leave. And to be fair, it worked. He did. I got rid of the bastard. But there is a petty, angry, hurt little girl in me who will always want to run at him with a pair of scissors, screaming "What about ME???!!" And she will never quite forgive me for being too weak to let her say her piece.
It took me at least a year to get over the aftermath and everything that that entailed. I went through my lowest times in Canada, feeling more alone than I've ever been, but I have a sneaking feeling that that might just be me. Sometimes I need for something horrible to happen to shake me out of my funk, to force me to take charge of myself. To push me out of the mess that I've created.. But that's enough blame for now. I took my fare share of the blame at the time, and more. And I kept going.
And yes, I could have done things differently, I could have said the things I needed to say, that I needed to scream from the rooftops, but I bit my tongue, I did what needed to be done and clung on to what little strength I'd found in Canada. Outwardly, I pretended to be fine and waited patiently until the day that inwardly, I was.
It came, as it always does, and I got on with it. Simple as.
----------------
As with any story, there is so much more to it than can ever be told, but this isn't a story I particularly treasure. So I'll write down the bits that I can, and throw the rest away.
I found this quite hard to write. In fact, if I'm honest, I wrote half of it last year, then couldn't ever find it in me to finish it. Not because it hurts or anything to write, it doesn't. I just kept going back to it and could never seem to finish it. Tonight, out of nowhere, I was doing my laundry and getting ready for work and it poured out. And now I'm going to watch an episode of Arrested Development and go to bed. Weird how things turn out.
I once went to Canada to escape from my life..
..and ended up finding it, right back where I left it.
So again, I've found something I want to post up - not adolescent poetry this time, just a little list, but I do owe it some context, so here it is.
June 2006 was the year I finally made my great escape. I spent 3 months with some family I have out there, in which time I managed to turn my whole life around, completely by mistake. Honestly, I have no idea how - it was entirely accidental (if much-needed). I'm sure I owe that period of my life more than just a paragraph, but right now I just want to note down an excerpt from the diaries I wrote when I was out there (henceforth to be referred to as The Canada Diaries. I know - original).
Cafe Rouge steak baguette
A real cup of bloody tea (Tetleys, Twinings, anything will do)
A bowl of Crunchy Nut
A Maccy D's cheeseburger (even they are different out here)
Pot Noodle, toast and tropical juice from the corner shop
A Proper Sunday roast (I would literally kill, for a Yorkshire pud)
Pitta bread and parma ham
Crumpets soaked in butter
Kebab and chips
A proper fry-up from a proper greasy spoon caf
A real bloody mocha
Cafe Nero mozzarella & parma ham panini
A Twister
Chinese sweet & sour noodles from Camden market
Tesco turkey stuffing sandwich and crisps
Oxford Arms pub quiz meal (free beans, sausages and chips. mmm.)
A crepe from the Hampstead Creperie (lemon and sugar, classic)
Cafe Organic's obscenely overpriced but fucking delicious cheesecake
Perhaps not my most deep and meaningful journal entry, but somehow the most sentimental, and reminds me of how much I longed for London, after all I'd been through to get away from it. I think everyone who lives in London, but particularly who grew up here, really needs to get away from it every once in a while so as to not become too suffocated by it to see it's charm.
So again, I've found something I want to post up - not adolescent poetry this time, just a little list, but I do owe it some context, so here it is.
June 2006 was the year I finally made my great escape. I spent 3 months with some family I have out there, in which time I managed to turn my whole life around, completely by mistake. Honestly, I have no idea how - it was entirely accidental (if much-needed). I'm sure I owe that period of my life more than just a paragraph, but right now I just want to note down an excerpt from the diaries I wrote when I was out there (henceforth to be referred to as The Canada Diaries. I know - original).
A List Of Food That I Want To Eat But Can't As It's All Somehow Quintessentially British So I'm Going To Eat When I Get Home
Cafe Rouge steak baguette
A real cup of bloody tea (Tetleys, Twinings, anything will do)
A bowl of Crunchy Nut
A Maccy D's cheeseburger (even they are different out here)
Pot Noodle, toast and tropical juice from the corner shop
A Proper Sunday roast (I would literally kill, for a Yorkshire pud)
Pitta bread and parma ham
Crumpets soaked in butter
Kebab and chips
A proper fry-up from a proper greasy spoon caf
A real bloody mocha
Cafe Nero mozzarella & parma ham panini
A Twister
Chinese sweet & sour noodles from Camden market
Tesco turkey stuffing sandwich and crisps
Oxford Arms pub quiz meal (free beans, sausages and chips. mmm.)
A crepe from the Hampstead Creperie (lemon and sugar, classic)
Cafe Organic's obscenely overpriced but fucking delicious cheesecake
Perhaps not my most deep and meaningful journal entry, but somehow the most sentimental, and reminds me of how much I longed for London, after all I'd been through to get away from it. I think everyone who lives in London, but particularly who grew up here, really needs to get away from it every once in a while so as to not become too suffocated by it to see it's charm.
Monday, 23 March 2009
The motherfucker of all mornings..
...is what I had this morning.
(I may have to re-think this whole Title... .... Blog thing)
Having said that, it's the evening now so I'm kind of over it. Suffice to say, everything went wrong this morning, from waking up late for work to not being able to find any underwear, to falling asleep on the bus and taking 2 stress-filled hours longer to get to work only to discover that work was cancelled, and if I had just checked my answerphone I would have known that. Also, on the journey home I decided I was going to do something productive with my day anyway, to make myself feel less annoyed for having missed a lie-in opportunity, like clean the flat, or find all my underwear and put it in a drawer, or at least make some sort of delicious extravagant meal to eat while watching Jeremy Kyle on the sofa. However, I fell promptly asleep the minute I got in the flat, and have only just woken up. So I've slept through the entire productive part of the day, and am awake in time to do nothing all evening, before tossing and turning til 4am in the knowledge I have to be up at 7 to relive this entire charade of a routine.
I also discovered, upon being woken up at 6 by my flatmate slamming the front door (prick), that I can't live here any more. Not in the literal sense of can't as, well, I can. Nobody's throwing me out or anything, it just suddenly occured to me that living here is slowing destroying my soul, and has been for the past 2 years. Which is a rubbish thing to realise at 6am when you're half asleep, raging mad at your flatmate but haven't got enough energy to do anything about it, and were pretty sure when you went to sleep the night before, that everything was hunkydory. So I fell asleep sobbing into my pillow in pure frustration, fatigue and self-pityingness (pretty sure thats not a word) with the knowledge somewhere in the back of my mind that there was nothing I could do about any of these things.
Anyway I'm ranting a little, but Ive decided I'm going to stop apologising and holding back about being frustrated with life - nobody holds back when theyre satisfied and happy with life, so why should the other end of the spectrum be any different? (I don't actually feel that strongly about it, but the thought occured as I was typing and came out a little too deliberately). But never mind, it's a good point and I'm gonna go with it - no holding back. Or apologising about stuff. Or something.
Another thing that makes this day so rubbish is that I realised my full length mirror had been tilted to a weird angle that made everything a bit long and drawn-out, so put it back to normal - only to discover that Ive gotten kind of fat. And had only not realised because my mirror had been inadvertantly lying to me. And yes evidently, I trust my reflection in a dusty Ikea £12.99 mirror more than I do my own god-given eyes. (I don't know why I wrote god-given, I'm an Atheist. Christ, that Catholic programming runs deep!) Anyway, so I'm fat. Well, chubby round the edges, and us short people can't get away with chubby round the edges. It's like, either dedicate properly and become a jolly little fat cherub, or a a svelte little elven thing. There's no middle ground for the short. And I cannot pull off jolly - so I'm left with the option of getting fit and dieting. And, as a full-time smoker (it's not a hobby, it's a life choice) the idea of running around in lycra lifting things up and putting them down again, makes me want a cigarette and a bit of a sit-down. And as a bit of a foody and more importantly, a human being, the idea of being hungry all day just doesn't seem logical. But hey maybe I'm just rationalising being too lazy to get up off the couch.
(I may have to re-think this whole Title... .... Blog thing)
Having said that, it's the evening now so I'm kind of over it. Suffice to say, everything went wrong this morning, from waking up late for work to not being able to find any underwear, to falling asleep on the bus and taking 2 stress-filled hours longer to get to work only to discover that work was cancelled, and if I had just checked my answerphone I would have known that. Also, on the journey home I decided I was going to do something productive with my day anyway, to make myself feel less annoyed for having missed a lie-in opportunity, like clean the flat, or find all my underwear and put it in a drawer, or at least make some sort of delicious extravagant meal to eat while watching Jeremy Kyle on the sofa. However, I fell promptly asleep the minute I got in the flat, and have only just woken up. So I've slept through the entire productive part of the day, and am awake in time to do nothing all evening, before tossing and turning til 4am in the knowledge I have to be up at 7 to relive this entire charade of a routine.
I also discovered, upon being woken up at 6 by my flatmate slamming the front door (prick), that I can't live here any more. Not in the literal sense of can't as, well, I can. Nobody's throwing me out or anything, it just suddenly occured to me that living here is slowing destroying my soul, and has been for the past 2 years. Which is a rubbish thing to realise at 6am when you're half asleep, raging mad at your flatmate but haven't got enough energy to do anything about it, and were pretty sure when you went to sleep the night before, that everything was hunkydory. So I fell asleep sobbing into my pillow in pure frustration, fatigue and self-pityingness (pretty sure thats not a word) with the knowledge somewhere in the back of my mind that there was nothing I could do about any of these things.
Anyway I'm ranting a little, but Ive decided I'm going to stop apologising and holding back about being frustrated with life - nobody holds back when theyre satisfied and happy with life, so why should the other end of the spectrum be any different? (I don't actually feel that strongly about it, but the thought occured as I was typing and came out a little too deliberately). But never mind, it's a good point and I'm gonna go with it - no holding back. Or apologising about stuff. Or something.
Another thing that makes this day so rubbish is that I realised my full length mirror had been tilted to a weird angle that made everything a bit long and drawn-out, so put it back to normal - only to discover that Ive gotten kind of fat. And had only not realised because my mirror had been inadvertantly lying to me. And yes evidently, I trust my reflection in a dusty Ikea £12.99 mirror more than I do my own god-given eyes. (I don't know why I wrote god-given, I'm an Atheist. Christ, that Catholic programming runs deep!) Anyway, so I'm fat. Well, chubby round the edges, and us short people can't get away with chubby round the edges. It's like, either dedicate properly and become a jolly little fat cherub, or a a svelte little elven thing. There's no middle ground for the short. And I cannot pull off jolly - so I'm left with the option of getting fit and dieting. And, as a full-time smoker (it's not a hobby, it's a life choice) the idea of running around in lycra lifting things up and putting them down again, makes me want a cigarette and a bit of a sit-down. And as a bit of a foody and more importantly, a human being, the idea of being hungry all day just doesn't seem logical. But hey maybe I'm just rationalising being too lazy to get up off the couch.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Jolly Good Show
Today Darcy told me he loves me. And for the first time in my history of I-Love-You's, I didn't say I love you back (I used to have a real problem with auto-answering 'I love you' with 'I love you too') but we both knew it wasn't like that - he just said it because he just realised it. And he didn't say 'I love you', he said
"You know what, I think I love you."
At this point, we were outside on the balcony, under a duvet, so that I could have a ciggie. I'd just had a rough night as my mother had turned up at my flat for no apparent other reason than to criticise me, and Darcy had picked me up from my flat, at 1am, to take me away from it all. My hero. And I was in tears, a little hysterically ranting about how much I hated living there, and how I was so stupid to let my mother still make me feel like a 14 yr old to this very day, and how I didn't need him to save me, just so he knows. But he listened til I ran out of steam, then made me laugh at myself by taking the piss out of my use of profanity - "fucking lovely" it turns out, is a catchphrase of mine that I use every other sentence, whether it's referring to something good or bad, "fucking lovely". So we spent a few minutes just saying, in increasingly posh tones, "fucking lovely" "yes, fucking lovely my good man." "fucking lovely is it, old bean?" - which, obviously, we thought was the funniest thing in the world. So amidst the hysterics and the "fucking lovely"s he slipped out an "I fucking love you." at which point I almost choked mid-laugh.
"Yeah, you know what, I think I love you."
He said this with a quiet, wondering look on his face. I could have died. Suddenly, we weren't laughing. In that moment (it's such a cliche but..) everything suddenly slowed down and all I could hear was my heartbeat thumping in my ears. I hadn't thought about it before, but suddenly I was so aware - if he doesn't love me, Im actually going to die. He's wondering it now, mulling it over, "Hmmm, do I love her? Do I not? I've said it now so.. do I?" All I could do was watch his face, trying to read any little miniscule sign that I could pick up in this half-a-second long pause.
"....Right. Well you either do or you don't. So, do you?"
The casual observer would have noted the tone of panic that I couldn't manage to control in my voice, but I didn't care. Suddenly, I didn't care about anything, about the situation with my flat, about my mother making me feel adolescent, about only having 2 more cigarettes left, about my past, his past, about anything at all. Except that I had to know. Suddenly, thats all that mattered.
"Yeah, I do.."
He looked up at me and a grin spread across his face.
".. I fucking love you."
Now something about how un-romantic and un-soppy it was, and the look of "huh - how funny!" on his face, made it just perfect. So we just sat there, grinning at each other til I burst out laughing.
"You fucking love me, do you old bean?"
"Why yes I do, my good chap."
"Jolly good show. Fucking lovely."
"You know what, I think I love you."
At this point, we were outside on the balcony, under a duvet, so that I could have a ciggie. I'd just had a rough night as my mother had turned up at my flat for no apparent other reason than to criticise me, and Darcy had picked me up from my flat, at 1am, to take me away from it all. My hero. And I was in tears, a little hysterically ranting about how much I hated living there, and how I was so stupid to let my mother still make me feel like a 14 yr old to this very day, and how I didn't need him to save me, just so he knows. But he listened til I ran out of steam, then made me laugh at myself by taking the piss out of my use of profanity - "fucking lovely" it turns out, is a catchphrase of mine that I use every other sentence, whether it's referring to something good or bad, "fucking lovely". So we spent a few minutes just saying, in increasingly posh tones, "fucking lovely" "yes, fucking lovely my good man." "fucking lovely is it, old bean?" - which, obviously, we thought was the funniest thing in the world. So amidst the hysterics and the "fucking lovely"s he slipped out an "I fucking love you." at which point I almost choked mid-laugh.
"Yeah, you know what, I think I love you."
He said this with a quiet, wondering look on his face. I could have died. Suddenly, we weren't laughing. In that moment (it's such a cliche but..) everything suddenly slowed down and all I could hear was my heartbeat thumping in my ears. I hadn't thought about it before, but suddenly I was so aware - if he doesn't love me, Im actually going to die. He's wondering it now, mulling it over, "Hmmm, do I love her? Do I not? I've said it now so.. do I?" All I could do was watch his face, trying to read any little miniscule sign that I could pick up in this half-a-second long pause.
"....Right. Well you either do or you don't. So, do you?"
The casual observer would have noted the tone of panic that I couldn't manage to control in my voice, but I didn't care. Suddenly, I didn't care about anything, about the situation with my flat, about my mother making me feel adolescent, about only having 2 more cigarettes left, about my past, his past, about anything at all. Except that I had to know. Suddenly, thats all that mattered.
"Yeah, I do.."
He looked up at me and a grin spread across his face.
".. I fucking love you."
Now something about how un-romantic and un-soppy it was, and the look of "huh - how funny!" on his face, made it just perfect. So we just sat there, grinning at each other til I burst out laughing.
"You fucking love me, do you old bean?"
"Why yes I do, my good chap."
"Jolly good show. Fucking lovely."
Sunday, 8 March 2009
My new flatmate..
..may or may not be a prick.
He moved in 3 or 4 weeks ago, and I'm still not sure. He's the boyfriend of one of my oldest friends Pinky, they've been going out for about 6 months now - they're both Croatian. I mention this because, not in a xenophobic way (I spent last Summer in Split, and find the Croats a fine, proud people) but because this is the reason Im so unsure about him. One thing most of my Croatian friends recognise, and wear pretty proudly, is their...well, I don't want to say rudeness as such, because it's not. But for the purpose of speed and laziness, then yes. Their rudeness. Like Pinky will swan in and steal my cup of coffee and help herself to my makeup, all the while telling me how much weight I've put on - then getting annoyed by my autopilot politeness.
"Hey, is it alright if I pinch a ciggie?"
"It's just me dude, why dyou keep saying please and thank you? Just fucking take them!"
This Ive gotten used to from Pinky, which is odd as I really like manners, but I know it's a Croatian thing. Comes from sharing, and being a community where there's no need to ask because mi casa es su casa. Its not rudeness, it's being comfortable. Like the British equivalent to fondly calling someone a twat. You're being rude, because you like them. (God, life really never leaves the schoolyard does it?)
Anyway it's different with the new flatmate.
He farts loudly and deliberately, while looking at me for a reaction.
(Childish boy stuff? Or an immature attention-seeker?)
He calls me short, fat and ugly continuously.
(Teasing in that charming Hrvatskan way? Or just being a dickhead?)
He has spoken to me on more than one occasion, quite forcefully, about conspiracy theories.
(Deep, if slightly misguided, thinker? Or paranoid lunatic?)
He has made some questionably racist jokes in the past, and then laughed at my disdain.
(It's either/or with people who tell racist jokes, same as it is with people who love Al Murray or This Is England. Either you tell them because you forget it's not PC because you're so un-racist. Or you're a BNP-happy twat. Again, which?)
See, while the above list doesn't paint a very hopeful picture, thats actually just me nitpicking - the majority of the time, he's very sweet and seems pretty genuine. He also clearly cares about Pinky and they make a lovely couple. He also always buys me cigarettes (another brilliant Croatian trait - cigarettes are for sharing) and pays rent on time, as well as being helpful around the house. I just can't quite shake the feeling that beneath all these things, there may lurk an emergent lunatic. Although this may just be because everyone I meet seems to turn out to be a lunatic, and my constant mantras of "Stop thinking everyone's great! This person is probably a lunatic!" have finally kicked in.
Although, he is very good with my cat. Which means more than you'd think - I can't help but trust animal lovers. Well, not animal lovers but people who love animals, you know, the appropriate amount. I think it's remnants of the Mystery days, when Mystery would be tweaking out on my sofa, weeping and punching walls, and I would lock my cat in the cupboard in the knowledge that Mystery was so far gone that he could quite easily step on him. And then I would have to smash his face in. (I'm not a thug, I just love my cat.) Anyway I think there's something a bit sinister about people who don't like animals.
Although, having said that, I don't like most cats. I only really like mine, and thats cause he's more like a dog. He wags his tail, and answers to his name (Pikachu), and he sleeps at the foot of my bed, chasing my toes. And he's friendly - I hate those cats who hide under the couch whenever anything moves, or makes noise, or happens at all. Okay Im ranting a bit about my cat and Ive sort of digressed from my main point, but I just want to make it clear. My cat is fucking awesome.
Anyway, will give the flatmate some thought. I really hope he's not a racist nutter.
He moved in 3 or 4 weeks ago, and I'm still not sure. He's the boyfriend of one of my oldest friends Pinky, they've been going out for about 6 months now - they're both Croatian. I mention this because, not in a xenophobic way (I spent last Summer in Split, and find the Croats a fine, proud people) but because this is the reason Im so unsure about him. One thing most of my Croatian friends recognise, and wear pretty proudly, is their...well, I don't want to say rudeness as such, because it's not. But for the purpose of speed and laziness, then yes. Their rudeness. Like Pinky will swan in and steal my cup of coffee and help herself to my makeup, all the while telling me how much weight I've put on - then getting annoyed by my autopilot politeness.
"Hey, is it alright if I pinch a ciggie?"
"It's just me dude, why dyou keep saying please and thank you? Just fucking take them!"
This Ive gotten used to from Pinky, which is odd as I really like manners, but I know it's a Croatian thing. Comes from sharing, and being a community where there's no need to ask because mi casa es su casa. Its not rudeness, it's being comfortable. Like the British equivalent to fondly calling someone a twat. You're being rude, because you like them. (God, life really never leaves the schoolyard does it?)
Anyway it's different with the new flatmate.
He farts loudly and deliberately, while looking at me for a reaction.
(Childish boy stuff? Or an immature attention-seeker?)
He calls me short, fat and ugly continuously.
(Teasing in that charming Hrvatskan way? Or just being a dickhead?)
He has spoken to me on more than one occasion, quite forcefully, about conspiracy theories.
(Deep, if slightly misguided, thinker? Or paranoid lunatic?)
He has made some questionably racist jokes in the past, and then laughed at my disdain.
(It's either/or with people who tell racist jokes, same as it is with people who love Al Murray or This Is England. Either you tell them because you forget it's not PC because you're so un-racist. Or you're a BNP-happy twat. Again, which?)
See, while the above list doesn't paint a very hopeful picture, thats actually just me nitpicking - the majority of the time, he's very sweet and seems pretty genuine. He also clearly cares about Pinky and they make a lovely couple. He also always buys me cigarettes (another brilliant Croatian trait - cigarettes are for sharing) and pays rent on time, as well as being helpful around the house. I just can't quite shake the feeling that beneath all these things, there may lurk an emergent lunatic. Although this may just be because everyone I meet seems to turn out to be a lunatic, and my constant mantras of "Stop thinking everyone's great! This person is probably a lunatic!" have finally kicked in.
Although, he is very good with my cat. Which means more than you'd think - I can't help but trust animal lovers. Well, not animal lovers but people who love animals, you know, the appropriate amount. I think it's remnants of the Mystery days, when Mystery would be tweaking out on my sofa, weeping and punching walls, and I would lock my cat in the cupboard in the knowledge that Mystery was so far gone that he could quite easily step on him. And then I would have to smash his face in. (I'm not a thug, I just love my cat.) Anyway I think there's something a bit sinister about people who don't like animals.
Although, having said that, I don't like most cats. I only really like mine, and thats cause he's more like a dog. He wags his tail, and answers to his name (Pikachu), and he sleeps at the foot of my bed, chasing my toes. And he's friendly - I hate those cats who hide under the couch whenever anything moves, or makes noise, or happens at all. Okay Im ranting a bit about my cat and Ive sort of digressed from my main point, but I just want to make it clear. My cat is fucking awesome.
Anyway, will give the flatmate some thought. I really hope he's not a racist nutter.
Saturday, 7 March 2009
Fell In Love With A Boy..
..and then fell straight back out again, when it turned out actually he was a bit of a mentalist.
Ahh the modern fairytale in motion. I wanted to post a couple of poems today, but realised that I owe them some context, so I'll do a bit of background on me and Mystery. (Not his real name, obviously, but for good reason Mystery as a pseudonym seemed appropriate, if a little ironic.)
I met Mystery when I was 13. I had dropped in on a friend of mine on a whim - well actually, I was busting for a piss. Leaving the bathroom refreshed and well, relieved, I first saw him. Tall, dark, handsome. What a cliche. It turns out he was my friend's best buddy, and also lived down the road. Im pretty sure it was that first, inconsequential meeting that did it. He was already crawling under my skin. We continued to run into each other at various parties throughout the next couple of years, and each time we met there was a definite vibe in the air. We got along like a house on fire, bonding over our favourite author, Kurt Vonnegut (I never did tell him this, but I'd actually never heard of Kurt Vonnegut until I once overheard Mystery mention him, and spent the next few weeks reading everything he'd ever written. He is now, coincidentally, my favourite author.) Each time we met we found more in common, but these meetings were tantalisingly few and far between. Even so, I was hooked. Fuck it, I was obsessed.
But then Ash. My Irish boy. My first, and only, real love. He came into my life, stayed for 2 years, and changed everything. But thats a different story, for a different time. Suffice to say, I had my first taste of love, and it nearly killed me. It, literally, killed him.
Another party. I was 17, going on 45, and had slept with most of the boys I knew (and most of the ones I didn't). I had moved out of home and was living with my best friend Pickled Lily and her fucked-up Russian family, and was dropping out of school. I was a broken, emotionally-twisted depressive who spent her days smoking in bed watching tv, and her nights dancing in dark corners of dingy rock clubs. Funnily enough, it was one of the happiest, most genuine, times of my life. But I digress - back to Mystery. By this time, Mystery had done some growing up of his own - these days he was tall, dark, handsome. Never trust a cliche. Anyway, another party. I'd gotten used to seeing Mystery at parties, we had a routine of merging the groups of people we'd arrived with, and spending the night flirting. But no pay-off, he never made a move. And I was still too in awe of him, and too unsure of myself to do anything about it, other than spend the rest of the night frustrated and insecure. But this night, this bloody night, I was on a mission. I manoevered myself back to his house, and told myself I wasn't leaving until he kissed me. Which he did. And we fell asleep in each others arms. I will always remember that night with such fondness, as one of those nights that you can only ever have at that age, when you haven't learned to play games. Except that even the memory of that night is a lie, as we were both proficient game-players and emotional manipulators.
That night lead to more nights, more parties, more sleepovers, until a few weeks later we were an established couple in love. I can think of no better phrase than to say it was a whirlwind of emotion. Sudden. Destructive. We spent the first few months learning each other and creating an emotional connection that we both thought would save us. When I think back to those days, I get a blur of darkness, late nights, tears, fist-marks in walls, and endless words - secrets, lies, truths, merging into one another (with a backdrop soundtrack of moody 90s prog rock). Turns out he was a fucked up little boy, with severe emotional issues and secrets that had been eating away into so much of his being that he'd become them. By the time we'd become a proper couple, when I looked at him I didn't see a person, I saw his secrets, and the lie that he'd become because of them. And I couldn't handle it. I'd built him up onto such a pedestal that he could never survive the fall from grace in my eyes. But he loved me. An intense, needing, suffocating love. He bore his soul to me, raw naked pain and anger gushed from him, drowning me. He was looking for help, for redemption, but over the months he gradually sucked up so much out of me that I literally had nothing left to give him, let alone keep for myself. I cared about him, but I couldn't breathe - he was destroying me, and I couldn't help him. And I couldn't live with any more guilt. In fact, I didn't want to. Selfish bastard. It was him or me. And I chose me.
I found several thousand bits of writing and poems (adolescent scribblings) that chronicled our 4-month disaster of a relationship, and have plucked out some snippets that I think represent the transition from obsession to suffocation to anger pretty nicely! Although Ive tossed the really powerful, angry crazy ones as all they did was chronicle his confessions, which frankly, Im happy to send to rot in a landfill somewhere. (Except that I recycle, so they'll be pulped up and remade into brand new blank pieces of paper.. but I don't want to turn that into some analogy on the nature of experience. They've been overanalysed enough already).
.................
Held up against the light,
Your colours leave me wired
Distortion on your breath sharpens my senses
Panicked, I grasp at patterns caught,
Poorly saught, but momentary
Intoxicated, Mesmerised
Dislodged and terrified
I have to know you tonight..
We may never meet again.
I have to know you tonight.
And I hate what I've become - yours for the taking
Consumed by the night and your dizzy words
As I long for the courage to raise the stakes
So strange and appealing you are
What a shame I'm disguised and enthralled
Itching for your touch on mine
I have to know you tonight.
Inspired and drained of colour, I resign.
.................
Tonight I had you on my mind
I don't even wonder where you are, or
What you're doing, who you're with
But mainly what had happened if I'd
Kissed you just that little rougher
Or stayed and let myself go
And looked you in the eye when we talked of..this
Then maybe I wouldn't still be slightly in awe
Of you and yours, and what this means
To you, beyond the words you speak
Which, although glittering and decorated,
And quietly deliberated,
Throw me a little off balance, and leave me
A little silenced.
.................
With you I forget myself
& I don't know why I ever was attracted
To you and I retract my latest statement
A little belated but I
I know exactly why
And didn't the muse just get it right
Close to me
I wanted you close to me
This may be bliss, call it bliss
Call this what you wish
The truth is I never was in control of this
& I know why I ever was affected by you
And the time we spend together I spend looking at the door
I clothed myself in silence
And you gently strip me down
& I re-mould myself in your eyes
My memory faded, a little elated but I
I know I had to lie
And didn't the muse just get it right
This may be bliss, call it bliss
Call this what you wish
Close to me
I wanted you close to me
My image mirrored on your face
Every trace of you erased
& this may be bliss, call it bliss
Tell me I was tricked,
The truth, the truth is I did this.
.................
Resonance takes residence in my mind
Ah, but for the pretty lies
Consorting with the shitty rhymes.
The truth is too painful to speak of in this place
The truth is irrelevant when we're face to face.
But I am one whose reticence is necessary
Imagery draws this night to dawn
Discordia brands me innocent
Possessed and colour blind.
Faces at the window
Oh, they wouldn't scare you
But caution knows its way around me
And fear, to me, is ever-present
Effervescent tonight you shined
As ever, lacking pride or effort
Disguise to you as natural as
Ignorance plays on my mind.
And time, to me, is finite. Another
Friendly thorn in my side
But somehow you are transcendental,
An ever-playing guitar riff
Of minor chords and accidental politics.
So I'll lay down my pen & replace mine with anothers.
Writing in the third person, shame and inhibition worsens.
.................
And I apologise for my sincerity
In all its forms
And I apologise for my insincerity
When we speak of time
My secret agenda - is a crime
Tis for myself I spit and lie
And for that I apologise.
But still I will not venture a promenade
Stagnant air will remain a friend of mine
In my mind, you lie intertwined
Laced in dusty lights
A whisper and a gentle touch - my primal weakness
My accused crime for you is a spit in the eye
I like clarity. I lack clarity. but
For my (lack of) cryptic bullshit, I apologise.
.................
I broke up with Mystery one anonymous night in Winter (all I remember of that day, detail-wise, is that there was a premiere for one of the Harry Potter films, which we were 20 minutes late for because I had to watch the end of a Man United/Chelsea Champions League match. United won 1-0, since you asked). It was out of the blue, and brutal. I pulled no punches - I felt I owed him at least the honesty of telling him I never did love him. He just weakened me so much that I went along with it and stopped questioning anything. I did, begrudgingly, care about him but by that point I couldn't even bear to look at him. We didn't speak for a year after that, in which time he travelled the world, and I found myself with the third in a consecutive trilogy of men who screwed me over. Funnily enough, Mystery is the only one of those men I still see. In fact, we're good friends these days.
Ahh the modern fairytale in motion. I wanted to post a couple of poems today, but realised that I owe them some context, so I'll do a bit of background on me and Mystery. (Not his real name, obviously, but for good reason Mystery as a pseudonym seemed appropriate, if a little ironic.)
I met Mystery when I was 13. I had dropped in on a friend of mine on a whim - well actually, I was busting for a piss. Leaving the bathroom refreshed and well, relieved, I first saw him. Tall, dark, handsome. What a cliche. It turns out he was my friend's best buddy, and also lived down the road. Im pretty sure it was that first, inconsequential meeting that did it. He was already crawling under my skin. We continued to run into each other at various parties throughout the next couple of years, and each time we met there was a definite vibe in the air. We got along like a house on fire, bonding over our favourite author, Kurt Vonnegut (I never did tell him this, but I'd actually never heard of Kurt Vonnegut until I once overheard Mystery mention him, and spent the next few weeks reading everything he'd ever written. He is now, coincidentally, my favourite author.) Each time we met we found more in common, but these meetings were tantalisingly few and far between. Even so, I was hooked. Fuck it, I was obsessed.
But then Ash. My Irish boy. My first, and only, real love. He came into my life, stayed for 2 years, and changed everything. But thats a different story, for a different time. Suffice to say, I had my first taste of love, and it nearly killed me. It, literally, killed him.
Another party. I was 17, going on 45, and had slept with most of the boys I knew (and most of the ones I didn't). I had moved out of home and was living with my best friend Pickled Lily and her fucked-up Russian family, and was dropping out of school. I was a broken, emotionally-twisted depressive who spent her days smoking in bed watching tv, and her nights dancing in dark corners of dingy rock clubs. Funnily enough, it was one of the happiest, most genuine, times of my life. But I digress - back to Mystery. By this time, Mystery had done some growing up of his own - these days he was tall, dark, handsome. Never trust a cliche. Anyway, another party. I'd gotten used to seeing Mystery at parties, we had a routine of merging the groups of people we'd arrived with, and spending the night flirting. But no pay-off, he never made a move. And I was still too in awe of him, and too unsure of myself to do anything about it, other than spend the rest of the night frustrated and insecure. But this night, this bloody night, I was on a mission. I manoevered myself back to his house, and told myself I wasn't leaving until he kissed me. Which he did. And we fell asleep in each others arms. I will always remember that night with such fondness, as one of those nights that you can only ever have at that age, when you haven't learned to play games. Except that even the memory of that night is a lie, as we were both proficient game-players and emotional manipulators.
That night lead to more nights, more parties, more sleepovers, until a few weeks later we were an established couple in love. I can think of no better phrase than to say it was a whirlwind of emotion. Sudden. Destructive. We spent the first few months learning each other and creating an emotional connection that we both thought would save us. When I think back to those days, I get a blur of darkness, late nights, tears, fist-marks in walls, and endless words - secrets, lies, truths, merging into one another (with a backdrop soundtrack of moody 90s prog rock). Turns out he was a fucked up little boy, with severe emotional issues and secrets that had been eating away into so much of his being that he'd become them. By the time we'd become a proper couple, when I looked at him I didn't see a person, I saw his secrets, and the lie that he'd become because of them. And I couldn't handle it. I'd built him up onto such a pedestal that he could never survive the fall from grace in my eyes. But he loved me. An intense, needing, suffocating love. He bore his soul to me, raw naked pain and anger gushed from him, drowning me. He was looking for help, for redemption, but over the months he gradually sucked up so much out of me that I literally had nothing left to give him, let alone keep for myself. I cared about him, but I couldn't breathe - he was destroying me, and I couldn't help him. And I couldn't live with any more guilt. In fact, I didn't want to. Selfish bastard. It was him or me. And I chose me.
I found several thousand bits of writing and poems (adolescent scribblings) that chronicled our 4-month disaster of a relationship, and have plucked out some snippets that I think represent the transition from obsession to suffocation to anger pretty nicely! Although Ive tossed the really powerful, angry crazy ones as all they did was chronicle his confessions, which frankly, Im happy to send to rot in a landfill somewhere. (Except that I recycle, so they'll be pulped up and remade into brand new blank pieces of paper.. but I don't want to turn that into some analogy on the nature of experience. They've been overanalysed enough already).
.................
Held up against the light,
Your colours leave me wired
Distortion on your breath sharpens my senses
Panicked, I grasp at patterns caught,
Poorly saught, but momentary
Intoxicated, Mesmerised
Dislodged and terrified
I have to know you tonight..
We may never meet again.
I have to know you tonight.
And I hate what I've become - yours for the taking
Consumed by the night and your dizzy words
As I long for the courage to raise the stakes
So strange and appealing you are
What a shame I'm disguised and enthralled
Itching for your touch on mine
I have to know you tonight.
Inspired and drained of colour, I resign.
.................
Tonight I had you on my mind
I don't even wonder where you are, or
What you're doing, who you're with
But mainly what had happened if I'd
Kissed you just that little rougher
Or stayed and let myself go
And looked you in the eye when we talked of..this
Then maybe I wouldn't still be slightly in awe
Of you and yours, and what this means
To you, beyond the words you speak
Which, although glittering and decorated,
And quietly deliberated,
Throw me a little off balance, and leave me
A little silenced.
.................
With you I forget myself
& I don't know why I ever was attracted
To you and I retract my latest statement
A little belated but I
I know exactly why
And didn't the muse just get it right
Close to me
I wanted you close to me
This may be bliss, call it bliss
Call this what you wish
The truth is I never was in control of this
& I know why I ever was affected by you
And the time we spend together I spend looking at the door
I clothed myself in silence
And you gently strip me down
& I re-mould myself in your eyes
My memory faded, a little elated but I
I know I had to lie
And didn't the muse just get it right
This may be bliss, call it bliss
Call this what you wish
Close to me
I wanted you close to me
My image mirrored on your face
Every trace of you erased
& this may be bliss, call it bliss
Tell me I was tricked,
The truth, the truth is I did this.
.................
Resonance takes residence in my mind
Ah, but for the pretty lies
Consorting with the shitty rhymes.
The truth is too painful to speak of in this place
The truth is irrelevant when we're face to face.
But I am one whose reticence is necessary
Imagery draws this night to dawn
Discordia brands me innocent
Possessed and colour blind.
Faces at the window
Oh, they wouldn't scare you
But caution knows its way around me
And fear, to me, is ever-present
Effervescent tonight you shined
As ever, lacking pride or effort
Disguise to you as natural as
Ignorance plays on my mind.
And time, to me, is finite. Another
Friendly thorn in my side
But somehow you are transcendental,
An ever-playing guitar riff
Of minor chords and accidental politics.
So I'll lay down my pen & replace mine with anothers.
Writing in the third person, shame and inhibition worsens.
.................
And I apologise for my sincerity
In all its forms
And I apologise for my insincerity
When we speak of time
My secret agenda - is a crime
Tis for myself I spit and lie
And for that I apologise.
But still I will not venture a promenade
Stagnant air will remain a friend of mine
In my mind, you lie intertwined
Laced in dusty lights
A whisper and a gentle touch - my primal weakness
My accused crime for you is a spit in the eye
I like clarity. I lack clarity. but
For my (lack of) cryptic bullshit, I apologise.
.................
I broke up with Mystery one anonymous night in Winter (all I remember of that day, detail-wise, is that there was a premiere for one of the Harry Potter films, which we were 20 minutes late for because I had to watch the end of a Man United/Chelsea Champions League match. United won 1-0, since you asked). It was out of the blue, and brutal. I pulled no punches - I felt I owed him at least the honesty of telling him I never did love him. He just weakened me so much that I went along with it and stopped questioning anything. I did, begrudgingly, care about him but by that point I couldn't even bear to look at him. We didn't speak for a year after that, in which time he travelled the world, and I found myself with the third in a consecutive trilogy of men who screwed me over. Funnily enough, Mystery is the only one of those men I still see. In fact, we're good friends these days.
The pretty lies, consorting with the shitty rhymes..
So Ive been wondering what I what to use this blog for - I don't want it to be a sort of clinical schedule-style diary, but I don't want it to be some wasteland of my own self-indulgent depressive ramblings, I want it to maybe have some semblance of structure, and most certainly humour and more than a pinch of salt. But not so much that Im writing with disdain, I want to be genuine and not some smug self-satisfied wannabe writer. (Im pretty sure Im all of these things, by the way. I just don't want to actually have it reflected back at me in my own words!) But I just think that when you're not writing for a particular set-up, it's so easy with blogs to drift into a certain tone, more often than not ending in pages of stream of consciousness that people think is wildly revealing but is just emo. In the worst sense of the word.
So good, Ive established what kind of blog I don't want to write - although, annoyingly, on rereading that last paragraph I can't help but notice my tone is exactly that of a blog I don't want to write. Rambling, and lazily peppered with generalisations and caricatures. Dammit!
Well, in demonstration of how cliche-ly (don't think thats a word..) emo I don't want to be, Im going to type up some god-awful poems. Although, in all seriousness, Ive got some old poetry I found a couple of months ago that I'd written 2/3 years ago, and re-reading it shook me a little as it reminded me of how much I used to write, and how much comfort I took in it. And, actually, how I used to be a right bloody mess! So Ive been trying to put them in a box somewhere, but haven't really found a place for them, as they're not really relevant to who I am now, but it's kind of interesting, having a brief snapshot into who exactly you were at a particular time, and exactly how you felt. But, anyway, I ramble. Im going to put some on here, and who knows maybe it'll be cathartic. At the very least, when I lose them in the jungle of clothes, paper, makeshift ashtrays and mouldy cups of tea that is my bedroom, they still exist somewhere in the world.
The makeup saved your life, made you up
And made you look like you were loved
But your eyes were paved with stains from better times
And I proclaim
Nothing. Redemption resides in the schoolyard
With memories categorised and illustrated,
Quietly frustrated I long for some smack,
I long for a break, all along you were
Tracked, we were made to come back
To speed up this time, entangled
And belittled til my postcode's stolen France
And it's so sad you can't see past the bottom of your champagne glass
And it's so sweet the way that you suppose
That the police will protect your home
Ah, the gentle deja-vu in lovers' eyes
Plasticine babies best forgotten, as serotonin levels rise
And I propose
Nothing. A small request for a forlorn rogue
Humiliated and stripped of prose.
So good, Ive established what kind of blog I don't want to write - although, annoyingly, on rereading that last paragraph I can't help but notice my tone is exactly that of a blog I don't want to write. Rambling, and lazily peppered with generalisations and caricatures. Dammit!
Well, in demonstration of how cliche-ly (don't think thats a word..) emo I don't want to be, Im going to type up some god-awful poems. Although, in all seriousness, Ive got some old poetry I found a couple of months ago that I'd written 2/3 years ago, and re-reading it shook me a little as it reminded me of how much I used to write, and how much comfort I took in it. And, actually, how I used to be a right bloody mess! So Ive been trying to put them in a box somewhere, but haven't really found a place for them, as they're not really relevant to who I am now, but it's kind of interesting, having a brief snapshot into who exactly you were at a particular time, and exactly how you felt. But, anyway, I ramble. Im going to put some on here, and who knows maybe it'll be cathartic. At the very least, when I lose them in the jungle of clothes, paper, makeshift ashtrays and mouldy cups of tea that is my bedroom, they still exist somewhere in the world.
The makeup saved your life, made you up
And made you look like you were loved
But your eyes were paved with stains from better times
And I proclaim
Nothing. Redemption resides in the schoolyard
With memories categorised and illustrated,
Quietly frustrated I long for some smack,
I long for a break, all along you were
Tracked, we were made to come back
To speed up this time, entangled
And belittled til my postcode's stolen France
And it's so sad you can't see past the bottom of your champagne glass
And it's so sweet the way that you suppose
That the police will protect your home
Ah, the gentle deja-vu in lovers' eyes
Plasticine babies best forgotten, as serotonin levels rise
And I propose
Nothing. A small request for a forlorn rogue
Humiliated and stripped of prose.
The Great R.D. Laing
Ive been hiding in my room all day. Juvenile as it is, too much life makes me retreat a little. It's now 1:30am and Im basking in solitude probably a little too happily (but I'll put that thought aside for another, more introspective time). I'm currently reading a poetry book by R.D. Laing, which is running brilliantly convoluted Knots around my poor weary brain.
Example:
It is boring that you are frightened
you are boring me by being interested in me.
Im trying to be interesting,
you are very boring.
You are frightened of being boring, you
try to be interesting by not being interested,
but are interested only in not being boring.
You are not interested in me.
You are only interested that I be interested in you.
You pretend to be bored
because I am not interested
that you are frightened
that I am not frightened
that you are not interested in me.
Example:
It is boring that you are frightened
you are boring me by being interested in me.
Im trying to be interesting,
you are very boring.
You are frightened of being boring, you
try to be interesting by not being interested,
but are interested only in not being boring.
You are not interested in me.
You are only interested that I be interested in you.
You pretend to be bored
because I am not interested
that you are frightened
that I am not frightened
that you are not interested in me.
Friday, 6 March 2009
Dealing with my hangover with grace and dignity..
..and not in any way being a growling head-clutching hermit. Got home last night at 6:30, and had to be up for work at 8. Except I got up at 10, full in the knowledge that the shop couldn't open without me, but not giving a toss. Which would be fine, except that Im working in an Oxfam shop, so if I fuck up it's like Im fucking up Africa or something. Which is a lot of guilt to handle on a blinding hangover.
Did coke last night for the first time this year. And actually didn't go home with the guilts, which was amazingly nice. So Im definitely a convert to the occasion-drugging. Birthdays, big parties, festivals, blue mondays. And obviously any time Im with The Cats. Im referring to my group of friends who Ive known for a couple of years now, and our friendship is based on us all frequenting/working at a particular pub, and bonding over much booze, gear, lock-ins, strip poker and forfeits. We are a debaucherous, frivolous group of good time guys and gals, but a more warm-hearted genuine bunch of people you just won't find.
Anyway, I know its passe and a bit twee, but I'll be using pseudonyms for the people in my life in this blog, not for any kind consideration for their privacy, but mainly so I don't feel hugely exposed and a bit naked in public (which is, coincidentally, another favourite pastime of The Cats).
The Cats are so-called because sometimes when we're all out on a particularly hedonistic night, I can't help but get The Cat Empire's 'The Wine Song' in my head, and it seems to sum up our vibe (at the best of times) pretty definitively..
Songs and melodies change and change, and sway
But they still stay the same.
The songs that we sung when the dark days come
Are the songs that we sang when we chased them away.
If I ever found a pot of gold, I'd buy bottles untold of the nectar of the vines.
Oh I'm going to die with a twinkle in my eye,
Cause I sung songs, spun stories, loved, laughed and drank wine.
Tomorrow is another day
The cats are out to play, to play
That old rusty spaceship wants to sail
Into the milkyway again, on a river of red, red wine..
Run...
Lets have some fun...
We'll drink..
A toast to the sun...
In summer the bushfires rage, and rage, and rage
On such beautiful days
And we fight them with water that runs through the cracks
Water we're desperately trying to save
So I'll just live on wine, and water my vines
And sleep on the wind with the fires right behind
And sing on the beaches and dance through the night
Oh we'll cry "pass the wine, pass the wine, pass the wine"...
Did coke last night for the first time this year. And actually didn't go home with the guilts, which was amazingly nice. So Im definitely a convert to the occasion-drugging. Birthdays, big parties, festivals, blue mondays. And obviously any time Im with The Cats. Im referring to my group of friends who Ive known for a couple of years now, and our friendship is based on us all frequenting/working at a particular pub, and bonding over much booze, gear, lock-ins, strip poker and forfeits. We are a debaucherous, frivolous group of good time guys and gals, but a more warm-hearted genuine bunch of people you just won't find.
Anyway, I know its passe and a bit twee, but I'll be using pseudonyms for the people in my life in this blog, not for any kind consideration for their privacy, but mainly so I don't feel hugely exposed and a bit naked in public (which is, coincidentally, another favourite pastime of The Cats).
The Cats are so-called because sometimes when we're all out on a particularly hedonistic night, I can't help but get The Cat Empire's 'The Wine Song' in my head, and it seems to sum up our vibe (at the best of times) pretty definitively..
Songs and melodies change and change, and sway
But they still stay the same.
The songs that we sung when the dark days come
Are the songs that we sang when we chased them away.
If I ever found a pot of gold, I'd buy bottles untold of the nectar of the vines.
Oh I'm going to die with a twinkle in my eye,
Cause I sung songs, spun stories, loved, laughed and drank wine.
Tomorrow is another day
The cats are out to play, to play
That old rusty spaceship wants to sail
Into the milkyway again, on a river of red, red wine..
Run...
Lets have some fun...
We'll drink..
A toast to the sun...
In summer the bushfires rage, and rage, and rage
On such beautiful days
And we fight them with water that runs through the cracks
Water we're desperately trying to save
So I'll just live on wine, and water my vines
And sleep on the wind with the fires right behind
And sing on the beaches and dance through the night
Oh we'll cry "pass the wine, pass the wine, pass the wine"...
Thursday, 5 March 2009
Stupid O'Clock in the morning..
.. and I'm not really sure what Im doing. Well, Ive decided to write a blog, presumably. Decided is actually too strong a word for what I do, which is stumble into things and pretend it was deliberate.
Anyway I'm not going to make a formal introduction or welcome for myself, as Im not sure how this works. I just read (stumbled into, again) my first blog ever this evening, and loved it. And have spent the last 5 hours reading its entire back catalogue (instead of finding a job or making myself some dinner) and thought maybe I should do that. You know, catalogue my thoughts and all that. Which, so far, have proven to be substance-less drivel. But thats okay, Im new and a bit nervous - Im also not sure writing-style-wise if Im writing to myself, or an imaginary audience. Actually I always had that problem as a kid when trying to write a diary. Although that was probably more to do with the fact I knew my mother would steal it and read it, and then mock me for it. God, it's barely been a paragraph and Im unloading parental issues. Good start.
Anyway I'm not going to make a formal introduction or welcome for myself, as Im not sure how this works. I just read (stumbled into, again) my first blog ever this evening, and loved it. And have spent the last 5 hours reading its entire back catalogue (instead of finding a job or making myself some dinner) and thought maybe I should do that. You know, catalogue my thoughts and all that. Which, so far, have proven to be substance-less drivel. But thats okay, Im new and a bit nervous - Im also not sure writing-style-wise if Im writing to myself, or an imaginary audience. Actually I always had that problem as a kid when trying to write a diary. Although that was probably more to do with the fact I knew my mother would steal it and read it, and then mock me for it. God, it's barely been a paragraph and Im unloading parental issues. Good start.
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