summer could come again, i could be happy

Update on the monumentally fucked up situation: he didn't tell her last week. I felt like punching him in the face, and tried to shut everything down, but when I did I realised something: I never got over this man. I want to go back to 18 months ago and tell myself not to break up with him for such a fucking stupid reason. I'd forgotten how this feels. It's like there's no disconnect between me as a friend and me as a girlfriend: it's so good to feel respected for what's in my head. I really didn't know what a good thing I had until I lost it.

And yet I don't regret this. Over the last 18 months I've become so much closer to the person I want to be. Could I have done that if we'd been together. I don't know. I'm just so glad he wants me, whether it's the fucked-up, somewhat naive girl who he met on my 19th birthday, or the person I am now.

We've had one of many deep and meaningful conversations, the gist of which being that this is something and it's going to be something. Obviously I'm scared, because this is me, but I'm not going to run away. Yes, I'm committment-phobic and scared of being trapped, but I'm not going to get another chance here. If he can cope with me being scared, then I'm going to take the risk.

Of course this is the easy bit. Rebuilding all my bridges with her is going to be a bitch, and I wouldn't blame her for punching me in the face. She's so childlike and fragile at the moment: I don't want to break her. But she's told me several times drunkenly that she doesn't think they like each other: what the hell do I with that information? And it can't have been that solid if all it took was a bottle of vodka that left us sentient enough to care about contraception to get us into bed. I highly doubt I'm so amazing in the sack that I can make men forget about their girlfriends.

I just feel bad because we're such different people. She doesn't seem to know how not to be in a relationship, so she's clinging to this no matter what. If it were me, I'd dump the fucker the second I started to feel as lost as she seems to look.

Despite all this, I got 97% in my Odyssey test and two Firsts in my essays. So out of six essays this year, I've got five Firsts and I'm still waiting on the sixth. I could actually get six motherfucking Firsts this year. I so rock ^_^

We've also been picking modules for next year. I've got no choice about my dissertation and Greek Literary Texts, but that still left me with two options. I knew I'd be doing Tiberius to Hadrian because I've wanted to do that since A-Level, and if I'm not doing Tacitus for my dissertation I might as well turn all that knowledge to something useful. It also fulfils my Latin component as well. I did sign up for History of Medicine, but the lure of Politics and Poetics with Dorrells and Fearn was too strong, and I switched. Plus, I get to do it in Latin and Greek. I am literally so happy about that. Ignore the fact that the boything will be doing most of the Greek for me, I'm still happy about it.

There are so many things around me which signify contentment. Hole gig tonight, most of a bottle of tequila left, Latin and Greek dictionaries, being curled up under boyface's blanket, homemade curry...

I feel like a bitch, but I'm happy at the moment.

and i will dig my own grave...

4:48am:

He's telling her now. In the room down the corridor, they are talking about how he and I fucked when she went back home overnight. She almost caught us at it tonight: we had enough time for me to get my shirt on, and then he opened the door to see her, makeup running, asking about nothing. She looked like a tiny child. I think I've just broken someone.

What makes me so disappointed in myself is that nothing good can come of this. It's not like we can salvage anything from the wreckage here: it's going to annihilate this household, and there's no way we can start anything in the same house as her. We should have stopped ourselves, we should have tried to think beyond ourselves. But I know we wouldn't have stopped until we were caught anyway.

It was entirely free of recrimination the first time. Okay, we were drunk, but the morning after we woke up wanting to fuck. And that was sin, because we had no excuses anymore. And then all those nights I've waited up for him, so we could watch something together or fight or talk or do anything that gives us an excuse to get close to one another and breathe out desire. But there was never guilt until I thought about her.

On Thursday, she got drunk. Very drunk. She kissed me, she cried about her family life, she cried about the fact she doesn't think he likes her or she likes him, she cried about the fact she still thinks I hate her for going out with my ex. It was so painful: she was begging me not to hate her in the morning, and now I want to do the same thing. And after she told me all that, after she was asleep, I went downstairs and made out with her boyfriend.

I am such a rat it's not even true.

All I've done with this is scorch a lot of bridges. All I've done is kill my name and everything associated with it. I'm not going to pretend that she was my best friend, but she was a laugh, she and I went girly shopping and laughed together, we drank sloe gin and lemonade and ordered pizza a gazillion times together. And I didn't know, I swear to god, I didn't know that this was under the surface. I thought I'd killed my affection for him long ago, but somehow neither of us escaped. It was subliminated, not destroyed. And now it will have to be repressed again, because there's no way this can turn into anything. You can't create something new from ashes.

I never wanted to be this person.

not everyone here is that fucked up and cold

Okay, it's been a while. In words of one syllable or less: stress, work, house inspection, essays, gigs, Camden, essays, cleaning, stress, going out, exhaustion, work, stress, going home, tiredness, illness, barcrawl, tonsillitis, work, cleaning, work, illness, Athens, home, family, getting healthy, work, friends, relaxation, finally some zen.

Well, largely, anyway.

The best moments of the last month or so:

* Athens overall, but sliding down the Areopagus with Becky, drinking absinthe with Joe and playing Mafia with everyone rank pretty highly.

* The mini Mooky meet. I'd met Candy the week before, but it was incredible how we all coalesced: it was like meeting people for the first and for the umpteenth time. It was so weird, but amazing too. I want another one.

* Does It Offend You, Yeah? All right band, nothing special, but the gig was a lot of fun. It was a lot of emo kids, so it was very high energy and made me feel teenaged again. I did get headbutted in the ear by some drunk bitch, but apart from that we got out alive.

* Catching up with the Cambridge peeps again. I miss the Marias a lot when we're not together.

* Going out gay clubbing with Ruby. I'm not totally happy with how we left it, but hopefully we'll pick it up again in the summer.

* Drunken texts from Jenny and Joe. 'Nuff said.

Things I'm looking forward to:

* We're now talking about Mooky meets in Cambridge and Brighton, which is something to look forward too.

* Hole on May 9th. I can't wait for this. Seeing Courtney Love will help fill out my grunge quota for the year, which began with Alice in Chains in November.

* Maria needs to go to Paris in the summer for her dissertation, and so we're talking about going together. Looking forward to this is keeping me sane.

* My parents are going to help me with getting my hair colour stripped (if it's the best thing to do), so hopefully I'll be getting blue hair sometime soon.

Things I love right now:

* Mark Lanegan. The Gutter Twins are absolutely fantastic, and I'm on a real Screaming Trees kick as well, so he's kind of soundtracking my life at the moment.

* Alice in Chains. I don't know why, but it helps a lot with my Greek homework.

* Raspberry sambuca. Mixed with lemonade it is my new lifeline.

* Coffee. Writing this essay would be impossible without this amazing, life-giving substance.

* My Antigone essay. It's weird, but I love this so much, it's mad. It's just incredibly interesting as an essay, and it's one of those rare beasts that actually feels like it might have a cohesive whole at the end of it all. I'm really enjoying writing it all.

* My new boots. I got them in Camden during the Mooky meet, and they're making me very happy.

* The fact that I can even think of things that I like lets me know that things will turn out okay, after all.

shame, such a shame, think i kinda lost myself again

I hate the fact that I never have fucking time to do anything at the moment, and that all my time belongs to other people.

I don't want to get up tomorrow at 4:45am to catch a train home, but I don't have a choice if I want to have any time at home.

I don't really want to go out tonight, but I don't have a choice since it's Jenny's birthday and everyone will be at Kasbah, and my non-attendance will be commented on and I'll feel like a fucking failure if I stay in when I could have journeyed back to Cambridge.

I don't want to spend money, but I want to get drunk.

I don't want to make myself beautiful, as it would only feel like a mask at the moment and I'm sick of hiding behind masks and I want to be raw and ugly as a testament to loss.

I don't want to go out into the cold, because I feel like I'll never get warm again otherwise. But I don't want to stay in this room, because it's too small and too personal to contain all my self-loathing.

Basically, I want to stop sucking at things.

i feel right at home in this stunning monochrome, alone in my way

Well, at least this post isn't concerned with theology or my own lovely fucked-up psyche.

I've been trying my hardest to keep everything going lately, and it's all failing. Two essays, each worth 25% of their respective modules, both due in on the 24th. I should be writing frantically right now, I should know what I'm doing, but I don't. This is not through lack of trying, it's just exhaustion and the sinking feeling that this is not going to turn out at all well. I just can't face writing these essays. Period. I also need to work on all my translations: that's the Res Gestae, Apuleius and Euripides, because they're all due in at about the time of the essays and so they won't be done as the deadline approaches.

University is just a juggling act: the skill is keeping all of the balls in the air. I'm usually an excellent juggler, but right now a lot of stuff is going to end up on the floor.

I can't wait to go back to Cambridge in a few weeks. I want to go home and be fed and be taken care of and not have to panic about my appalling work life/sex life/weight issues. Yeah, I can't believe I wrote that either. It's just that my eating schedule's all over the place, and because I'm working until 3am a lot I get the munchies for bread and Marmite, or Special K, or whatever I've got at awful moments. I'm sure I'm gaining weight. Once I start eating though my body still believes it's hungry, and I have to work so hard not to eat something else. Then I hate myself for my weakness.

In addition, I went shopping with Jenny, and we swapped clothes a few times. The thing is, I'm about 10 inches taller than her, but she's usually takes a size up from me. She's not a big girl at all, but she has pretty prominent breasts, and so if we swap clothes or both try something on, I'm taking a size down from her. She's not trying to, but she's being a bit snide about it. She referred to me as 'offensively skinny' recently - dude, I'm a bit under 10 stone! That's not even close to offensive! I would love to be able to wear corsets and actually enjoy bra shopping instead of it being another fantastic round of 'and will this one fit...? No, of course not!' So yeah, I'm indulging in a bit of self-loathing at the moment. So sue me.

I also slept with Nick again, but that's not an issue. He wants another girl, and he made it abundantly clear that I am like no other girl he knows: I'm a friend in a way that he doesn't usually get from people he wants to sleep with. So this is cool: we're mates, and we're cool. That works for me. It makes me question his motivation, but that's not my problem. I've actually come to realise how little I care about the men in my life, which is not good. I don't think I've ever met a man whom I could elevate beyond the level of a friend whom I sleep with. [There is potentially an interesting exposition of my psyche here, but I'll re-evaluate my sexuality later when I'm less busy.]

Nick and I hooked up after George's party, which was fucking funny: someone invited along their 17-year old brother, who was a right little poser, but who made me laugh and clearly wanted me to *ahem* disappear somewhere with him. This led Nick into a right moment of jealousy (he then asked me if he could come back to mine, and told me that he didn't mind me going off with other men, 'like that Tom guy', which would of course make sense if he didn't throw a fit every time I do. Okay, let me assure everyone reading this that I am not quite as slutty as that phrasing implied, and that he simply goes a bit spare every time a guy flirts with me, because I have proved once or twice that I will go home with people if I feel like it. However, I'm not going to bed with a 17-year old I just met). The situation did resolve itself, as the 17-year old ended up throwing up about 4837248 units of alcohol in the kitchen bin and thus was somewhat unable to follow through on his promises. Like I said at the time: I'm sorry for him, but LOL.

Also, best quotes of the night: 'It's like sex, but walnuts', and 'I'm happy. I've got a bin.' CLASSIC.

I also want to buy too many clothes, having bought a great many books for my Origins essay so that I don't have to panic about not being able to get books because I maxed out my library account getting books for Augustus, and I have also bought a lot of booze recently. Money money...wherefore art thou? I also hate buying clothes when I'm paranoid about the fit. Like I said, I'm having body issues at the moment.

London (Camden!) on Thursday, Evolve with Kate and Soozi Thursday night, Koko's tomorrow with Ellie, possibly Crash on Friday, miss out Saturday, wake up Sunday with a hangover and then have a good panic about my two non-existent essays.

Yep, that sounds about right.

For now, I have Irish coffee with Sheep Dip whiskey (bought entirely for the humour of that name), Alice in Chains and leftover pizza. There have been worse evenings.

[That's me desperately trying to end on a note that doesn't contradict the first sentence of this post.]

hit so hard, i saw god

God I feel awful.

Joe and I were arguing, as per bloody usual, about laws and their place in the state. As is always our wont, we agreed on the main points and then had to spend an hour ironing out the kinks in a tiny point of ideology. We got down to the idea that if there's only one person left on earth, do the laws still apply to him. Joe maintains that they do, that law is inviolable (and he admitted that he's massively hypocritical, since he begs me to buy him weed every time he gets drunk), I stuck to my belief that it was utterly pointless.

Joe approaches all of this like the recovering Catholic that he is. Whether or not he's actually an atheist, he takes his ideals and makes them into his God. I commented on this, and he asked me what I actually believe about God.

I hate that question.

I laughed him off, acted all enigmatic, and that only increased his interest. He didn't even press me too much, just stayed silent and looked at me in that way that makes me remember everything that's passed between us. I love him, I hate him, he infuriates me and soothes me. He's my best friend and I want to be nothing like him.

So I told him. Because he's Joe, and he's good. And he told me that I was honest, which is probably the best quality to have. The second the words were out of my mouth I felt like crying, but that just sealed it. I feel like I've been hit.

I hate thinking about God. I don't care: you have to deal with the world as it is, and God is irrelevant. If personal faith brings you comfort, then that's a wonderful thing, a private flame. But I can't bear everyone knowing the secrets of my brain, I can't bear everything peeling me open, knowing what I think about these things.

I then cornered him and asked him not to tell anyone else. He asked me how I was feeling, and I said exposed. He really didn't get it: he reiterated that no-one has the right to make me tell them things or take my belief away from me. He's such an idealist, and he's so skilled at missing the point. I know he doesn't understand, but there are certain cards that are always stapled to my chest, and I just ripped a card off. The staple is still there, and it's started bleeding again.

If there's one person I could have told, it would have been Joe. Now though, I just feel like my brain is broken. It's massive misdirection: I don't want God factoring into the way people view me. It has no bearing on me, my decisions, my political beliefs.

I can't bear feeling so open.

This is why I need to be an enigma. Because I can't bear the thought of being so totally exposed, because the second you say something it will be taken and cherished as a memory, as a judgement by others. The plethora of ideas within my head would become a sullied diaspora if released.

I have to keep myself locked up. I can hint, as in this blog, I can write things out to make them better, but I can never give it all away. And knowing this, that I can never share myself fully with another human being, is the most lonely and desolate thought I can formulate.

we kill what we build because we own the sky

Why is this blog turning into ma vie sexuelle? I've had a few complicated romantic fuckups in my life, but this month has been mad. Ruby, Nick, Matt, John...all people I've either done far more with than I actually wanted to, or good sense suggested would be wise, or when I actually wanted something to happen, it all went dead.

Well, I liked Alice from the moment I met her, and we were kind of compatible tastes-wise anyway, then we got pretty damn drunk and kissed. Quite a lot. She has a boyfriend, but she spoke about him like she was just waiting for the right moment to break up. We left it like that, but we were both pretty wrecked anyway, so it may be nothing. But she's living with Ellie and Kate next year, so I'd like us to be cool anyway. And at least there's one massive difference in this instance: I am very sure that she started it. Not complaining, but it's just nice to be sure.

Oh well. Even if nothing happens, it made for a fun night out. And I do like her a lot, so we'll see where it goes.

Back to everything else: John texted Jenny a few nights ago asking if the girlfriend thing was just an excuse. Head. Bang. He's backed off now, but if he brings it up again I'll hit him. It's putting both of us in a real spot with Jenny, as she's having to be the intermediary. Fingers crossed he's getting the message now: dude, it's been a week! Let it go. I told Mum a little about it all, and I think she's a bit concerned that I'm out of control.

I got my essay back from Matt: 72. Not bad, it means I've got all Firsts last term and I'm averaging about an 80 overall, and factored in with last year that's like a 78, but I'm a bit meh about it. Largely because his main issue was with my style, which both Fearn and Monica praised, and he kept talking about my 'potential'. I thought I'd cracked all this: I didn't realise I was back to being a 'potentially' good student. I'm also in a bind because he prefers you to work with a thesis, like you're trying to prove a point of view. I prefer presenting the debate on an issue, and then having balanced the evidence, explaining why I favour one side. It then looks less like you're twisting the evidence to your POV. But do I change my style, the style that Fearn and Monica both approve of, for this? Like I said, it's a bind.

Ancient Greek is a bitch. I have about 20 verbs to learn, with their principle parts. Greek principle parts are first person present, future, aorist, perfect, perfect middle/passive, aorist passive. You can understand why that's such a pain in the hole. Clive also hates us, and me in particular, but considering that he's a moron, that's kind of a compliment.

However, I am going to Athens in March now. Fun fun. Jenny, Paul, Joe and I are going with Classics peeps, which should be a right laugh. I'm looking forward to it already. It's not like I have a heavy load at the end of term either: all my essays are due in week 7. (Crap, that's like a month from now. Bollocks.)

This is what's known as epic procrastination. I'm taking notes from a book due back on Thursday, and I have so much work to do between now and then that I really need to get it done tonight. However, thanks to everything else getting in the way, I've actually done a little over two pages, and it's a ten-page article. Last night, taking notes from a twenty-pages article took 7 1/2 hours. I didn't sleep until 4am. I need a life. Seriously. To procrastinate, I've learnt about five new tabs, smoked, IM'd Kate, Facebooked Annis and am now blogging. And now, having reread this post, I'm fantasising about good looking girls.

FAIL.