The Rules

I spent a long time trying to be ok.

(I wasn't ok for a long time.)

Longer than I probably care to admit but, in this case, there was a particular reason for it and I can pinpoint it's genesis and evolution. I went through my five stages, not in a clear cut manner and not exactly in sequence but I think that's normal. Each was difficult in their own way but, weirdly (and something no one ever talks about that I can remember), each with their own pluses.

Denial was probably the worst but made me manic (as it has a tendency to do) and meant I got loads done. I didn't need more than 5 hours of sleep a night, I achieved everything I wanted to each day at work, I didn't really need food, and I exercised every day and lost a stone and a half in about a month. That was good. What was bad was sleeping with a guy that had treated me very badly in the past and feeling completely disconnected from every one and every thing. That wasn't so fun. But it did, as I said, have it plus points.

Anger was awesome and frightening. As anger is wont to be. As every middle class white girl will tell you, anger is something we are taught to fear rather than utilise. Which, ironically, makes me kind of angry. Anger is one of the best tools you have for changing things. It is necessary but that is never made clear. You're never taught have to use it effectively. It's always, pretend everything is fine, act like you're normal, never access your golden goddess and bring down a reign of fire which leaves you in a no-mans land of nothingness. Which sucks. Because when your golden goddess is rising everyone is telling you to stay quiet and sit down and don't be any trouble (if there is one piece of advise I wish I could impart to the teenage me it is that you should always, always be trouble and stand up and scream). Anger is so important (do not let anyone tell you different). The trick is (as always), to make sure it's directed at the right targets. This is where I fell down. I was angry at him, sure, but mostly I angry at me for not being there for him, I was angry at my friends and family for not being there for me (they kinda were but when you do your golden goddess shit no one knows where to look or how to act, and to be fair I didn't know where people should be looking or how I wanted them to act but I know I fucking hated them for not looking or acting in a way that made me feel better). I was angry at boys from the past that meant something to me, I was angry at God, I was angry at it all. Everyone fucking pissed me off and I wanted them to disappear. Anger might galvanise you but it also makes you fucking terrifying to yourself and everyone else. It continues to linger now but it's not at the top of tree anymore which is good because it's also, amongst other things, it's fucking exhausting.

Bargaining came and went pretty quickly. I prayed often to a God I don't believe in. I said to myself a number of times 'I'm ok as long as he's ok, so he has to be ok' and then he wasn't. He nearly died more times than I probably know. Which made the whole bargaining thing out to be a fool. (It was a fool but I didn't want bargaining to know that). 'I won't talk to him ever again if he's ok' 'I'll fall out of love with him if makes him ok', 'I don't care what it takes just please make him ok' but no matter what I did or didn't do everything was so random and chaotic that it seriously freaked me the fuck out. It made a total mockery of the God I didn't believe in. Although religion has always fascinated and repulsed me in equal measure (if you feel the same then it's Joseph Campbell all the way baby fyi) there was always thistiny part of me that thought I controlled it all. That I had power far exceeding the power you have. That I could influence the outcome of things. If I really, really wish for Barack Obama to become president then he will. If I really, really hope for Alexander to win X-Factor then she will. If I really, really wish for tis job then I'll get it. It always worked before, why not now? Turns out, that's just not how things operate. Life is random and chaotic.

Depression meant one thing and one thing only: Tuc biscuits. A lot of them. God I love Tuc biscuits. I love them when that's all that'll love me back. During this time I didn't exercise, I didn't write, I didn't do anything but stuff my face with Tuc biscuits. And they were delicious (they would have been had I tasted them but I was too busy stuffing my face to taste anything). Depression hurt like a motherlover but it did mean I got to eat a lot of Tuc biscuits. Everything has its upside.

The one thing I didn't get was that slight thrill from it all. You know that thrill? That thing where there's this part of you that's actually kind of enjoying it all. Watching from a distance and thinking 'well,what's wrong with a little destruction?'

I didn't feel that. I gleaned no joy from any of it, no matter the pluses. It was all horrible. I felt horrible.

You know what though, anyone else I would have cut them a lot more slack for what they went through than I did for myself. I fell in love and carried our baby (for a bit) and he nearly died. That's a lot of fucking stuff to cope with and I did cope with it. I needed professional help for a while but that's ok, sometimes asking for help is the only way to cope. So that's what I did.

I'm here, a few months later feeling, well, not good exactly but I'm not cutting my wrists either. I've processed. I've reached acceptance. I've worked out what I want and what I don't want. I feel strong. Which is when he contacts me:

'I'm home for the weekend. Shall I call you?' says the text messageShall I call you? Four words, all of them containing a lot of power in a sentence that he writes from him to me. 'That's good news!' I reply with a stupid exclamation mark I would never use in real life 'Yeah, you can call me whenever'. I continue. 'Ok.' he says. And then I wait, and then I forget I'm waiting, and then I check my phone when I remember I'm supposed to be waiting. And so on and so forth.

What happened to acceptance? What happened to me moving on and doing better? Why did they say something about this on The Hills the other day and it made me laugh and go on a 'YEAH! boys always DO contact you when you've just forgot about them! ALWAYS!' rant for about five minutes without ever thinking it would apply to me ever again? Just... all of it... why?

Equality and Diversity

I had to do an training course entitled 'Exploring Equality and Diversity' yesterday. All day. For six hours. For six hours, all day. Did I mention it was scheduled to last all day? I wasn't looking forward to it much as I figured the following would do just as well and would mean I didn't have to get up earlier than usual and then drive for 40 minutes through traffic jam after traffic jam and then have a nightmare finding somewhere to park and then realise I didn't have the right change so the motherbastarding machine took 30p more than it rightly deserved:

'Don't be racist'
'Ok'
'Don't be homophobic'
'... Allllright'
'Don't make fun of people in wheelchairs'
Tut. Sigh. Eye roll. 'Fine' [belligerence]

The end. That's all that is really required; 'be an adult instead of being a total dick '. Oh right. Be an ADULT, NOT a dick! It all seems so simple now!

However, despite me pouting from about 8pm the night before because GOD! I don't want to go do this piece of shit 'training' that I don't even need because I'm only homophobic when gays are around and am hardly ever racist and rarely openly mock the differently-abled and I've got work that I actually could be doing it turned out to be not nearly as awful as I thought it was going to be.

I got there half an hour early because, hello, I'm me. Although I berated myself for being such a loser eager beaver it turned out to be a good thing because I got to hear the most tragic-slash-hilarious story I've ever heard in my entire life.

I entered a room full of the trainers (as in people that do the training, not the Nike shop). One was chuckling at every sentence that left his mouth and I immediately didn't like him. There was a lady who looked like Anne Diamond (Nick Owen-era) and another man who had the very definition of 'wide-boy' down pat. He was not-so-subtly needling the chuckling man about all manner of things which only made Chuckles laugh more. It culminated in:
'Well you can see why his wife tried to kill him'. Chuckles chuckled. 'It's true!' said the younger Del Boy.
At this point, although I had been sat at the back of the room trying to studiously avoid being drawn in to the conversation my ears suddenly pricked up.

It would seem that Chuckles lived in a house with his second wife which had a trap door to the basement just past the front door. One day she unscrewed the trap door from its hinges, relaid the carpet and awaited his arrival home. He stepped into his house, fell through the floor but got stuck in the carpet.

And I lolled (silently, whilst pretending to read a book).

He then revealed that this had happened before he married her. And at the time he was a cop. And her dad was in prison. For stabbing a cop. And at the wedding, just after the dad had got out, someone made a lol-worthy comment about the plastic knives and forks at the buffet being plastic because the dad couldn't be trusted. So dada got out his flick knife and stabbed lollerboy.

'I guess I should have known then that it wasn't going to work out'. Yes. That might have tipped you off had her attempting to kill you TWICE (oh yeah, she tried again but we didn't find out how) hadn't tipped you off previously. Chuckles was, quite frankly, a sap. And I warmed to him.

All this knowledge was acquired before 9.30am. That is the start of a good day. Anything that begins with juicy, juicy gossip of a tragic nature is great. I'm happy from that point on. Eventually everyone else filed in and the training commenced, this is where things took a downturn because treating people with respect apparently is:
'political correctness gone mad'
and
'well we're bending over backwards too much nowadays for them alldon't you think' (emphasis mine. Who? WHO IS 'THEM'?)

I love the phrase 'political correctness gone mad'. It' second only to 'I'm not racist but...' in phrases I just ADORE to hear tripping off other people's tongues. Because, pretty much, no and no. So you can't go to work and call someone a poof anymore? Good. So you can't refer to people as 'golliwogs' anymore? Good. So you can't regale the office with your learned-off-by-heart Bernard Manning routine anymore? GOOD! These are good things! It is not 'mad', it is something that was required all along. I'm sorry that you now have to start taking other people's feelings into account when you walk into work and not be a dick anymore. That must be so tragic for you, to have to behave like a decent human being during the hours of 9 to 5. It's awful, I know. BUT (and here's the kicker) you're a dick. I am all for freedom of speech but you modify your behaviour depending on your audience. We all do it, all the time. People have the right to feel safe that they won't be discriminated against when they walk into their place of work. If that means you have to leave your Bernard Manning jokes at home then boo freaking hoo but they're there waiting for you when you get home just in time for you to don your white hoods and go stand round a bonfire somewhere. If you so choose.

Anyway, yeah, that got me a little riled. I said my piece and everyone nodded and 'mmm-hmmed' in agreement (because no one wants direct confrontation and was agreeing with everything said in that room. People are funny) and that was that. Lunchtime. I always like to discuss my thought and feelings about Carol Thatcher before lunch. Gets me hungry. For blood. Anyway, when we came back we had a talk from a guy from the Ethnic Minority something something service. He works with gypsies and travelers basically. The council effing LOVES giving ridiculously long titles to jobs, it loves it so much it wants to make sweet sweet love to long job title names all day long (my full job title is 'Children's Information Service Outreach Worker - Parent Information' for example). So yeah, although I had not thought that attending this training was going to do more than bore me, this guy completely reinvented my views about gypsies and travelers. Although I've never gone out of my way to badmouth travelers and Daily Mail coverage on them has always made me vaguely uncomfortable (Daily Mail coverage on anything makes me vaguely uncomfortable to be fair) I'd never thought about how our opinion (as a society I mean, but also yours and mine individual opinions I would wager) is comparable to how black people were treated in the American deep South in the 1960's. Or that comments made by Himmler about gypsies were not a million miles away from comments made by Jack Straw just 10 years ago on the same topic. This sort of 'they're dirty, they steal, I wouldn't want them living near me' has only one end point and it's not good. It's the sort of end point that ends up with 2 million people gassed to death just because of their heritage. I had never, ever thought of it like that before. It freaked me out I was so happy to implicitly condone such racist attitudes and hadn't realised how sick it was. So I got juicy gossip, a chance to soapbox and then had my mind blown all in the course of one day.

I guess the moral of the story is always keep an open mind. And don't be a dick.

There Is No Spoon

I feel like everything I've been through in the last few months; every emotion, every plot twist, every argument and misunderstanding, has changed me in ways I still haven't quite come to terms with yet. It's an unsettling feeling to have. I feel constantly out of sorts - even in my dreamiverse - just because I don't really know me at the moment, I'm not entirely sure who this new person is or how she's going to react to certain things. I think I like her, she seems much more at ease with herself that the previous versions of me for one thing, but I haven't really had a chance to test that out yet. It's sort of like having The Joker in the room and not being sure if he's going to sit there quietly or blow your shit up. It could be either or neither or both simultaneously at any time. There's no way of predicting it.

Like I say, unsettling.

See, I've done depressed before, I've done self-loathing before, I've done fucked-up before, and there's an element of me that yearns for those incarnations of myself because I know the script for those characters. I understand their motivations, their hopes, their fears, their beliefs and their needs. I know how they operate. And this time, the one time that I think I have a legitimate excuse to be depressed or fucked up or self-loathing - I've rejected it. I burned off all of those persona's because they didn't work for me, but obviously something must take their place. So I now exist as something new. It doesn't feel like a good thing or a bad thing - it's just what it is. I'm very aware that I desperately want the last few months to mean something, to be profound in some way. I want to walk away feeling more empowered, more willing and able to face other challenges that will inevitably occur at some point; but, at the same time, I don't want to exploit events of the last few months for my own gain. That seems... disrespectful somehow. A man nearly lost his life, for me to walk away feeling good about that, in whatever way, seems horrific.

So what I've done is distance myself from everyone and everything. I sort of feel like a social anthropologist at the moment. Like I'm observing the world and my new self in the world through a scholarly eye - trying best to soak up what I can and learn something from it. I'm not sure that's a healthy way to be; to feel like you're apart and above* everyone else. Yet it feels necessary for the time being, that I have to be separate in order to absorb what I need and figure out how to be human again; but armed with deeper and wider insight this time. I desperately want to learn how to become an adult.

I've always been obsessed with the idea of becoming an adult. When I was younger (and by that I mean maybe up till a year or two ago) I thought that meant getting a mortgage, a husband, a 2 year fixed savings bond, and breeding. Now I believe these are just our cultural signifiers of adulthood, but to have them doesn't necessarily mean you are an adult. I will never fail to be surprised by the number of people ten, twenty, whatever, years older than I, all thoe who have those cultural signifiers but who do not behave in a manner that I believe to be mature, well-reasoned or adult-like. I hear tales of 40-something women sending text messages where they diss one another's vaginas (really), people in their 30's seriously considering fucking up another persons hair straighteners just to get a modicum of revenge for an event they feel justly annoyed about but unjustly justified in taking revenge for, men deciding to date a person, breaking up with that person, deciding to date them again and then breaking up with them again (and then dating them again). All in the space of a week and a half. And then arguing the point when the object of their indecision calls them a jerk (they are a jerk). All of these people are technically 'adult'. They all have homes and loans and cars and jobs. They get dressed every day and make a choice to exist in the world as a person who may be old enough to be legally defined as an adult but who is not an adult. And it's this revelation that has made it apparent to me that being 'an adult' is something different from being 'an adult'.

The idea of 'grown ups' used to terrify me. People who have it all figured out and know what they want and how to get it and have all their ducks lined up and can discuss mortgage repayment schedules and the importance of interest rates. I didn't really want that for myself. I didn't know what I wanted instead but I knew I didn't want to be like 'them'. So you find yourself stuck in a half life; a place with no real responsibility yet paralysed by this unshakable ennui. A sense that things should be different but the options on offer don't entice you at all. And then, about a year ago, it dawned on me that by keeping my options open I was keeping myself still, which meant I was unable to ever go forwards and become an adult, become human, become a woman. So I started making choices. Which has lead me to somewhere that I've never been before. I'm out of my comfort zone.

I know I've been harping on about my last relationship somewhat but it was one of the most profound and fucked up experiences I've ever gone through and I'm still dealing with the fallout (not helped by him still being in hospital and me going for days at a time unsure of whether he is alive or dead). I fell in love with someone who was eight years older than I and, on the surface, a lot more grown up than me. But he still had this vague notion of wanting to be a Lord Bryon or Dylan Thomas figure, believing the illusion that giving in to darkness rather than searching out the light is a glamorous lifestyle choice and not just really fucking depressing. (Here I point you towards someone else who was in love with the romantic notion of destruction and Byron and the like: Peter Doherty. The sweaty moon faced crack addict of your dreams. Or nightmares, depending on your levels of sanity). Watching someone refuse to make choices, refuse to take responsibility, refuse to be an adult and take all that to it's inevitable conclusion was heartbreaking. I know for certain I don't want that for myself or for anyone else (but I also now know I can't make that decision on anyone else's behalf).

So, here's the thing: I think I now understand the formula of growing up; you learn how to be you. First and foremost, that's the crucial part of the recipe. The bit that makes you able to take the next few hundred thousand steps. Without it you bimble along in this world that doesn't really exist. A world where you lie to yourself and accept the lies that others tell you. You take the red pill, take a bite of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge**, shake off illusion and embrace reality and everything that entails. You finally learn that 'there is no spoon' (there is no spoon) and that frees you, completely and one hundred per cent to just be you - accepting the awesome and horrible parts of yourself, learning that they are pretty much one and the same thing (because they are what makes you, you), and being ok with that (something no-one will ever really tell you but you really must believe - you being you is ok. It is enough. No-one should demand anything more of you than for you to be the most 'you' version of yourself that you can possibly manage. You are perfect. You are imperfect. It is enough). The next bit is harder and more of a slog because once you've realised you're Neo and can save the world and destroy God, you actually have to go off and save the world and destroy God. Which is effort. To put it into real world terms it's like me going 'that painting I was going to do would be really awesome if I painted it' but then just sitting down and twiddling my thumbs instead. Knowing that I am capable of painting awesomely andactually doing an awesome painting are very different things.

And I think that's where I am now; looking at the ingredients, looking at the recipe, and trying to find the strength and the energy to pull it all together. I've had so many revelations through going to therapy that have clicked so many things into place that I just can't see myself making the same mistakes again, which is good. I just don't feel good yet. And that's the one thing I wish I knew how to get back.


*I don't mean 'above' in an arrogant way, though around the time I was going through all this 'breaking open the world and seeing the light' shit when my best friend came out and showed me how easy it was to live without fear controlling you, it was arrogance I felt. I felt I'd been given a key to a secret kingdom and only a select few of us were brave or clever or special enough to enter. Most others chose to stay on the ground and I was living in the clouds, observing and shaking my head at how stupid it all seemed. The petty lives people lead when they weren't being honest or true to themselves. I knew better, I was above all that. I'd taken the red pill, everyone else had chosen the blue pill and had an easier but less fulfilling time for it. The arrogance on this occasion is absent, maybe because it's another persona that just didn't work for me. Maybe because it's a trait associated with youth and I don't feel like a kid anymore. Maybe, in this instance, I just have nothing to feel arrogant about.

** No-one has ever explained to me why God would want to keep you wrapped in cocoon of illusion. It seems to me that Eve had the right idea, rather than damn humanity she saved us. But then girls becoming women and realising their own power has always, and probably will always, be construed as a dangerous thing.

Empty

You're sat there, in an all-you-can-eat restaurant looking around at your family, or the family you've known since you were 13, all because your mother happened to start dating a man who was chubby with a beard and came equipped with four children of his own. Four children who turned your world upside down, who made you a stranger in your own house, who made the experience of growing up even harder than it already had been.

Not that teenage years are easy for anyone; the awkwardness in your own body - the way it bends and twists differently than before and doesn't sit right on your frame; the isolation - the feeling that no-one has ever felt the things that you do, has never thought the thoughts that you have (though of course they do and of course they have; you just don't realise that till much, much later); the hormone surges; the unknowingness of life, of yourself... it all combines so that no matter where you sit on the social scale, teenage years are hard. No matter the state of your family life, teenage years are hard. No matter how comfortable you are with yourself, teenage years are hard.

For one thing, it's unjust. Adults win continuously just because they are adults. The unfair things that teachers say to you have to be accepted because they are your teachers. The unfair things your parents say to you have to be accepted because they are your parents. You are not allowed to fight for yourself because you are a child and they are the adults and they know best (they do not know best). Rebellion doesn't run through your blood like it does for others. You bide your time and hope that it gets better.

You carry around an anger for many years that things were made harder than they needed to be. You learn not to reveal emotion - it was something that came naturally anyway but you honed that instinct and made it a part of you. You remember back in the distant past your father screaming at you to stop crying and when you claim to him that you can't just stop crying he loses all respect for you in that moment, (you both know it but don't acknowledge it) because of course you can. Even though you are seven.

You learned a lot that day.

You now don't reveal much of yourself to people. Your closest friends don't know half the thoughts that run through your head. You do your best to disguise your pain in front of them. You are there to make other people feel better, that's the role you've assigned yourself; the one who gets told the secrets, not the one who reveals them. You wonder if you've isolated yourself too much. There was a time when it seemed honesty was the only way forward but the words get stuck in your throat these days. They sit behind your tongue, they formulate at night and invade your dreams, but when it comes to letting them out during daylight hours they get caught and stay trapped within you. They weigh you down, make it harder to breathe, make it harder to fly. You remember a time when those things were second nature, a time when you had managed to burn off what wasn't working. But you have found yourself laden with baggage again. The one thing you hadn't wanted to happen.

You try and tell people how you feel, try and not become sulky. They hear you but they do nothing or they don't hear you and pretend there is no problem - I haven't noticed you being a bitch they say. They are lying. (Or just so adept at pretending it's become second nature to ignore problems). You want someone to sit there and beat the truth out of you. You know that's the only way the words will start spilling out; you've got too much control over the words to let them tumble from your lips of their own accord. You sit with your feet tucked under a cushion, your arms wrapped around your knees, on a sofa with the boy who was supposed to be simple and uncomplicated and make you feel better and he makes you feel worse. The antidote to the messy and serious situation you were just in is not having the desired effect. What now? You calmly explain in what manner he has hurt you with no malice attached (but perhaps heavy with sarcasm). You unfurl yourself from the sofa and sit in a chair on the other side of the room and slowly zip up your boots. You pick up your coat and push your arms through the sleeves one at a time. You tuck your hair into your hat in that way that makes it look like you've been preening in front of the mirror for hours to get it just so but seems to just happen naturally. I'll text you tomorrow he says I am sorry for being a twat. You mutter indecipherable words under your breath as you pull the front door shut. Standing up for yourself was supposed to feel more empowering than this.

You just feel empty.

And then a day later you're sat there, in an all-you-can-eat restaurant looking around at your family, or the family you've known since you were 13, and you realise the anger you've been carrying around for years has gone. It doesn't seem to matter anymore. Other events have occurred that have taught you what is important and what isn't and this particular anger just isn't. Losing this anger was supposed to feel more empowering than this.

You just feel empty.

The rule of Chekhov’s gun

There are certain things that are meant to happen when your first love reveals that he’s gay.

TV and movies teach us that, as the ex-girlfriend who is currently single, you’re supposed to freak out. You’re supposed to blame yourself. You’re supposed to go and get falling over drunk and sleep with the first guy you meet to make sure you can still be considered attractive by men who don’t also sleep with men.

I didn’t do any of those things (although I do miss the halcyon days of having sex for the trio of perfect reasons; boredom, revenge, and to raise one’s self-esteem. There’s really nothing quite like it to give you a vague feeling of self-loathing that never quite washes off). Mostly, if we’re all honest here, because I always knew he was as homosexual as the weather is erratic. I don’t think you can know someone as well as he and I once did (and are on the road to achieving now) and not be aware of it. Not because he was like, checking out guys all the time and constantly doing John Inman impressions (those were my designated tasks) but because I always knew there was something about himself that he wasn’t accepting. It never felt like he was entirely comfortable being him.

Not that this mattered a jot to me when we first got together. I wilfully ignored a whole chunk of things which appeared in front of my face with big ‘AWOOGA! AWOOGA! HE AIN’T STRAIGHT!’ horns blasting. Captain Obvious stopped by many-a-time and kept pulling at my coat tails and pointing things out that were… well, frankly obvious, as to why me and the boy would never quite work out. But instead of me allowing my attention to be drawn to these matters I just put both hands over my ears and went ‘LALALALALA’ really really loudly until Captain Obvious and the AWOOGA AWOOGA YOUR BOYFRIEND LIKES MEN AS MUCH AS YOU DO! horn got so annoyed and fed up with my pig-headed refusal to see things their way that they slunk into the shadows muttering cynical sentiments under their breath about how I ‘would get mine soon enough’. I didn’t care though, those bitches could do and say what they wanted. I was in love and quite frankly, that’s all that mattered.

That is until I went loco.

I went loco for many and varied reasons. There’s been a fair few times when I’ve tiptoed up to the edge of the mentalists compound but never before had I actually stepped boldly over the line and gone all out crazy before. Certain things contributed to this; being at art school five days a week 9 till 5 and working all day Saturday and Sunday (giving me precisely seven minutes and fifty-seven seconds a month to chillax) certainly didn’t help. I have to have plenty o’ chillaxing time to feel content and complete. As I’m sure I’ve expressed before, I need a large chunk of the day devoted to NOT TALKING if I’m going to even achieve a level of functionality that half-way approaches normal as, without this, I go a little loco. We can also blame the fact that he went off to Bristol and started living a life without me. I mean, that’s awful and despicable right? Living your own life and enjoying it and moving on. God. People can be so selfish. But again, this act, this act that so many kids (as a 25-year-old I’m allowed to now use the term ‘kids’ when discussing anyone under the age of 21 as part of the statutes laid down in the ‘Patronising Act, 1982’) go through when their beau starts university – it made me loco. I was the clichéd nutso girlfriend from home that your new friends make snide comments about after the thirteenth time of her texting you that night knowing that you’re off drinking with your new buds (although, I’d like to make it clear that I’ve since retaught myself rather effectively where contact is concerned to be as erratic and distant as possible. The trouble is – you start doing that with guys you date and it soon extends to everyone you correspond with. I can’t change back now. The damage has been done). But, in going a little loopy, I was able to start listening to what Captain Obvious and the AWOOGA horn had to say. I started asking questions about the relationship that hadn’t been asked outright before. Niggles turned into doubts which, curiously enough, turned into rage.

So I ended it.

In the space of about a month I went from thinking that this was the guy I would be with forever to thinking that he had never loved me, would never love me, and wishing that I could erase him from my life completely.

What hit me most hard was that he seemed fine. He appeared to be unaffected. We would still talk on the phone, even after the night that I tearfully told him that I couldn’t take this anymore and he tearfully replied that he knew that and couldn’t continue on either, and he was as bright and breezy as ever – if not more so. Every conversation turned into a more elaborate game of cat and mouse as I kept trying to hunt for clues to prove he either had cared for me as I had for him or that he had moved on. All I seemed to get was confirmation of the latter; that he was having the time of his life without me whilst I languished in a prison of self-hate with ‘PROTOTYPE EMO’ tattooed across my forehead (I’ve since learnt to cover this with make-up – you’d be amazed at what you can do with cosmetics nowadays). I was hurting in a way I’d never hurt before. In fact, saying that, in actual fact what struck me as most odd was that there was a complete absence of hurt. All I felt was nothing. There was no point in anything. There was little point in getting out of bed, little point in washing my hair, even less point in going to college and pretending like I was going to be ‘remembered for my art’. I just wanted to hide away from everything. Curl into a ball and bury myself into the earth and never have to deal with anything going on up above the surface again. Although, there was one emotion that I got very well acquainted with – hate. I hated myself and I hated him. I hated that us breaking-up had made his life easier and mine exponentially more difficult. Hate gave me something to cling onto at a time when I was numb to everything else.

So, I did what all good wacky nut jobs do. I used the whispers the Captain Obvious and AWOOGA horn had been feeding me and instead of using the truth as something positive – something to help me move on and understand what it was that he might have been feeling – I turned it into a horrible, twisted, ugly weapon and stabbed him with it. I knew he didn’t want to be gay. I knew calling him out on it would really hurt him and emasculate him and would mean nothing would ever be the same between us again. But that, right there, is EXACTLY what I wanted. If I was hurting and filled with hate then by gum, he sure as hell was gonna be a-hurtin’ and hate-filled too. To the best of my recollection it’s the only time I have ever intentionally used the truth in this way. I mean, sure, I’m the queen of passive-aggression. I do a fine line in cutting people down to size when the occasion calls for it, but using the truth to scald and burn and ruin; that was a new and evil way of doing things and although on the night that lead up to this climax I was falling over drunk, the fact remains that I did go out and find the first guy I could that would sleep with me and then I did text the ex-boy almost immediately afterwards informing him of my adventures that evening and also happen to mention that he needed to face up some home truths about his sexuality (though perhaps not quite as classily as that). He responded back five minutes later saying he didn’t want to see or speak to me ever again. Three or so years of my life had a full stop put on them through the power of a badly-spelled, angry revenge text. I said the one thing that I knew would affect him the most. Regrets? I’ve had a few.

So that’s where we stood. For years and years he was just this guy that I had once dated and had ended up intentionally destroying in a misguided attempt to make myself feel better. But then, time passed. People move on. I picked myself up and made this life for myself that had nothing to do with him. That was a good thing. I divided my time equally between nerdiness, sluttiness, and silliness. I wasn’t always happy, I wasn’t always sad. I would get to a point where I thought I had everything figured out (like, literally, the whole world and myself) and then a few weeks later something would happen and I’d realise I was clueless. My world expanded and got smaller according to how I was feeling and who I was spending time with. I lived life. Sometimes pretty effectively and sometimes not but living life all the same. Y’all know about all of that stuff. I write about it here all the time.

Then, in the summer, we met up again and we went and got drunk and ended up going dancing. It was masses amounts of fun. Slowly but surely we found our selves being part of one another’s lives again. It was great. Another thing that I’d chosen to ignore, that I’d had to ignore for a long time was how much I’d missed my friend. So we became friends again. We hung out. We went bowling. We ate falafel and veggie burgers from a van on the side of a road that advertises itself as the ‘Ultimate Taste’ (it is. It so so is). We did more dancing. We watched films. We spent a LOT of time talking rubbish. We remembered why we’d hung out so much before – we are equal parts awesome and lame in all the right ways and could appreciate both of those aspects in one another. But there was still that thing, that thing that I knew and wasn’t sure he did. That thing that had burned everything to the ground and meant that I’d had to start again from scratch.

As Chekhov’s laws of storytelling go – : if there’s a gun on the wall at the beginning of a drama, it must have gone off by the end.

This gun had been sat on the wall for mine and the boy’s entire relationship. It was there when we went to the movies, when we were fooling around in my room, when we were sneaking cigarettes out by the creek (Sazz’s Creek, not Dawson’s), when we were going out and getting wasted and laughing the whole time. It was there when we fought about my petty jealousies (which, ironically enough, were always girl-based), it was there when we made up and made out in the backseat of my car on the hill overlooking Portsmouth. It was there when we didn’t talk for years and years and it has been there since the summer when we began to reconnect again. Although, I had assumed by this point that if he did indeed swing that way then I would have found out about it by now, whenever we went out the air was always heavy with things left unsaid. The conversations that we avoided followed us and pointed accusingly. I again, chose to ignore their denouncing gaze. I’d already screwed up enough once to push my friend away for, what felt like, ever. I didn’t want to risk that again. He would tell me what he needed to tell me in his own good time I reasoned. I knew there was something, I just didn’t know what exactly. He never told me about anyone he fancied. He never mentioned any girls he’d dated throughout our years spent in the friendship wilderness. He’d talk about how hot Rhianna is (but she fucking is – you don’t have to be a straight male to work that one out) but never anything personal that was real. For a time I was able to explain that away as him protecting me given our past history. I certainly didn’t launch into any long soliloquies about my dating past. I’d throw in a name here and there or tell a funny dating story occasionally to see if he would respond in kind but he never did.

Yet, for whatever reason, in a dusty car park, on a chilly Sunday night in March, I’d had enough. I was exasperated with his silence. I needed to knock down this wall that still stood between us and wasn’t allowing us to fully connect. The gun had been on the wall for long enough and now it needed to go off.

So it did.

I‘d just finished reading Generation X. As I said in my last post, when I really like something I think about it a lot. One of the things in that book that I couldn’t stop thinking about was when Andy said ‘we all have that person in our lives that we would run away with if they asked us’. A week before I sat in that car park, I had been at an impromptu house party where I sat outside on some big stone steps talking to a girl I’d never met before and I asked her that question and she gave me an answer that totally bummed me out. She described a boy and a situation that had been one I knew all too well myself (with a different fellow from the one I’ve been talking about up till now);

‘I get it’ I said sagely ‘he only wants you when you don’t want him and you’re left wondering how you manage to keep falling into this ridiculous pattern that’s been going on for years’

‘Yeah’ she replied, her eyes growing wider and her voice more expressive ‘YEAH! How AM I still feeling the same way when it’s three years later and nothing’s changed from when we first met?’

‘I don’t know. I wish I did but I really don’t. I’m sort of over mine now. It does get better’

But as I said that I realised something. Fuck. I’m sort of over mine now. I haven’t got that person who I would run away with if they asked me anymore. He’s all too real and fallible now and couldn’t be with me even if he wanted to (which, for the record, he does not). I’m out here on my own. A couple of hours earlier I’d been feeling liberated and empowered by this fact and now, now it struck me that I had to rely on myself. If I want to run away then I’m going to have to be the one doing the asking, and even then, running away won’t solve anything because I’ll still be stuck with me. Shit. Fuck. Bollocks. This innocuous question that only came to me as a way of getting to know a really interesting person better had totally bummed me out. A week later, in a dusty car park, on a chilly Sunday night in March, I was still bummed out (there are no escape routes! All roads lead back to me! I have to start being in charge of myself and not wait for a knight in shining amour to come rescue me on his trusty steed! [especially as I’m allergic to horses]). And I was still thinking about that question.

‘Everyone has that person in their life that they would run away with if asked. Everyone. Except I now don’t but that’s not the point. Why don’t I know who that person is in your life? Why don’t you tell me anything?’

I stared at him as Frank Black wailed on and then looked away shaking my head as I did so. A year, two years went by. He put his hands to his face and looked up to the car roof (looking for answers? Looking for divine intervention?) whilst I tried to stop myself from giggling as I suddenly realised how drunk I was and how awkward the situation was. A filter tip hung louchely out of the side of my mouth as I constructed a cigarette from the contents in my bag. I concentrated resolutely on making that cigarette. I knew if I laughed I’d blow it and he’d hide back in his shell.

Finally he sighed a massive sigh and said; ‘I fell in love with the wrong person’.

Hands down, even in my drunken fug, even being swept up in the moment of confessional tension, I knew that that was the coolest sentence I would ever hear anyone say in real life. There’s a million places you can go with that sentence. A million things you can learn from, and about, someone who utters those words. It’s the most perfect sentence he could have ever possibly have said.

What follows is a conversation that’s too personal for this public forum. I’ve only revealed this much fairly safe in the knowledge that neither he, nor anyone too connected to either of us, will read this but there are still some things that are best left private. The upshot is that he’s come out. He’s accepted himself for who he is. He’s finally ‘there’ (wherever that is – I just know that I think it’s some place that everyone has to try and get to eventually. It’s not a place that has anything to do with who you fancy. It’s a place you can only get to if you understand yourself and accept yourself in a way that makes the lurve bus a less dangerous thing to board). The best part is; if he can get there then I think I can too. It flipped this switch in me that just flooded my situation with light. For one thing, I know that, even in the times when I’m not ok - I’m going to be ok. So I don’t have ‘that person’ anymore. So the fuck what? IT’S A GOOD THING. It leaves me free to play this game, this life game, exactly as I want to. I can date people and not worry about where it’s going to lead or if it has a future again. Sweet sweet un-pressured joy. I got all caught up worrying that all the guys I’d been with since this perfect gay one didn’t mean a lot me. I desperately wanted to fall in love – so much so that I got caught up in this drama with this other boy without ever stopping to ask if I did actually love him or just wanted to love him. It all seems pretty silly now. (I’m still a bit sad I don’t have the drama anymore though. I get off on drama so bad. It’s mildly addictive). The other amazing thing is being able to be completely honest with someone that’s been closed off to you for a number of years. Being able to sit down and talk frankly about sex and love with a person who was never capable of frankness before – it’s the best feeling in the world (that wall that we hold up around ourselves for protection so very rarely gets let down but every now and then a chink is found by the right person at the right time and makes everything else worth it). We are able to unconditionally adore one another without any other agenda clouding that fact. I can’t tell you what a relief that is.

From my crowd of pals, my favourite reaction was from my mate Kes who is mildly devastated that her one last hope of good looking, well-dressed straight men that can dance actually existing in the world has been shattered (not that I want to stereotype but… well, the sooner all of us girls can accept this fact the better I guess). She’s also quite upset that it’s dashed her dreams of me and him ever ending up married. Which is another good thing – I no longer have to hem and haw in explaining to people why the two of us aren’t a couple, “well, you know, we’ve tried that before and it went a little bit like Hindenberg’ just doesn’t cut the mustard for some ‘but you two are so good together!” “Well, yeah but… it’s just… We’re not…” “See! You have no reasons! Get it together get it together!”. Justifying something like that isn’t particularly fun. You get accused of being in denial or being scared and it made me feel confused and start questioning if we should be together. I’m awfully easily manipulated. You know you see infomercials for things like ‘JML Dryer Balls’ and you think ‘who the hell sees this advert and then buys this shit?’. Me. I’m that person. I lap it up. But anyway, now I can just go “because he’s gay” and I’m off the hook. No further explanations required. No more exposition needed. ‘Oh. Oh I see” [awkward silence] “Well, you know, good for him” (side note: ‘good for him/her’ is my favourite response that someone can give to someone else owning up to a sexuality that deviates from the norm. It demonstrates everything about the middle-class mind-set in just three words – a desire to appear liberal yet unable to hide one’s uncomfortableness. Respeck).

So him being gay? Not a surprise. His telling me? Only leading to good places.

Getting my head round of all this has been no problem. In fact, it’s helped me get my head round some other things as well.

But of course, there’s an addenendum. There’s a part of the story that I haven’t yet revealed that has thrown me for a loop. Has made me freak out and wonder if this world we inhabit makes any sense at all.

You see, you know how he came to terms with all this initially? You know what made him face up to those truths that I’d used to wound and he’d been hiding from for so many years?

Hollyoaks.

Muthafucking Hollyoaks.

Apparently a character on that show went through a similar thing that he did and that’s what made him FINALLY realise everything. I have no way of understanding how I’m supposed to process the fact that Hollyoaks does good in the world instead of acts of unparalleled evil. Hollyoaks has always stood as a beaming example of everything I hate, in one half hour show it presents everything wrong about us and our society. And now I have to accept that maybe it can be used as a force for good. That it HAS been used as a force for good. This is going to take a lot of getting used to.

The day I locked myself out of my house

*what follows is based on true events*

The day I locked myself out of my house was 12 hours after my parents had gone on holiday. Before they left we joked about the wild parties I’d be throwing (apparently they think they’ve raised a daughter who lives her life according to the rules laid down in Animal House), the non-clearing up after myself I’d be doing, the irresponsible acts I’d be performing when not under the watchful parental gaze. The fact that I spent three of the last four years not living at home and I am 25 years old seems to have escaped their attention. I mean, we all know it’s just part of the banter my family indulges in (FYI if you meet me and I’m mean to you, that means I like you. It’s how I’ve been taught to show affection) but there is a kernel of truth in the non-trust my mother and step-father have in me. I’m not an untrustworthy person. I’m not the person you wait to see how and when they’re going to fuck everything up (well, not unless it’s got something to do with my love life). For the most part, I'm Captain Sensible (no, not that one).

Yet, I say that, and then 12 hours after my parents go on holiday I lock myself out of my house.

Despite my love of stuff I have a pretty free-and-easy hippy attitude when it comes to looking after the stuff I own. I have things and sometimes I leave things behind. It doesn’t bother me too much as I put my faith in the universe to reimburse me as and when it sees fit. Some people think this makes me a womble*, but picking up free stuff does not a womble make. It’s just a universe-bartering system that I have been inducted into. I often leave various items of clothing, jewelry, accessories in different places (normally the sorts of places where alcohol is served) maybe not intentionally, but I rarely get upset at this. I just always hope they find their way to a good home (I find if you're going to adopt this philosophy it helps to be slightly forgetful and not to swing too much or too often into the realms of sentimentality). Having said that, I have been really missing my leopard-print shoes that I’ve lost at some point between going to Spain in the summer and, well, some point within the last week or so when I suddenly though about wearing them again. I just have to remember when the tears start prickling at my eyes that possessions do not maketh the man (but they can maketh the man’s feet look really good and feel very comfortable. Oh shoes, where fore art thou?). [Oh, by the by, I’ve worked out a strategy to help with my inability to gauge timescales – I simply think back to what outfit I was wearing at the time (yes, for some reason, I have catalogued every outfit I’ve worn in the last two years in my mind and this - what can only be described as - superpower has only just been brought to my attention. I AM MOTHERFUCKING CLARK KENT! Sort of.) This obviously only works in the sense of ‘remember when we went to… and did…’. It will not work if you say ‘what were you wearing on Tuesday 12th May?’. For the record, one more time, I HAVE NO CONCEPT OF DATES. But if you try the first approach then I will immediately know what outfit I was sporting. If it was summery then it must be around summer time, same for wintry looks. Sazz friends are encouraged to put this to the test. I need to make sure it actually works and I haven’t just been tricking myself into thinking I have this superpower].

However, that wasn’t how I locked myself out of the house. I just thought I’d mention it.

No, what happened was that there were keys in the inside lock and the door was ‘on the snip’ as we say (I think everyone else in the world says ‘latch’ or ‘catch’). This means that you can only open the door by putting your keys in and turning. However, as I mentioned there were keys in the inside lock meaning that I couldn’t put the keys on the outside all the way in the lock to turn them.

Thus I was locked out without being able to properly lock the door in the first place. Welcome to my world.

This happened as I was leaving for work. I decided there and then to just go to work and worry about it later. I figured if I couldn’t get in then burglars couldn’t get in and also thought that if I had some more mulling over time then I could figure out a way of somehow solving this minor conundrum.

I got in my car, and, as I do every morning, prayed to all the appropriate Gods, said all the correct incantations, and it eventually grumbled into life so off I drove. Seven minutes into my ride to work I had a flash of inspiration. Lightbulbs flickered into view all around my head. If I can just fit my hand through the letterbox then I can take the keys on the inside lock out and then open the door easy as pie. A smug smile played at the corners of my mouth. God I'm good. I thought. Smugly.

Then I went to work, did work things, and finally got home ready to put my plan into action. I was, and I hope this goes without saying, kind of excited to see if this would actually work.

Question: Have you ever tried putting your hands through a letterbox?

Yes, I thought you would have done. As such, you will know that if you have arms that are wider in circumference than a strawberry bootlace (i.e. everyone but Amy Winehouse) then you'll know that the furthest a normal sized person can get their arm in is generally half way between your wrist and your elbow.

This does not leave a lot of 'bendability' to twist one's arm back and fiddle with keys in a lock. The most you can do is move it from one side and then back to the other side. And then back to the other side again. You can wave basically. That's it.

My cunning plan looked a little like it might have failed at the first hurdle.

What I need is something like an arm, but smaller than an arm and with some kind of hooking device,I mused. Looking around for inspiration my eyes fell upon such a thing. Hello Kitty umbrella. The only umbrella I've never successfully lost. Old faithful friend. I'm trusting you Hello Kitty umbrella. Work your Japanese cartoony magic.

Did she?

Did she fuck.

She was even more useless than my arm. Not helped by the fact that I was doing this blind. However, the feeling that this was quite similar to some kind of trial from the Crystal Maze did make me feel a little better. If I can somehow relate one of my predicaments to a tv show then it kind of makes everything ok.

I stood back and really took a look at what was going on. I was trying to break into my own house by using a Hello Kitty umbrella.

Something in my life had gone very wrong at some point.

A new plan of attack was needed. Maybe I forgot to lock one of the back doors! All that was standing between me and checking this out was the 6 foot fence that surrounds my parents property. How do you get over a 6 foot fence when you're a 5 foot 6 inch girl who is possibly the most unfit human being in England?

You climb your dustbin and scale down the other side. Thus fulfilling your Peter Parker quotient for the day. So that's what I did. In my mind I assumed It would be a hop and a jump. Easy peesy.

In reality? Not so much.

First I had trouble clambering on top of the bin. It had been raining and these new fangled modern bins are all smooth and slidey. Anyone watching me would, I imagine, be unable to shake the image of seals flailing wildly over rocks on the oceanside. But slightly less gracefully.

After eventually trying the running jump technique (failing), the hands behind ass, shimmy up with a jump at the end technique (success). I was now atop a bin. It pains me slightly to say this probably ranks top 5 proudest moments of my life ever. However, the journey was only half completed. A quick peek over the back gate established that I was not going to be able to jump. Not unless I wanted a broken ankle. I weighed up this idea but decided that explaining to the paramedics how I'd found myself in such a predicament would really be the uncomfortable conversation to end all uncomfortable conversations.

I will do anything to avoid middle-class embarrassment.

So, instead, I bent double over the gate and reached to open the bolt. Again, I was doing this blind, stretched out to full capacity and leaning heavily on a plastic bin and not-exactly-stable piece of wood. I pretty much figured that this was how I was going to die. Falling from a bin and smashing my head open, all in an effort to open a gate. Just as I was about to convert to religion and ask God for help/just kill myself there and then the gate swung open. I hopped off the bin and looked round the back of the house for any likely entry points. I started wishing I'd watched that program with Dom of Kristian-and-Dominic fame wherepeople get burgled to see how easy it is for them to get burgled (I mean really. I hate people that say shit like 'and this is what I pay my tv license for?' but if they're saying it in relation to this show then more power to them). However, the house , as far as I could see had indeed 'Beat the Burglar'. It was tucked up safe. No living out of Julie Newmar fantasies for me. I was starting to contemplate whether or not to sleep in my car (honest to God, the reason I discounted it was because I didn't want to go to work in the same outfit two days in a row. Fashion dictates everything dahlink) when I remembered I had a corkscrew in my bag (don't ask) (well, you can... I like wine ok?). The back door keys have a lock that is slightly wider than the front door one so, on a whim, I tried jimmying the keys out of there with the corkscrew so I could use the keys I had on me to open the back door (again, if there are keys in the inside lock then you can't get the keys on the outside to go in fully enough to turn them. If I could push the keys out then it would be a bingo bongo bish bash bosh job done situation).

And that's exactly what I did. Saved by a corkscrew.

Who said being an alcoholic was a bad thing? (I know everyone does. Shut up).

* Which reminds me of the time Chloe saw my Moomin snowglobe for the first time and reacted as thus; ‘What?! You like Moomins?? Then why did you get all offended when I said you reminded me of a Moomin??’ I’ll leave you all to ponder that question for yourselves.