Sunday, May 29
I have just been dragged for a four hour hike by Rory. I ache. I am never, ever, going for a walk wih him again. We went down the river and saw dogs, drunk teenagers, ducklings of various sizes, a cloud which looked like a turtle, and a bus which drove past us. I was dragged, literally this time, from the stop. I am not a happy bunny. He's attemping to make up for this by cooking a "fry", which includes the most unhealthiest things imaginable: sausages (vegan for me), fried potato bread, beans (possibly also fried), mushrooms, and maybe some lard for decoration. It's not cooking quick enough though.
Yesterday was quite dull. We went to Sainsbury's and B&Q, then Rory's mate Paddy developed some films here. I spent the evening reading
Special by Bella Bathurst. I ended up getting quite upset. It's about teenage girls. One's anorexic and self harming. Her monologues reminded me so much of how I felt and how I still sometimes feel. I feel weighed down by this body, all its weight and lumps. I want to be as thin as her, to feel light and ethereal. Of course it's not healthy, but I can't help the way I feel. All the characters were so horrible to each other, and the teachers too. It brought back such memories, memories I've been trying to squash and ignore, but which keep surfacing in my dreams, which haunt me and are there every time I close my eyes. A lot of it is very similar to the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, actually. Maybe I should mention that to the psychologist when I finally start these CBT sessions in a month or so. Aside from all this, it was still a very good book, just a little too close to home for me.
16:30
Tuesday, May 24
I'm almost there! The end is in sight! Three more days and that's it! (Except for the crappy OCN certificate stuff I have to do, not due in til after half term.) The photography exam is over and done with, my hairdressing work is virtually finished and I go to Belfast on Friday! Yeeeeeeeeey! I was running around in a panic today whilst my work was being printed. The printers were going incredibly slowly and problems kept occurring - I would select the wrong size paper or decide a shadow looked crap, or once someone put the paper in upside down so that it all had to be reprinted. But eventually it was done. And I soon I'll be able to sit back and be incredibly bored until September.
18:33
Sunday, May 22
One more week to go then months of freedom! And no doubt boredom too. I spoke to the Volunteer Co-ordinator at SHIP about volunteering again over the summer so I suspect I shall do that for 2 or 3 days a week between the end of college and the restart in September. Again I've been reading, this time
Lighthousekeeping and
The Crying of Lot 49. What the hell was that all about then? Left me very confuddled. I had a bit of a splurge on books on Friday, as I'd been waiting more than a year for
Lighthousekeeping to come out in paperback and seeing as Borders had it on 3 for 2, I took advantage and also got
The Shadow of the Wind and something else I can't remember, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Tomorrow is the last day of my photography exam, and like the others before it, I have no idea how to use the time. But after tomorrow it won't matter, and that's the important thing.
16:39
Thursday, May 19
My college work is peaking now, but there's a sharp drop off point ahead: one more week and then I'll have no work to do until September. Sounds very good indeed. My hairdressing project is almost finished and only requires a little tweaking. Which is good because I'm now sick of it. I'm still looking forward to going to Belfast, it'll be a good break, give me a chance for a rest before the panic of the exhibitions kicks in. Going to see the ducklings will be exciting, feeding bread to the ducks is a national institution, up there with football hooliganism and afternoon tea. I don't really have much else to say, life hasn't been particularly interesting of late, it's all been sleeping and college, really.
11:03
Sunday, May 15
Went with Simon to see the ducklings on the uni pond again today. They're bigger now, better swimmers, but still very fluffy and incredibly cute. They were eating the paper which was floating on the water. We would have brought them some bread but it was an unplanned visit. Rory says that when I go to see him in a fortnight, we'll go walk up the river and see the ducklings there and we can take them some bread.
My eating's still being erratic. I was good for most of this week and was eating as little as I thought I could get away with. Then on Friday I went to the international supermarket, bought Coco Pops Crunchers, and it's all been down the drain since. I know I need help with food but it's not the urgent need that people with a proper disorder need, so there's little which can be done from outside sources. I just need to keep doing my best to eat sensibly, resist the urges to binge, try to think of myself positively, only wear clothes which make me feel good about myself... It's so hard though, I just want to give up sometimes and abandon the whole thing. I feel I don't have the energy to properly work things out, especially not on my own. But there's little else I can do. I want someone to come take care of me, make all these problems go away, but I know it won't happen. Doesn't stop me dreaming about it though. I just want someone to hold me and stroke me and hug me and hide the food from me. But all the people who do that for me leave, or live so far away. I don't want to have to be on my own. But I don't have another choice.
22:01
Wednesday, May 11
I woke this morning feeling quite depressed and energyless. I felt as though I didn't even have the energy to walk to the end of the street, let alone to college. So I rang and said I wouldn't be in this morning as I wasn't feeling right, but I would go have a sleep and see if I felt up to coming for the afternoon's class. I was intending to wake at about 11 or 11:30 and then reassess the situation. I didn't wake until 1pm, when I should already have been in college. I used the rest of the day to take some more photographs for my exam and to start another book, this time
Atomised by Michel Houellebecq. It reads quickly and is quite interesting, though not as good as other books I've read this week. I listened to
( ) again, it really is quite amazing. Tomorrow it's back to college again. It looks as though our trip to London is being scheduled for June 16th. This makes me happy as the
Plan B exhibition starts the day before. I'll probably try to get in touch with Harriet and see if she wants to come see it with me.
20:10
Sunday, May 8
I've spent most of today and yesterday reading
Middlesex. It's been many years since I last read
The Virgin Suicides so I can't really comment on how his skills might have progressed between the two books. But his skills are immense. I wouldn't have spent a day and half reading a 500+ page book if they weren't, though, to be fair, I did need to distract myself from my misery, and this was the perfect escape. I'm shit at giving book reviews unless I really hate the book, so I'll just leave it at saying it's highly recommended. Though one more voice doesn't really make much difference when so many were saying the same before me.
To return to the subject of my misery then. Well I had to some time. It's been a combination of things eating at me. The first and foremost is probably Ed. Previously we were friends. He stayed, we hugged, drank hot chocolate together, played on the swings, listened to music. I encouraged him and tried to help him and he did the same for me. The past couple of months his attitude changed towards me. Other people had been having a go at me and I felt he was siding with them. He told me I was imagining it. The past week or so he's been practically insulting me and in the past few days, whenever I was around he would post pictures which he knew would upset me, mostly of pigs' ears and trotters. The message was clear, he wants no more to do with me. To make it worse, everyone else has been on his side and standing up for him. Another community abandoned. This keeps happening and I don't know why. What am I doing to turn people against me and make them hate me so much? It doesn't help that a couple of months back I had a huge argument with Alex which I didn't record at the time so I can't even find solace in him. He did offer a small apology afterwards but I felt it didn't cover the level of abuse he had hurled at me and thus I'm left all alone. Again. I keep wrecking places like this. I feel welcomed, a part of a group, accepted. But it always turns shit. How many times has it happened now? It must be four or five. Everyone is against me and I can't go back.
In addition to that, there's my exam worries. It's tomorrow. I have to do something but I still don't know what. The photos I have taken are shit, they say nothing, they're pointless and useless and before I was worrying that my last year's grade of a B would be dragging me down to a B this year, instead of the A I want. Now I think it's probably more likely to be letting me hold on to a C. How can I fill 15 hours with the crap I have to work with? Of course I shoot more film between sessions (the exam goes over 3 Mondays) but what on earth do I shoot? I could go back to my old idea of arty photos representing different sides of me. It would at least show thought being put into the work. As it is, the pictures are merely what the lens saw when the light-proof barrier was removed between it and the film.
Currently I'm entertaining the idea of printing the best pictures of what I have - 4, maybe 6 shots. Window mounting these and creating a collage on the mountboard of ephemera from my life: food packets, bus tickets, receipts, song lyrics, printed-out blog entries, medication boxes, shiny things I can find. It's the best plan I have, but that's hardly difficult. Fuck knows what the teacher'll say.
The other thing getting to me is food. I've had to give up Coco Pops as I was eating them constantly, as I originally feared. But I've found that now there's no food I want to eat. I don't mind bread, but I'll go through half a loaf in a day. A packet of cereal might last three days, if I'm careful. Even cooking pasta and adding ratatouille from a can or sauce from a jar seems too much for me right now. If people cooked me nice, proper food I'd probably eat it, but I don't know what that food would be so I can't make it myself. I feel I need someone to come and sit with me, find me easy recipes and help me make them, so I can see they're not difficult, that I can manage it. The obvious person for this is David, as he likes cooking, is calm and reassuring, is also vegan, and likes hugs too. But he's moved to Huddersfield. So I'm stuck. The way I'm coping with this is by not eating. Today I've had a hot chocolate and half of Simon's bottle of Coke. I considered going to the shop to buy popcorn or something but I decided not to, I feel fat enough already and now I feel better, superior, for having managed not to eat. I feel as I used to, that I have control again, that I can cope. I feel happy. I don't know what tomorrow will bring, if I will eat then. I can get food at Beanos tomorrow, which will be relatively healthy, enjoyable and give me a variety of vitamins. But I can't buy food from there every day, and even if I could, I can't afford to live on their pies and sandwiches. I'm going to see how I feel at lunchtime tomorrow and then decide about it. I know this isn't a long term solution, but it might tide me over until I find food I want to eat again.
20:52
Friday, May 6
That last post certainly generated some interesting comments. No I shall not be getting married, ever, nor shall Rory, and we are perfectly happy as we are, it is merely my brain which is not. And Em, woo, I'm happy for you. Email me some time please?
What exciting news do I have to share, then? Rory has finally booked our tickets for the
Green Man Festival. I saw
some gorgeous ducklings on a pond in the uni today. I still have no idea what I'll be doing in my photography exam on Monday. I saw the new
Mitch Ikeda photo book in HMV today. I'm unsure as to whether or not I should get it. Some of the pictures made me laugh, some made me smile, some made me sad. Maybe I'll see how I feel when my birthday comes around. They were playing the video for
Motorcycle Emptiness on MTV when I passed by one of college's TV screens earlier in the week. That too made me smile but be sad. Still, if you want a laugh, there's always the photos of the time that James bleached his hair... Back to me again, I have nothing exciting planned for a while. So I shall mostly spend this weekend avoiding thinking about my photography exam.
19:15
Monday, May 2
My cold is now gone and today is a glorious, sunny day. Simon and I celebrated by going walking in the park. We saw birds and children and dogs and pretty girlies and skateboarders and a bloke having a shit in the bamboo bush we were sat next to. Beltaine being celebrated in a somewhat untraditional manner, as you're meant to have sex in the bushes, not use them as a makeshift toilet.
I'm having a bit of an internal dilemma at the moment, with regards Rory. What I truly believe is that marriage is an awful ritual forced upon people to make their lives a misery in the name of social control. Marriage produces nothing positive and encourages people to become lazy, complacent and self-absorbed. I like the fact that Rory and I have such a close relationship and actively want to not take that to any further stage.
"Let me be who I am but be it with you." I don't want to be half of someone else, I want to be all me (at the times when I don't mind being me). I want to take the world on my own terms, not on terms I've compromised with someone else to reach.
But I'm paranoid. Paranoid Rory will find some reason to leave me, abandon me. That I'll be left alone with no way of coping. For some reason, my brain is offering marriage as a suitable method of avoiding this. Realistically I know it's highly unlikely. I don't know the statistics, but I think about half of all marriages end in divorce nowadays, and marriage never stopped infidelity, ever. Not that infidelity is an issue with Rory and I, as we're polyamourous, but the rational side of my brain is pointing out that just because you've married someone, it doesn't mean you've got your claws into them forever, and using that for an illustrative purpose. I wouldn't even want to tie someone to me like that. Forcing someone to spend most of their life with me, for hours a day, until we murder each other or kill ourselves, and that's unavoidably how it would end, it's a horrendous punishment when I look at it. And I also know that Rory has no desire to ever get married either. But still, there's this little part of my brain telling me that he could leave, that he will leave, that I have to do something to stop him. If he wants to leave I don't want to stop him! I want him to do as he wishes, to be who he wants first of all, and then to be with me in addition to that. But my brain's not having any of it.
14:19
