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March 07 KissingWhat is the best part of a kiss? The anticipation as you move in to your partner? The actual kiss? The hands? The eyes? The... ahem.... tongue? What is it? I know what I think it is but I wonder if anyone will read this and tell me what they think.
March 06 So much time, so little to do... wait, reverse thatTo say that nothing has happened would be a revolting lie. On Saturday, Gifford and I split up. I'm not sure why as neither of us wanted to and by 4.30 on sunday we were sat on a bench in the park with our arms round each other. On that front, ignoring the weekend, things aren't too bad.
I get my exam results on Friday. I don't want them and I really want them. I must remember to take a sick bag to school that day.
I'm still mad.
I'm still screwed up.
I'm still me.
So far.... January 25 In the white room/with black curtainsExams over. Not in the mood for a long entry.
Life going crap.
Got headache brought on by too many paracetamols.
Shit. January 17 Where my shadows used to beThe French, in their eternal gallic wisdom, have filled their Senate with 'old men' (literal translation). Is it any wonder that their country is hated internationally? Their President is a nutter who looks like a shovel! Their Prime Minister is a name unknown to most of the population AND Shovel Man's University buddy! This is a nation who had to choose between Chirac, a thoroughly unpleasant and oafish man, or Jean-Marie Le Pen, a blatant Fascist! Knowing all this valid information about the French Political System how can I possibly learn to love their langauge? It's like asking a semi-homophobe to love Polari (okay, maybe not that extreme). The question should also be asked: Are Shovel Man and Question Head (Dominique de Villepin, French PM) better or worse than Big Ears (Tony Blair) and Fatty Lard-arse (John Prescott)? I couldn't answer that but Chirac is a womaniser and Prescott is a fat, violent pig. Maybe we could merge them into one Political Mega-Force!
What has this to do with anything, you ask. The answer? Absolutely nothing. I am using this as an opportunity to practise my touch-typing and I'm doing quite well. However, I have amused myself in my slagging off of the French. Damn them and their stupid tenses! Subjunctive, Perfect, Imperfect, Plu-perfect, Conditional, Conditional Perfect, Past Historic, Present, Future and all the other French tenses. Damn them all! Also, those stupid little accents they insist on putting all over the place. What makes it worse is that you have to use special keyboard codes to type them on an English computer. And genders! How is a room feminine but a college masculine. Its daft. I'm saying this as a girl born of German parents, semi-fluent in german, a language with some particularly wonderful words. Languages are very odd things. Why do the Spanish insist on putting upside-down question marks at the beginning of sentences? So the reader knows that the question is a sentence and can adjust his tone thus. Brilliant! My favourite language to learn is Latin. I'm doing a Latin A Level. It is a brilliant language and certainly not dead! Learning Latin (as I have down since year 3) improves your style of writing and grasp of basic grammar rules. But then, I am the sort of pedant who corrects punctuation on posters and NEVER uses split infinitives.
Someone's boring me - I think it's me (Dylan Thomas). January 15 о бог помогаетThe relationship with Gifford has reached the stage where I have become a gibbering and painfully obsessive wreck. Today I have drunk 24 cups of very hot, black, unsweetened tea and washed my hands 10 times. I went in the shower and shampooed my hair three times, washed myself twice and shaved my under arms until they were raw. I revised for my Biology exam for 4 hours straight. I wrote three pages (6 sides) of A4 nonsense and called it a poem. I know I won't sleep tonight and I will fail my exam tomorrow. The only problem is food. I don't want to be hungry but I am, achingly so. I want to eat constantly. I can't help it. I start each day with a small breakfast, followed by a small lunch and then mid-afternoon I go mad and my stomach aches like hell and all the tea in the world couldn't squash my hunger pangs. I think I'm going to go mad. This was how it started before. The skin is peeling off my hands, the wounds on my legs have turned black and ooze constantly. Sweet sweet madness. Welcome back! I've never been so glad to see someone as I am to see you. January 14 27 WordsIdiot Boy has resigned. I don't know why this makes me feel the way it does. I shouldn't be bothered. But I am. I really am. January 04 Get your philosophy from a bumper stickerMy A Level English coursework essay on The Great Gatsby has been requested by the exam board for their archives! That might not sound too impressive but bear in mind that mine was the only one from my school in ANY subject to be requested and it hasn't happened for 4 years! I had to sign a consent form to say I was willing to have my work in the OCR/NEAB/Edexcel?AQA archives. Incidentally, this piece of coursework took me two hours to write (when I really get into a text I can spew out essays in a flash) and I was awarded full marks (50 out of 50).
That's my exciting news for the day. I went to see Narnia with Gifford on Monday night. Wonderful film, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I am slowly getting back on my feet after my Christmas illness although it has lead to unfavourable living arrangements.
I have had 6 University offers now, all the universities I applied to have made me offers.
Exam revision beckons! December 31 My New Years Resolutions are already brokenThe New Year is not actually here yet but its certainly going to be an interesting one given the events of this evening! Gifford came round for dinner (external circumstances meant he had to leave at 11), we talked, danced to Jools Holland music and played Monopoly. That may not sound like fun but I can assure you it was!
Christmas was awful. I contracted a bug from somewhere and put on antibiotics. Antibiotics never react well with me and so I had a fit and ended up in hospital on Christmas Eve. The fact I was in the Lake District at the time made it worse. I was allowed out on Christmas Day morning but I spent all the time until the 27th, when we went home, in bed asleep. I didn't eat anything for 5 days and lost half a stone. I still haven't eaten properly and my appetite is non-existent.
I am at work tomorrow (urg) and monday. School starts back on wednesday so at least I have one day's grace for relaxing and revising. I don't really feel like I've had a particularly relaxing holiday. Or even a holiday at all. Now I am alone and its nearly midnight on New Years Eve. Happy New Year to myself, may the new year be better than the old one (Not in every respect, Gifford, I mean no offence to you). December 18 Can you see the real me? Can you? CAN YOU?!Sundays are always slow and miserable and feel like they are 4 days long. I hate Sunday - I always have. Sundays were the days my friend wasn't allowed out because they were doing family stuff so I had to sit in my room and play with my imaginary friends. Eventually, that's all I ever did on a Sunday... and every other day of the week.
I did some more painting last night. Just a small patch, the size of 3 postage stamps. It was what I needed and, like a drug, managed to calm me in an instant. The awful thing was I did this just after Gifford left, literally a few minutes after his exit stage right. Afterward, I slept for 4 hours solid and then woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. Since 5.30 this morning I have been writing essays, writing christ-makkah cards and bashing my head again an invisible concrete wall.
I break up from school on Tuesday and go to the Lake District on Thursday. I was supposed to be going out to lunch with Gifford on Wednesday but his mother is intent on making him collapse from exhaustion and has ordered him to stay in and revise. He isn't a mummy's boy but he is, like me, an only child. His parents are obsessed with maintaining the 'perfect suburban family existence' and he HAS to submit to their wishes in this area. Naturally, he hates them, almost as much as I hate mine but I have the advantage of freedom.
Soon we will both crack, him from the stain of work, me from lack of food and sleep. Until then, neither of us will speak anything of it and after then we will wish we had. Life's a bitch, I'm looking forward to death. December 17 Can't think of a title, can't bear to leave it unnamed...This will be a very quick entry as I'm expecting company any time soon.
Things aren't going too bad at the moment. I haven't slept longer than 3 hours a night in ages, I've lost 2 stone in a month and someone hit me with a rug at work today (by accident as he was turning around) and gave me a nosebleed. Apart from that everything's fine.
5 university offers in total and an offer to study in America for my 2nd and 3rd years. I'm feeling very apprehensive about going to university but I am also excited to the point where the excitement cancels out all other emotions.
Better go as the pasta is probably boiling over and ruining the cooker. Again. December 11 I want a hippopotamus for christmas/Only a hippopotamus will doWorking in a shop on the run-up to christmas really does crush your faith in humanity. Its nice to nurture the dream that humans still have a part of them which is not completely fuelled by consumer fetishism. At christmas this dream is squished.
A bratty little boy informed me today that his 'mummy really loved him because [he] always got lots of presents and last year he got a bike AND a computer'. When he barked this at me I gave him a hard look over my glasses and replied 'what are you GIVING this christmas?' His reply was a confused look and 'dunno'. Then he slunk off to mummy and daddy, busy cramming a basket with more ways to tell their son they love him silently and without bodily contact or effort.
I do not think that shops should be open on Sundays. I not religous or family-oriented but there needs to be one day of rest. I am tired of seeing little children dragged around shops on Sundays. They should taken to the park or on a family day out. But, it seems, mindless consumerism has no rest. Smiths was really busy today. Loads of people wanting books we didn't have or that didn't exist or that weren't released yet. (One woman became abusive on being told that the book she wanted didn't exist.) There were also loads of phone orders... until I unplugged the phone.
This was done just after I made Angela Stupidhead cry. I didn't mean to. It stunned me that she did cry. If I'd meant to upset her and it had worked then I'd be pleased with myself but I honestly didn't mean to this time. Still, I did feel a twinge of pleasure, she's a self-centred and obnoxious bitch. I only said 'You grammar is appalling today!' I meant it in jest and my tone, smile and laugh reinforced that. She ordered me into the stock room and, between blubbering, screeched 'I am a Supervisor! I have A Levels! How dare you disrespect me! I am a Supervisor!' She then thrust the walkie-talkie at me and disappeared upstairs for an hour. I had a secret giggle in the travel section.
I went to Gifford's for dinner last night. He beat me a chess, I have not been beaten in 6 years! It was a hour-long game and I held my own, I think. Then we watched The Blues Brothers and sang along to the music. Life is good. December 09 PieOn the advice of a good friend I took the 'What Pie Are You?' test.
I am:
CHERRY PIE!
I'm 'the perfect combo of innocent and sexy
Those who like you enjoy a contradiction' Hmm... Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel - why not every man?I'm a little bit drunk. Just a little bit. This is my plan - get a little bit drunk, wait an hour, then work solidly till dawn on revision and essays. It works.
Today has been the epitome of shite. I have been banned from study leave. That is to say I HAVE to be present in school every day as usual during exam periods, no time off to study like my colleagues, only allowed out of lessons for the actual exams. I don't know how I'm going to pass them with hardly any time for private SILENT study. If I'm at school all day, at work some evenings and then in my room, surrounded by external noise and distractions when am I to have the silence I need to cram my brain with subjective tenses and the Kreb Cycle? You may ask why I've been banned from study leave - I am 'too opinionated'. I told Rat Features that she was incompetent in reply to her telling me that I shouldn't be in the 6th form, I should go back into hospital where I am 'more suited to their lifestyle'
The typing of this entry is taking up the hour I need to wait for the alcohol to settle me into a fit state for essays on Oxidative Phosphorylation.
I went to work today and was told that I'm going to receive a written warning. I'm not entirely sure what for, either way I don't care. They can sack me and I wouldn't blink an eyelid. Gifford could walk in here right now, tell me he was using me, he hates me, he lied to me with every word and stab me in the back - I would still apologise for bleeding on his shirt.
I am feeling murderous. Self-murderous. I don't know why I don't just complete the inevitable act. Do I honestly think I am going to succeed? No, I don't so why do I bother? I don't know.
There's too much concrete for us to breathe.
I want to be five again.
I hate myself.
I don't want to be like this; too thin, too tired, too ill, too real.
December 08 Vampires in disguiseI went to give blood yesterday with PIC. I was fine, they drained a bag full of dark red blood out of me with no trouble at all. PIC was another matter. She went pale, very pale, and almost threw up. Myself and the donor nurse stood and fanned her with clipboards for half an hour until the colour returned to her cheeks and lips. Poor old PIC. On the plus side, I have given my 4-monthly pint, succeeded in that regular good deed and won David's 'undying respect - I wouldn't have the guts'. I intend to drag him along with me next time I go to donate.
I know its 'the decision of the individual' but for gods sake! Half an hour of your time, no pain, no great discomfort, friendly people and free tea and biscuits. What more do you want! Oh, and YOU WILL SAVE A LIFE! I don't think there's much left to say.
December 05 I crave the safety of someone who is paid to careToday bred insanity. I have been awake for nearly 30 hours and my eyes are welded open. My right wrist is huge, swollen, black and blue - I don't remember falling or bashing it at all. The doctor I saw at A&E (Bio Mouse took me on seeing the extent of my bruising) declared that 'by rights it should be broken'. I've been doped up on painkillers, even though I wasn't in pain and dent home. Alone. My head is full of sound and fury. The balloon-like sensation that is clouding my mental pathways and caused me to sit and bash my wrist with the handle of a pair of scissors for the past hour. Not sensible, I know, as it has made the bruise worse, bigger and purple-r, but I don't care. I know why I've done it... to get sent back to the safety and protection of a psych unit. They won't send me back, but I can try. This university offer has scared me more than I like to admit and I need to find a way to escape it. There are three ways I am familiar with: Death, incarceration in a raisin ranch or incarceration in borstal. I'm no criminal and death, for now, is no option. That leaves sectioning. I know doctors and nurses don't really care, they are paid to act concerned, glorified actors, but at least they pay attention to me and at least they don't look through me in an attempt to block out the part of themselves that I reflect. What part is that, you ask? It is everyone's, every single person's, possibility of becoming mentally ill. That is badly worded. Allow me to clarify. All of us are the same, mental illness can affect anyone. When people ask 'Are you okay?' what they really mean is 'Are you contagious?', 'How did this begin?' becomes 'Oh God! Could this happen to me? Could I become a loon like you?'. You see where this is going. Doctors and nurses are the ones that either don't care or don't fear it... December 04 Reality bites, reality is rabidOn saturday morning I received two letters: one from UCAS telling me I've been offered a place at Aberystwyth University and another from Aberystwyth telling me the same thing. Suddenly it hit me full in the face: I am 17 years old and I am going to university. As soon as that thought hit me, I was hit by another. I don't want to be 17 years old. I don't want to be where I am.
I want to be 5 again - everything made sense when I was 5. More than anything I'm scared, terrified. I don't want to grow up, that means responsibility. I have lived a sheltered life. Generally people like me, IE mad, are sheltered and looked after. One young man of my aqaintance, with the same condition as me, was so 'protected' by his mother and father that at 19 he had never bought anything in a shop.
I was lying in the bath earlier, remembering past christmases. The best one was the year I received my first pair of skates. I was 6, before then I'd always had to borrow skates from the ice rink and they were crappy things, nowhere near sharp enough to build up a good speed. I loved to ice skate, I still do. I remember putting them on and heaving myself around the patio in them, not taking the blade guards off to aviod blunting them. They were white with silver laces. Beautiful. I don't remember what happened to them. They've probably been thrown away along with my teddy bears, my childrens books and my artwork.
I don't like my memories. They remind me of happy times that are long gone. If I could have another shot at this life I'd change everything that happened after my 5th birthday. Is it wrong of my to think like that? December 02 To say you have no idea is an under-statementI hate the people I work with. I've got two strikes for 'inappropriate behaviour' at work. Another strike is an official verbal warning, then a written warning, then I'm out.
Act of inappropriate-ness 1: Playing the guitar. The manager asked me to look after some little children (12 in total) who had come to play their guitars with Wesley the Guitar Bear in the space by the doors in Smiths (I don't know why!). So there I was with 12 8-year-olds brandishing guitars, what did they expect me to do? I borrowed a left-handed guitar from a small boy and began to play a song they'd all know - 'Didn't my lord deliver Daniel'. We had a good sing-song. Three spirituals, a carol and some pop songs. I was thankful for my guitar skills at this point. But, no, playing the guitar is inappropriate.
Act of inappropriate-ness 2: Accepting a kiss on the cheek from Gifford. He came in with his mum to do some shopping (we were open till 8, bear in mind), I haven't seen him properly for 14 days and on leaving he gave me a quick peck on the cheek. There was no one else in the shop. At all. It was on the cheek. What is the problem? The problem is the manager is a mangey old man with no life so no one else can have one.
Oh well. I don't really care. They can't honestly sack me for those two petty things. In fact, I'd like to see them try.
Gifford is coming tomorrow. Yay! He rang me tonight to tell me that he misses me, I have 'beautiful green eyes' and he loves me. I have fallen. I don't want to stop falling, it feels damn damn good! December 01 Now is the winter of our disco-tentAh, a free moment to breathe. How nice to have five minutes to hear my own heartbeat. One's heartbeat is the most comforting sound in the universe, whether we admit it or not, to know you are still alive is a reassuring fact in this new computer-generated age.
Enough of my metaphysics. Life isn't too bad at present. One piece of coursework has been handed in today, another is nearly finished. Exams are looming but I feel strangely calm at the prospect.
My interpersonal relationships are muddling along just fine. Partner in Crime and I are getting on as good as ever. I haven't seen Gifford in 13 days but that will change on Saturday as he is coming for dinner and I intend to pin him to the wall if he tries to escape. A relatively new, but no less important, friend has become more and more of a feature in my life and we are getting along very well. The only distance between us is the geographical distance.
Work is shit, but then its never been anything else. I have another job as a private English tutor to a 12-year-old Veruca Salt style brat who can't spell or punctuate. I get paid £20 for an hour and a half of verbal abuse as I try to drum into her the various parts of speech, where to put commas and how to write letters to a given format. The £20 is extremely useful, I'm saving it all up to help with university. Yesterday she informed me that her daddy 'is going to buy her a pony, a brown one, with white bits and its going to be called Tinkerbell and she's going to ride it every thursday'. When I told her that ponies were no good in life if she could spell 'necessary' she kicked me with her £150 boots (everything with this girl is described by price tags) and started to cry. Now, anyone who knows me will know that my temper is infamous and volcanic. I kept my cool and told her that if she didn't sit down and behave I would tell her father that she skived school on monday to go to HMV to see some popstar who was doing a signing (I only know this because I was in the coffee shop over the road, reading, and saw her). That shut her up. On the plus side, my intervention with her grammar has led to her getting an A on a piece of English work (Its my A! I deserve it more than her!).
Right now, I am home from school as my French teacher is ill (or dead or pregnant - they never tell us anything!), trying to ignore the extremely off-putting noises coming up through the floor boards from Russell's room downstairs. I think a moment like this calls for very loud McFly music! That'll put them off! November 26 Non-denominational winter holidaysA request was put to me today at work for ' non-denomination winter greeting cards'. I suggested that the woman wanted a winter-design blank card to send 'just because' and she leapt on me - 'NO! I want a card to wish my hindu friends a very merry winter period! We're not all christian you know!' The irony of this lost comment could have been brought to her attention very easily but I let it go and showed her to the blank cards before walking off, ignoring her huffs of indignation.
Recently I have had the privilege of serving most of the weirdos of this town. The woman today was one of the less weird. Thursday was the 10% off late night opening evening. I had to work till 8 and at 7.50pm a man came sauntering in looking for 'a book about witches and suicide, where one of the witches commits suicide or someone she loves is driven to it by her jealousy'. When I asked if it was an actual book he had seen before the reply was 'no, but I think it would be a cool thing to read about'. We didn't have anything. 'How about vampires inflitrating an American University Sorority house?' Still nothing.
Today I worked this morning with Gifford and not at all this afternoon. I went shopping for presents and bought something for everyone I wanted to except Gifford, who is proving very hard. I wanted to get him something not too flamboyant, not too boring but so far its all socks! Or books! But when it comes to book I am unfortunately guided by what I enjoyed which is not usually the sort of thing normal people like to read. Not that Gifford is normal.
School is becoming more and more dire. I burst into tears in French grammar on friday. I've reached saturation point. Even English, my love and life's passion, is a struggle at present. My coursework on F. Scott Fitzgerald, a subject I wish to study at much higher levels, is plodding very slowly towards completion. This will pass and come next year, hopefully before exams, I will be back on form, studying 5 hours a night and not sleeping or eating. A dichotomy of a situation, I'm sure you'll agree.
Who am I writing this to? The general populance? Someone special? Definitely not the latter. Meh, what does it matter.
November 21 A completely pointless load of information about me....Books: Give me a book and I will read it. I love to read, it is the greatest gift my parents gave me, the gift of reading. Unfortunately, I am slowly going blind so in 10 years or so I will no longer be able to see... but I'll learn braille. Nothing will ever stop me reading.
My favourite authors are: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, Octave Mirbeau, Philip Larkin (a poet, so strictly not an author) Shakespeare, JD Salinger, Jeffrey Eugenides, Tom Sharpe, Tracy Chevalier, John Irving, Marilee Strong, Oliver Sacks, Paulo Coehlo, JG Ballard, Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis, Seamus Heaney, Susannah Kaysen
I love reading philosophy: Machiavelli, Plato, Schopenhauer, Cicero and Decartes are among my favourites to read but my favourite text to read is David Hume's 'Essays On Suicide'
Graphic Novels are also an interest of mine, especially the works of Adrian Tomine, Art Spiegelman, Daniel Clowes and Chris Ware.
As for all the other areas of literature, I suppose I have favourites in those too but they are too numerous to list here.
Music: Manic Street Preachers (dare I admit that I own every CD they ever released?), REM, Steve Reich, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovshy, McFly, Goo Goo Dolls, Train, Bond, Daniel Smith Blues Band, The Doors, Counting Crows, Green Day, Matchbox Twenty, The Who, Pink Floyd, The Clash, Sacha Heifetz, Oasis, Michael Nyman
Films: Anything directed by Jeunet, Magnolia, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, old black and white Hollywood masterpieces, Elephant, La Haine
TV Programmes: Blackadder, BBC 1 documentaries, Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids, Scrubs, 8 Simple Rules
My Heroes: Anyone who stands up for their principles. It is something that I try to do but in my circumstances they usually just increase my pills and call it 'acting out'. I also greatly admire Professor Robert Winston, a fascinating and charismatic man.
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