and all the rest is talk

you wonder, don't you, how someone like me could possibly be a disappointment. you don't understand, and therefore you think, somehow, that i am exaggerating this.

i am not that good a liar, sir.

you don't know what parents can do, when they really work at it. the opposite of what you feel – you whose parents didn't so much work at it as give you a free rein. i'm not saying that's wrong. i'm not saying that's right. i'm not saying that that's all they've done. i am not here to judge. i am just trying to explain how i feel.

i am practically perfect in every way, in the eyes of a parent. i'm smart. i'm pretty. okay, i drink, but i'm almost always sensible. i did the right and proper thing when i started seriously seeing someone – i went on the pill. i'm going to law school. i've worked HARD for my money. how could someone like that be anything other than a parent's wet dream?

the thing is, there's no such thing as perfect.

the closer to perfect you get, the more you realise this. because you never quite get there. and the fights that should be about staying out late or smoking or whatever it is that normal people get into trouble for – the fights over things a parent wants to control but can't – become different. someone else's parents would forgo the little battles in the hope of winning the big ones. in my world, the little battles become the big ones. for parents who claim to be liberal, mine have one hell of a control issue. bearing in mind that i'm not even at school anymore, we fight over things like seeing my boyfriend on a work night. wanting to quit my job two weeks before my contract was due to run out anyway. not spending enough time expanding my cultural horizons. hanging about with "the wrong crowd" (who have never led me astray, or tried to hurt me. unlike one clever, bright eyed boy i might once have known.)

your whole life becomes a goldfish bowl. i don't even know if my beliefs are my own anymore, or whether they're just things that my parents told me that i've been so conditioned in to believing.


you don't want to study english, you want to study law.
you don't want to pick higher history, you want to study spanish.
you don't want to study maths either. don't be so stupid. you're not a mathematician.
you don't want to stay there.
you don't want to go out with him.
OR HIM.
you especially don't ever want to be yourself. YOU'RE SUCH A DISAPPOINTMENT.

to have all this followed up with – "you're so selfish, you only ever do what you want to do" – is... well, galling isn't the word. i don't really know what is.

i feel like a human sponge. i hardly know what's real any more. the only times i begin to feel real is when i am not there. with my best friends. with my boyfriend, especially. i begin to feel – human. like a real person, rather than my parents' puppet. spouting their ideals, their mantras, mantras they fervently believe in – until they apply to me.


four more months until maybe i can breathe.

fighting the jury in my head

how to decide what is important to me?

my friends and my boyfriend - or the opportunity to get away from everything i've ever hated?

i cannot make this decision. i am NOT qualified to choose one over the other, to choose my own self importance or my love for these other people. i can't DO it. i don't know how. i don't know how to reconcile myself to the fact that whatever i choose, i am going to lose something...

i feel ill. i feel scared and small and tired and less than human or animal or mineral.


i don't want this anymore, i don't want any of this, please take it away from me, i don't want to be special or gifted or clever anymore. i don't want it.

i could save you, baby, but it isn't worth my time

this is the last time i'm going to mention her, i swear, i swear.
god, i miss you so much it's unreal. i've lifted my phone a million times to text you and ask you about your new man, to share this or that piece of gossip, to ask you what i should do about uni and all because i need help so, so much. because we were always good at those parts. the talking and discussing and the laughing and the crying. and god, for a while we were everything to each other and i loved you so, so much. i don't think you'll ever know. the way you loved me was selfish, like a child loves a toy. you wanted all of me, but you wouldn't give me all of you. never. i loved you unconditionally. all i wanted was for you to be happy.
and you used me.
you are untrustworthy, you are a liar, you are manipulative, you are deceitful, you never think anything is ever your fault, you are lazy and feckless and selfish and i hope you burn in hell because no one has ever, ever broken my heart like you did.
i tried. i tried so goddamn hard. i tried even after everything you did when you were going out with my boyfriend's best friend. i tried to give you another chance, but that became another, and another...
it got too much and i couldn't cope with a friendship like that anymore. not when you tell people things that i find painfully embarrassing. not when you try to turn me against the nicest person in the world. to think i nearly lost her because of you. shame on you.
i miss what we had. i feel sorry for you, more than anything else, because deep down i know how unhappy you are. but that is not my fault, and it never will be. and i'm sorry that i can't be who you need me to be. but i've changed too much and this friendship can't survive because you're exactly the same person you always were and will be.

i loved you.

i'm sorry.




goodbye.

trapped in his bedroom he saw the world

if i was the advice giving type, this would be it: don't say forever, don't make promises, never regret a single thing, and always be willing to trust and fall in love. because the ending isn't what matters. it's the journey.

this is the end. it's over, the whole thing is over. now she hates me as much as i hate her and it is over.
no one has ever hurt me so much in my entire life, but it is over.
it is done.

i don't know quite how to feel.

blake thinks angels grow where you plant angel dust

i think the best way to describe my style is "cautiously optimistic". that's certainly how i feel right now, in general anyway. but right now, i feel like i have the sun and the moon and the stars in my eyes; like i was created from gold and glitter and all that is good and sweet and pure. i'm on a high, the best kind. this total want of care and worry is so alien to me as to be wonderous. it's freeing. tonight i'm going to go home, listen to teardrop by massive attack LOUD and just generally wonder at the infinity of everything behind my eyes.

and this is what it is like, or what it is like in words.

it's so polite it's offensive

what were we? i don't understand it anymore.

never mind.

today i am cleaning. i don't hate cleaning, i just... i cling to things, like if i keep everything the same way nothing will have changed anywhere else in my life. and then some days, the opposite – i need things to change, so i clean and i organize and i try to figure out: where do we go from here?

today it's all about the latter.

i'm too worn out to think straight. i want my life to be straightforward and i want people to stop telling lies that i can see straight through.

probably never gonna happen.

maybe more later when there's something to actually talk about

should i stay... or should i go?

i ain't gonna die for you, you know i ain't no juliet

sometimes, it's all about what's left unsaid.

"who's your favourite character?"
"i like cassie, she's crazy. you?"
"i have a total soft spot for chris, not sure why"
because he looks like you and acts like you and god i miss you when you're not around and half of me wishes i didn't because then things would be fucking simple.


"i blame him for all this"
"i do too"
but i still wouldn't change a minute of it because he changed absolutely everything i've ever been.


"it's my favourite, i hope you like it"
"i do, i've listened to it three times in a row"
"great, i'm glad"
i miss you.

"you know you can trust me with anything right? best friends, forever."
"yeah of course, of course."
i hate you, you liar, liar, fucking deceiver, backstabber. you left the frays from the ties you severed. best friends don't lie, they don't tell, they don't play the fucking victim, and they don't make me feel the way you do.

"moving out makes no sense right now, too expensive..."
i want to move out.

"all i want is for you to be happy"
even if i can't be that person, like i wanted to.

fin.