Our songs.

When me and my girlfriend were together we had a song.

Now we're apart, we have a song.

We can never break up
We can never not show
We can never go home
No, we can never elope

We've only got one choice
So let's keep making it
And making it
Making it
And making it

A lot of things can change
A lot of tears will dry
There's no way out of your head
I can't still drink like I'm trying

I never had to work too hard
Let's keep working it
And working it
Working it
And working it

You're like a test, I can't fuck up
You're like a song in my head, like a la la la la la like a dream
Don't wake me up and if I never see the light again
Well I guess they put me in the ground with this smile on my head, my love
My love

We can never break up
We can never not show
We can never go home
And we can never elope

We've only got one choice
So let's keep making it
And making it
Making it
And making it

You're like a test, I can't fuck up
You're like a song in my head, like a la la la la la like a dream
Don't wake me up and if I never see the light again
Well I guess they put me underground with this smile on my head, my love
My love [9x]

You say you stand by your man
Tell me something I don't understand
You said you loved me and that's a fact
and then you left me, said you felt trapped

Well some things you can't explain away
But the heartache's in me till this day

CHORUS
You didn't you stand by me
No, not at all
You didn't stand by me
No way

All the times
When we were close
I'll remember these things the most
I see all my dreams come tumbling down
I can't be happy without you round

So alone I keep the wolves at bay
and there is only one thing that I can say

CHORUS

You must explain why this must be
Did you lie when you spoke to me

Did you stand by me
No, not at all

Now I got a job
But it don't pay
I need new clothes
I need somewhere to stay
But without all of these things I can do
But without your love I won't make it through

But you don't understand my point of view
I suppose there's nothing I can do

CHORUS X 2

You must explain why this must be
Did you lie when you spoke to me

Did you stand by me
Did you stand by me
No, not at all
Did you stand by me
No way
Did you stand by me
No, not at all
Did you stand by me
No way

Me and my scars

I have a long history of self-harm. It starts age 11, and ends age 18. I have scars pretty much everywhere; my arms, shoulders, breasts, legs, hands, feet...

I am NOT ashamed.

I am aware that people judge me when they see my bare arms. I am happy and willing to hide my scars when meeting new people, or representing my family. I understand that they do not reflect well on us.

But I am NOT ashamed.

Bad stuff has happened in my life, I have mental health problems. I am not ashamed of these things. I could list them, but it would achieve nothing.

My scars are a result of the things I have survived. I would not be the intelligent, emotionally-balanced, caring person I am if I didn't have my scars. They are part of me.

I am NOT ashamed.

"I'll be ok, just as long as everyone just keeps their love off me."

I broke up with my girlfriend last year. I loved her with every part of myself. She didn't feel the same way. It was messy, it was painful, and it left me in a really bad place.

It took a very long time and a lot of lost weight for me to get to a place where I felt better. I realised that I could survive if I focused on the good stuff, my friends and family, comedy and music, and didn't think about love.
I told the world, "I'll be ok, just as long as everyone keeps their love off me."

Unsurprisingly, this didn't last. Why? Someone decided to unleash their love all over me. Covered in the stuff. Revolting.

A girl I met at Rangers and got on brilliantly with, sent me a text message. Sort of loves me, apparently. Over the months, this has increased to a level of needing me, and frequently threatening suicide. They are relatively empty threats, I can tell the difference between teenage defiance and true depression.

I try to counsel her, hold her hand, explain to her that it's possible to get through it, it's about living for the good bits, and for heaven's sake, lady, suicide is not an option! I like her a lot, and I try to be her friend, but in the end I am both her counsellor and torturess.

We sat and talked for a long time last night. We both felt we couldn't go on as we are. The other options are that I disappear, and she learns to live without, or we give 'togetherness' a go. For me, the latter is not an option. I live 150 miles away most of the time, and I haven't felt any form of physical attraction to anyone since Gemma - I couldn't make her happy. For my admirer, the former is not an option. She can't imagine living without me being there.

So, we carry on as we are. Awkward, unhappy and dismally hopeful.

I never thought this would happen to me again, but I received a text message from my new friend Shaun just the other day...

Facebook

I'm young. I'm of the modern generation. I facebook, I twitter, I have little arguments about the use of the names of social networking sites as verbs, and I usually feel twitter is, but facebook isn't. I of course, feel that the meaning depends on its use and there is nothing wrong with "facebooking", I just don't think it sounds pretty.

However, I come to you today rom that all too familiar position of having been surreptitiously spurned by facebook. Ah yes, when someone makes a passing comment in their status that is ambiguously broadcast to everyone but you know without doubt that it refers to you. I will avoid going into detail on this matter. I will admit that I may be a little bit in the wrong. I may be oversensitive, perhaps I spend too much time on facebook, perhaps I have read a little too far into what I see. However, something I said has been taken out of context, spread in the form of a rumour, and has now ended up on facebook, with me as the injuree. Such trivialities, I accept, should be ignored. I am going to take no action into the matter. Tempted as I am to write a long rambling apology to the girl in question, I feel that as I have nothing to apologise for (I don't, I'm not just being stubborn) that would make it seem that I did in fact do or say something malicious that warrants an apology, and therefore make this situation much worse. So I shall be quiet.

Eventually, we draw to the real point of this entry: Is facebook a good thing? Has it changed our culture? Are we more exhibitionist? Are we less discreet?
The simple answers to the above are: Largely, yes, yes and yes.

In more sensible times, not many years ago at all, people had conversations. We would see a friend in person, or on the phone, or communicate by letter or email, the defining point is that it was a conversation between two people or a select group.
We could choose who knew what, we had a vague idea of who from our group would tell who from any other group, and of course, vicious gossip and rumours spread, but they were said, in a second. They were out there, never to be removed, but they also carried no trace. Now, of course, anyone can go online and read back through anyone's facebook conversations and take note of every opinion, flirtation, and argument that has occurred. The deletion of a post is not merely a deletion, but has in and of itself its own meaning. Delete posts with the greatest of care.

If you had an argument with your partner, you would go and talk to your best friend. Now, you tell everyone you know on facebook. Then your partner, reading this and feeling hurt that you have just broadcast an intimate detail of your relationship to the world, posts their own feelings. A brand new argument stems from the old one and takes place in public, with everyone you know following it like a soap opera, taking sides and pitching you against one another. It's sickening. But there's no cure for curiosity. It's an integral part of human nature. It's who we are. So the only way to stop people following all the little dramas in your life and magnifying them is to keep them out of the public eye.
Can we manage that?
Older people probably can. They are used to discretion. They are also more mature. They are capable of having private feelings and ignoring them whilst on facebook and instead posting about a piano they have for sale. My concern is that younger people have become so reliant on this outlet of the facebook status that even if they had some horrible experience and resolved only to use facebook for trivial matters they would struggle not to post their innermost thoughts every time they become upset, angry or lonely.

I could go further, and suggest that this outlet has led to a generation of people who have no idea how to keep their emotions in check, and will grow up believing that it is entirely reasonable to tell everyone everything.
It is not.

Angel of Destruction.

I was 12 when I first saw her. I thought nothing of asking her to sit by me, I thought nothing of her accepting the offer. For months, we sat together in our French lessons. She didn't talk. She was so shy. Gradually, she opened up. We became friends. I knew her better than anyone, and she knew me. Each of our lives was the other. We existed for and because of each other. I could watch her, and find delight in the way her legs crossed, the curl of her hair, the texture of her skin.

I told her, in a rush of emotion, what was happening to me. I told her, that she meant the world to me. She told me, that she felt the same. And it was wonderful.

Until, that is, it fell apart.

She didn't seem attracted to me like I was to her. It took a long time for her to kiss me back. We never kissed properly. Sexual encounters were few and far between, and less than easy. I lay awake at night, imagining the feel of her skin on mine; she didn't. I turned to her in times of hardship; she shied away. I promised her my love and support; she shied away. I asked her to be honest with me; she destroyed me.

We tried to remain friends, but every time I saw her, my head span, my heart raced and I felt like I was drowning - My lifeline was right there, I could reach her, but I could not have her.

I cut all ties, but I watched her. I had reports from reluctant friends, I followed her MySpace. I knew when she wanted to be with a guy, and the pain was fresh. I ran to her rescue when something horrible happened to her, hurting myself, but out of control.

Now we are friends. But she has her boyfriend, and I have this never-ending pain. She came back into my life recently, nothing dramatic, but like nothing had changed. After a long time of stability, I fell apart. And yet, yet I worry about her. I try to look after her. I lecture her and care for her. I can't help myself.

Is it my fault for getting in too deep?

WD-40

This is the last portrait I drew. I drew it in March of last year. So, it has been almost one year since I sat down with a source image and did some serious sketching.
What with exams, depression and pain, I just haven't gotten to doing it again.

So, tonight I take out my old sketchbook, take an Ann Summers brochure, and try to draw. (I tend to use the many girl's faces for practice.*)
Awful. Absolutely bloody awful.
First, I find myself staring from the picture, to my paper, to my pencil (repeat) and wondering how the hell I can get those layers of graphite to create a pattern on the page.
Then, I put pencil to paper, and find that I have completely lost the knack for translating an image in front of me into a motion of the pencil.
The result, a lopsided face with a half dodgy smile and one good eye.
I compare that picture to the one here, and I know - KNOW - that all I need is practice, and it won't take so long this time as it did in the first place.

But, when you first start trying to draw, when you've never believed you can draw and you see yourself progressing from this:



























to this:
























And then to Holly above, you feel impressed. You feel proud of every drawing you do in which the nose is slightly less skewiff, the eyes a little more real, the hair a little more three-dimensional.
But when you know you can do good things, but you can't quite get it down because your talent needs a good squirt of WD-40, every step forward is just as depressing until you surpass the point at which you stopped.

And so, like with everything else, I'm thinking I might quit, because I'm not strong enough to go through the learning again.

Grief

Grief sounds like a strange word to connect to chronic illness. At least, it does to healthy people. To chronically ill people it makes perfect sense.

As far as I can see there are three main factors to why chronic illness (& pain) sucks:
1. Pain. Which leads to...
2. Limited mobility/lifestyle changes. Which tends to encourage...
3. A change in other people's attitudes towards you.

Pain is difficult to deal with. You can get by when you twist an ankle, break a bone, or suffer some other acute injury, but when you have constant pain, day in, day out for weeks - months - years - it gets harder and harder to deal with. It sucks the life force out of you. Everything becomes harder. It leads to depression. Depression makes it worse again, because you lose the motivation to take medication and do physio and exercise.

People's attitudes are important, but you soon learn who are your real friends and who aren't worth bothering. It's still a challenge, though.

Right now, I am finding the most difficult thing point number 2. I am 17. I used to go on camps with my girlguides, and I loved it. But now I know that a night in a tent would screw me up so badly I'd barely be able to walk. We used to do hikes together for charity - can you believe I used to walk 13 miles through the Cotswolds? No, I can't either, but I have certificates to prove it. I actually used to be the fittest of my girlguides. I used to power ahead. I went on a walking holiday in the Aeolian Islands just three years ago. I've climbed volcanoes.
Now, walking to school in the morning can leave me in tears. Writing a few sentences can make me cry. Hell, even sitting still I can be in too much pain to focus on my work.
I'm 17. All my friends are turning 18 and throwing parties. Tonight is my oldest friend's 18th. I'm not there right now, because my hips scream at me for walking from the study to the kitchen, let alone across town.

My body sucks. It really, truly does.
Now, I'm going to get drunk.
And when my doctor tells me to have a more positive outlook, I'll bite him.