Friday, November 25, 2005

What A Strange Day: I Can't Help To Think It Means Something

Why do things keep going right for me? I've got my Oxford university interview on the 7th (of December - two weeks away!!! Where did November go? I barely had time for socks), counselling is going ok, I had a big cry last night and didn't talk to anyone, but that was because I was cold and wet. There was this massive hailstorm that whipped my face and legs as I stood pathetically at my front door thinking about ways I could break down the door because I had chosen this day to forget my keys and no one was at home. So I took a bus to the library and read for a couple of hours until Dad could get me.

I'm still in a decent mood. Why? I told Dad the truth. I stopped lying. When he came back from his (horrible: Grandad became a little more senile because of it and Grandma ended up in hospital) Carribbean cruise. He just had his fatherly inkling: he sat me down in my red fleece dressing gown, and told that there was no one who could love me more than him and that I really could tell him. So I told about the overdose. I told him about the psychiatrists, and the social workers and all the lies I told. I told I was feeling depressed, and I started to cry and we stopped talking then, cause I don't like to talk about it. It's been 9 days, I'm just glad I'm home in my bed and I didn't die through morbid stubborness. I'm finding it terribly difficult to return to reality though. It's like I'm suspended in thick mid-air, waiting for roses to fall and trying to write short stories about the nitty-gritty realism of the blacked-out ghetto, feeling utterly in the middle and meddingly confused, as if this was all to be someone else's fault. He doesn't know I cut, or that I have eating problems, or that it wasn't a complete moment of madness, but a...god knows, but he's asking questions.

My teachers are being lovely - my homework is basically very lax now due to the overdose and that I can ride off my perfectionisms from last year that gave me AAAB in my AS's. I'm finding it hard to relax and concentrate. I just don't know how to manufacture such a thing. And everyone's asking me out to places. I'm going to the theatre for the first time with Rich and Alastair and his girlfriend so I'm excited about that, and then the day after I'm going to National Portrait Gallery for Self portrait research (Don't I sound educated?!) and having my first protest - Action Against Torture down at Downing Street 1:30-2:30 --don't miss it! I mean, how big a deal is it to actually have survived a suicide attempt? Should I feel I've gone through onto this greener plateau where everything where it really hasnt, my tongue has loosened.

I have to say Rich is amazing. He doesn't know I blog because he only knows I had an overdose and went mad when I was 12, which is actually quite a bit...anyway, he's been really supportive, good to talk to. He and Alastair bought me a jar of Quality Street which was what I needed and I don't need anymore chocolate for the next few days. And he's been supportive and not awkward and sweet and just...I didn't know I had such a great friend under my nose. It's his birthday today and I want to get him something amazing for his 18th, but I haven't a clue. Maybe a book? Some plays? I haven't had a chance to write him anything...or I don't know. I'll have to figure it out for myself!

Today is strange because I quit Classical Civilisation, I've sworn off drinking and feel good about it, today I got the interview with Oxford (I'm shaking in my boots, even now) and there's this irrevecoble (sp?) proof that you can drink yourself to death, with the fine example of George Best, R.I.P. I don't want to end like him, pathetic and on a drip after all the luck the world could possibly give you. To ignore your desperate friends and family, to obey an affliction that just keeps lying to you, deluding you, as it poisons your skin and poisons your mind. It can most certainly happen to the best of us, and the most loved. So constant vigilance is your shield. Use it.

For now, I'm just hoping I have a good weekend. And so should you lot, outthere.

x

Monday, November 21, 2005

Monologue

Okay, this is more or less what happened to me on my first night in the hospital. I've written it in monologue form cos that's always worked for me. And it's copyright, too! in case you're wondering.

(Enter scene: In a children’s hospital with purple walls and nurses rushing around after children. Parents pace round the ward with babies in their arms. Opposite the nurses’ station is a private room with a 17 year old attached to her drip.)

Harriet: I don’t like hospitals much, and I try to avoid them as much as I can. When I think of hospitals, squeaky white shoes and that vomit smell is all I can think of. But I guess I can’t avoid it for now, especially with what I’ve done.

I’ve been so silly, see. I’m very tired too – that’s my excuse for everything. I’m tired, that’s why I wasn’t listening – I’m tired, that’s why I’m skipping class to hang with my friends – I’m tired, that’s why I drank too much. I’m too tired to think right now, but that’s all I can do. The TV is some dreadful 50’s throwback and can’t even manage Coronation Street. Not that I watch Coronation Street mind – in fact I can’t stand the stupid show. But I’m craving for some normality. And a hug. Although I’m not going to tell that to anyone. I’ll let them figure it out. (Scratches arms through top?)

(Pause, Harriet looks out of the window.): It’s quite nice, isn’t it? When I visited my friend her room wasn’t as nice as this, although she did get to watch Bollywood films all day. And I’ve got my own bathroom, with an actual bath and a working shower. This was a great source of excitement for my family, you can guess. They must have been near twenty minutes talking about the decor of the room, the view from my window, the friendly nurses and my life-support (the digital radio) before they asked what actually happened. I told them that I’ve been having a lot of stomach pains later and that I didn’t think they were anything serious until I started vomiting blood last night. I told them I made my own way to the hospital (I don’t know why), I then told them I was wearing pyjama trousers because they cut up my other trousers for some reason – yeah, a panic-blind lie. My lies kinda spun out of control and all I was waiting for someone to do was to take my lies and come to a conclusion of their own. (Pause, plays nervously with her hands, camera moves in closer to Harriet’s face) My brother, aunt, two cousins and my brother’s girlfriend had all come to me to just...I just wanted them to leave them alone. I might had even told them the truth, if it got rid of that caring glare plastered on me as if I had some kind of duty to be honest when it just wasn’t expected of me anymore.

At this point nausea overtook me and I vomited for the third time in 18 hours. It was horribly embarrassing at first, with the care glare turning into a care cheer – go on, let it all out, Harriet, you can do it, and so on. My aunty was moving my head around to get my hair into a scrunchie and I was horribly reminded of only a few hours earlier when I had again vomited violently in down in the observation ward in front of this old couple who wouldn’t stop looking as if my discomfort was some assurance to them, but I was too weak to scowl, and just rolled over and cried instead (rolls eyes). But the nurses got rid of everybody apart from Aunty Layla, who started only one of the first of the score of inspirational speeches I was to listen to over the next few days. She kept scaring me by telling me that something was wrong and that our talk was confidential.

“You must always know that you can rely on me, Harriet. Whatever you have been going through you cannot go through alone…”

And suddenly everything in my mind goes blurry. My vision doesn’t change much. In fact it sharpens, and her skin starts to shine. Her lips get redder and the sound is turned down very slowly until I feel like I either have to scream to stop this happening or maybe this would finally be the end. Then she stops speaking as everyone returns to the room. They have to leave, and I’m grateful until my brother gives me a hug. This must have been, like, our third hug in all those years of domestic piss. I felt guilty for lying to them all as I watched the small crowd drift away and I was left alone again, just as I had always wanted it to be.

(End scene? Long pause anyway. The nurses scatter back and forth, the speed of the picture slowing and speeding up. Background music? Coldplay Trouble or Aqualung Strange and Beautiful. Harriet watches all of this, being very still. We return to her as the nurse checks her temperature and silently leaves the room.)

Harriet: Did you hear her nerve? “Oh, isn’t it interesting?” She said. I thought she was talking about something about books. I told the doctor I like them and it’s all they talk about to me now. I asked what she meant, and she said “Ain’t it interesting about the secrets we can keep from the people we live next to our whole lives? Makes you wonder, eh? And you’re such a good student, and you’re so polite and articulate and well-spoken, and you’ve obviously got a lot of people who care about you. Feel better, pet. You have so much to live for.”

I’m so pissed off. How dare she? How dare look into the mass of crazyness and confusion inside this shell and decide for her what it’s all supposedly about? Just deciding everything is going to be alright, just like that. Why does everyone keep calling me articulate? Why can’t everyone see I’m going to die? I can feel it. Its right round the corner. I’m so full of myself: there’s this voice choking, spluttering, inside of me. I know what it is, that frog in my throat, trying to pause that hideous, wondrous inevitable. It’ll finally bubble up to the surface to be reckoned with in my state of nauseous numbness: I’m going to die soon. I’m not afraid of death. What’s left to save me now? And I will burst out laughing and blow a hole in my head and that will be the life of Harriet Jones. (And then, and only then will I be able to rest, and sleep properly and put myself first. That’ll be interesting.) (Harriet then turns off the radio, and goes to sleep, turning her back away from the camera. The camera zooms out, the last twenty? Or so seconds of Aqualung’s Strange and Beautiful play out as we zoom out back into the busyness of the children’s ward.)

Friday, November 18, 2005

Post 201: In Case You've Been Wondering

I've taken another overdose. Well, on Tuesday night/Weds morning. I took 18 paracetemol tablets and washed it down with alcohol along with other medicines.

I...I have been in hospital since then, on a drip, lying to my family more than ever, but being more open than before if you get my meaning. Now that I'm home, I think I'm on suicide watch on the moment, considering that the amount I took was said to be a fatal amount and I have done damage to my liver, but it's recuperating. And I'm resting trying to not to work too hard and I'm trying so hard to see what has changed in my life. I know that for one thing I'm not so afraid of death anymore. And I know that I'm going to die soon, much sooner than I thought if I carry on this way. I don't think my feelings have caught up with me yet, I'm so tired and weak and everything is so surreal. My brother actually hugged me, for one thing. And me and Mum bonded. Ay, I have so much to tell you, I'll have to break it up into three parts, give me something to look forward to until Dad comes home and I return to college to the wrath from my teachers.

And god, despite everything that's been happening I'm still worrying about my two essays. God, has anything changed at all? Am I going to make it to university? I don't know, I don't know. I should have talked to someone to talk me out of the ... attempt? Who knows, I'm going to rest some more. I broke a promise and I'm sorry.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Missing You


Hehe 200th Post! *Dances*

I've had a busy manic weekend - my cousin was stabbed, I saw the Remembrance Day fireworks, I've started a new story, commuted with a werewolf, and my Dad is on a cruise in the carribbean. But it all sounds so rudimentary. I miss Ria too much.

I haven't seen her for three weeks now and it feels like forever. I just want to hug her, mess up her hair, see her smile. I haven't missed anyone like this for a while, and it's distracting. But I guess it's a testimony to my shaky humanity that I can feel such love for a person. Most times I speak to her, I'm always thinking of the future - when we will be living somewhere new and we'll get sick of seeing each other all the time.It's the only time that I look forward to real life beyond university years. She's just lovely. If I lost her I'd be stuck somewhere incomphrehensibly unhospitable. (sorry to get so mushy) And the last time I saw her was in hospital, and she was all weak and scabby. Now, she's on to her second boyfriend, who's wary of the big bad lesbian taking Ria from her. I'm going to tease him mercifully whenever I meet him. He sounds like a wicked sense of humour.

And about werewolves, did you hear that there's a war plaguing the world? The war between witches, demons, werewolves and vampires? No?! Well, apparentely you should. This is what my friend has told me on Wednesday. She then went on to say her husband, who's also a demon, was killed the night before but herself and her witch friends brought him back to life. But he's lost most of his memory and they're awfully tired. I've been worried about her for a while, but I'm pretty sure that she has now, officially, lost her mind. I think it's all real in her head, but she talks like there's actual people involved. I'm going to her house on Wednesday and I don't know what to do. She's been a good friend so far, so I can't just abandon her.

My Dad has been gone for two days, and I've been drunk both days. I dunno why. I am in a crying mood, but getting drunk just makes the world so....dreamy. Safe in my alcohol fuelled cocoon. I'm still wondering how I'm going to survive but... OMG I have to tell you guys something -

The ball has started to roll! I have gotten two university offers!! One from Sussex (my top choice!) and from Sheffield!!! They're both in the top twenty universities in the country!!!!

And after the elation and the smiles and my as-yet celebrations, I'll be thinking to myself : -

Ack...what the fuck has the world come to?

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

My 199th Post

Firstly, have you heard about this? A technology school? No books?! *Heart palpitates wildly*

I'm on page 68. of Murakami's new book, Kafka on the Shore. This book makes me very happy as its fabulous, and funny and I totally relate to the weird characters and that unknown disjointed, disconnected quality the lead characters have. I love it.

Monday, November 07, 2005

If I carry on this way, it won't be better if I stay - So Long and Goodnight, So Long and Goodnight (My Chemical Romance)

I am in too good a mood. I have just watched this adaption of Much Ado and I am full of love songs and poetry and gaiety that just won't quit - "Yours, my dear, is the true face"...

It's been a rough day. I've been such a good mood but no one seems to want to humour me, or be interested in just having some fun. Everyone is poorly and in a bad mood and I'm just happy, loud and annoying Betty. It just won't do. Anyhow, if I don't get some control on my feelings when I do come down from this high (and it won't be long) I'll be so low and despairing (when, quelle surprise, everyone is back in a good mood. I'm totally out of step.) that I might not make it through the year. My moods are just too extreme and the environment doesn't demand for it: I need to be even mannered if I'm going to get through this. So I'll be moderating my emotions, sharply, for now on, I'm afraid. I haven't cut much recently but I'll need to soon and I'm just being...practical, anticipating when I'll next be completely incapitated with depression.

Otherwise, I am full of love songs and poetry and romance. I'm in the perfect mood to be swung off my feet and pampered and loved. My mood? Iris, by the Goo Goo Dolls:

And I’d give up forever to touch you
’cause I know that you feel me somehow
You’re the closest to heaven that i’ll ever be
And I don’t want to go home right now
And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
’cause sooner or later it’s over
I just don’t want to miss you tonight

And I don’t want the world to see me
’cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

And you can’t fight the tears that ain’t coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything feels like the movies
Yeah you bleed just to know you’re alive

And I don’t want the world to see me
’cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
And I don’t want the world to see me
’cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
And I don’t want the world to see me
’cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am

My poem? Sonnet 116 By Shakespeare:


Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.


I just want romance and love and to make out with that gorgeous girl. I've been writing more poems, although they aren't essentially lovely. I'm just beginning to feel that I've lost that loveliness inside of me. It used to lie there, dormant, in my heart and its been cleared out so I can love more freely, love better. But I would love to have that ability, that humane part of me. But before I sign off, there is one more poem I want you to read. It's a bit strange, and has a certain meter to it. If I could recite it on the internet I would but this will have to do.

Untitled

Gold never decays.
You put me down and frowned upon
My smile as I lay.
I want you to own me.

You kissed my eyelids shut –
You chide, dare your pride
To ride high without –
I don’t actually care, but you’ll try.
I said before;
I want you to own me.
Let’s drown in romance,
Ridiculous sentiments. Ease.

Gold can run thin in the soul.
You don’t sparkle, you glide
And leave me lying here besides.
I could detest you.
If I remembered how to breathe.

You let strange men take me away
In red velvet blackness.
I am still waiting
To see you again.

Gold band on my finger
Protests again through the procession
Yet you remain.
Am I stained?
Soon I won’t be seeing you again.

Gold band on my finger,
Such loneliness is such a tempting
Trigger.
I don’t know what to say to you.
But I’m going down now, somehow.

What I have refused to see is
A fatal flaw in the breakdown of love,
That the mask frozen to pieces,
The man who said he’d always love me is a liar.
And I perish as the gold grows bolder,
An evergreen cliché.

- Okay, there it is. It was inspired by a John Donne (love) poem I had to overanalyse in class, and I started to think about the "romantic properties" of gold. Then I thought to throw in the macabre, inspired by the Helena video by My Chemical Romance. It's a nice mixture. Please tell me what you think!














(This is Helena...)

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Strange Sensations















Heylo, I started this post on Friday evening, but I couldn't be arsed to finish it, but guess what? Something weird did happen on Halloween.

I managed to get to sleep through music bribery (I listened to most of Beth Orton's album to calm my brain down with the prospect of seven pieces of homework and two essays for my Oxbridge application, due on the 10th. Then, on Monday morning, after rolling my way onto the bus and into college, I recieved the news that my gigantic, scary, monsterish Oxbridge Special History Exam has been set for Wednesday.

Tomorrow.

Morning. Eek!

I stared at my apologetic looking politics teacher who gave me the news, ready to scream "WHY didn't you tell me earlier so I could pretend I tried to study over half term?!" and it turns out he only just found out today, yet all my other Oxbridge classmates knew...grr. I wondered why this had to happen, now, this week, when I'm feeling so stressed and unflexible and foggy. I did walk by a white cat in a bush, which is frankly a bit weird. I've never seen strange acting white fluffy cats sitting still next to train tracks. That would explain it, right? The test is basically all about the nature of history, rather than its content. It's basically some stressy sort of I.Q test, and you can't revise for it....thats why it's so scary. It's happening at 9 am tomorrow morning, so wish me luck?

Anyway, continuing my other post...

On Friday it was my friend's 18th birthday, and as he was a very intelligent, sophisticated, fun kinda guy it was going to be that kinda day. Me and Rich met up with our birthday buddy (BB) and his girlfriend, Anna. First we went to the trendy chinese restaurant and had lots of chillies and starters, of which BB paid for most of it. Then, he directed us to this magical candy shop. It was this tiny place near Chinatown and sold candy from all over the world, with the exception of gobstoppers. I think we spent around £25 pounds on sweets and chocolate, including cinnamon gum, halloween sweeties and jellybeans of every flavour. Including candyfloss, toffee, chocolate pudding and garlic. I thought this was too weird to miss, so I got some of almost everything, including the garlic because I quite like garlic. It's good for my blood and I use it almost everytime I cook. I tasted lots of things I never had before, including the gum, Hershey's chocolate cookie bar, a twinkie (those things were weird, but Americans sure know how to make sweets!) and Mountain Dew, which I really liked, and is one of the things young Britons are now searching for when they go to America.

So after that first shop we went through Chinatown and down to Piccadilly to this really expensive chocolate and had some tea-infused chocolate, and this nutty chocolate ball thing that actually made my knees tremble, it was soo orgasmic! The last stop of the day was at the National Film Theatre for the London Film festival to see this short film set. It wasn't bad, although sometimes it got a bit bollocky. I was eating my jellybabies in the dark and couldn't see which flavours I had put in my mouth, and at one point in one of the films, a sex scene, I tasted the full blown taste of garlic and chocolate pudding in my mouth, jellybean form. My tongue stiffened and my mouth did that strange gagging sound you do without moving your lips. It was very funny. It didn't taste that bad in reality. It was just that one second I was tasting chocolate and general sweetness, and then this overpowering garlic thing came over me. It was really weird.

I did talk to Ria about talking to her ex boyfriend, and she's kinda okay with it, as long as of course, I don't get too friendly...

So yeah, that was a great day. I had a laugh all day from noon to 6 in the evening, but now I've got this scary exam that I don't want to fail. So I won't. Basically, if I fail this my Oxford hopes die here, and it's given me so much stress and hassle I want to keep it going for as long as my brain puts out. So tonight, I'm relaxing my brain, and enjoying stimulating reads to squeeze thy creative juices. Night night for now.