What Your Soul Sings: The 243rd Chapter of My Life (okay, blog)

At this moment, everything hurts. Some skin came off my ankle yesterday and it smarts when I touch it, which is all the time because feet get a lot of use, I'm tired because I'm not sleeping and I'm depressed but at least I'm rebelling by not taking that damn Prozac - none of it - it fucked me up more than most things that have actually happened to me.(I should mention I have this now too. The label list gets longer. My status declines.) Also, my throat is feels blocked and raw because I've made myself throw up for the last 6 days (Saturday could be excluded...this post will expose the truth later. OOH.) after most of my meals. Even Dad is starting to move past the inexplicable veil of Denial:

"Betty, why are you throwing up everyday? You never eat that much either."
"What do you mean Dad? I didn't throw up yesterday. Or the day before that - the only day I threw up last week was from the party, remember?"
"Oh yes...of course. How silly of me. I must be getting old."
"Well, you are 47."
"I'm 21 actually!" (We laugh. It's an old routine, whether we're talking about Syphilis, family deaths, films or eating disorders.)

This is how it works. We talk about something obvious, like me avoiding meals, or the sound of me retching, or stuff I forget to clean up etc. Dad asks what's going on and I point blank lie, I say there is no problem - I say that I am fine, "perfect", even. Dad takes it in, however slyly, or snarky as he wants to I don't care because then we have a joke and there's no tension and I don't have to talk about icky things like shoving sick down the sink and choking on bits of spaghetti and spewing out cold water and ice cream and talk about how much easier its getting and how much harder it is to keep things down and not have a panic attack about it, or how I have a new fear of blocking up the sink and the bath and the toilet and the shower and not just getting caught with a plunger but not being able to get rid of the food either. Things I don't want anyone to care about because they'll get hurt, if not grossed out.

At the moment I'm submerged in some other strange kind of sorrow. I feel a shivery kind of numb, then I feel so warm, all over except for some invisible place inside which stays so cold. My right ear is numb, hehe. And its miseries with pleasantries, on a trip to that bloody Motel where I end up every year. This year I see to be taking an exeedingly long amount of time. But I wouldn't mind staying in the real world for the next couple of months just so I can remember something properly in the month of June. One of those gorgeous snapshot memories - you remember the weather, the wet sand between your toes, smell the sea and the fruit and the cocktails. You remember the layout of the hotel you were staying in. And most of all you remember why you remember it so well - it was the last time you went swimming, were in Jamaica, you were happy. You remember who told you to remember it and your Aunty's life flashes past your eyes...

Isn't that how autobiographies are made, what each blog is - a skilled chapter of ones' life? For it is true that everyone has a novel inside of them, even if it is a 12 page dictation of their own life, as even if it is a dull life - and most are - and it turns out you didn't actually believe in anything at all contrary to popular belief and it was really just sanity, survival and sanctity (where you're told what to believe and you never really discover it for yourself) because autobiographies are so important. In the only memorable, palpable form of expression and recycled examples of life imitated onto art, our stories may be the only thing we have.

Where did this thought come from? Rich sent me a text asking how I was, and when I realised how grim things were, I almost didn't text him. Might be why I'm slow to be emailing Nik. I just want them to do justice to my friends and be happy...

I give up. I'm going to bed.

My Second Blog Birthday

Thankfully, my head has become a little clearer. I'm talking to people again. I'm making jokes again. I'm flirting again (I've found this total Indian Curvy Cutie - no idea if shes straight or taken though :S ) Things in my crazy life, are starting to become quite normal again. For this I'm glad.

Anyway, this is only a mini post. I'm just wishing a happy day for myself and any others in the same sticky, tough, molten spot as I am....And hoping for Blog-a-versary comments! Hint, Hint, Hint! Honestly, I can't be any more shameless if I spread my legs open or something...

Or second thoughts, lets burn that moment. Ok? Gone? Good! Now comment!!

I'm Not Dead

At the moment I'm going through a rough patch. I'm having trouble coping with this rough patch because I can't find anybody to really help me out apart from KT Tunstall who seems to interpret my feeling perfectly at this moment, for which I'm grateful. My feelings have been shoved into a jam jar and I don't feel, well, safe enough to let them all out. Hence, I feel as hollow as those giant great dead Redwood logs, making lots of noise as they go down, down down.

Anyway! Events:

• I'm now on Prozac. This gross liquid stuff thats full of sugar and is turning my life upside down. I'm stuck in this strange place between extreme hunger and extreme nausea and I can't seem to find a balance between the two so I've almost stopped eating altogether. This feels good, but it means I can't concentrate on my studies and my grades are beginning to slip. And then I slip altogether and eat like everything in sight. I'm going to become so fat, so gluttonous, so disgusting, so foul. I know it will happen, and the inevitability of it all makes me want to drive off a cliff.
• Part of the Prozac effects mean that I'm becoming quite an insomniac. I just don't feel like sleeping. I didn't sleep at all for one night, just staring at the computer screen, crying, thinking about hurting myself, crying, crying, crying. I slept for 2 hours and felt like shit for the rest of the week.
• I'm starting to give up relating to people. I'd rather just hide in my room, drink beer and whisky and read books all day. I would happily waste away like this.
• The thing is, I still want to succeed, but I'm doubting everything about me. Really, everything. If I will get a girlfriend, if I'm as clever as I used to be, if I can get through this, if I'm a good writer (I got snubbed at this years College Creative Writing Competition)

I'm not great, am I? I would love to just stay in bed and not get out, and I thought the Prozac was supposed to help with that. I got it 11 days ago. I feel like exploding. I feel like hurting myself, dying. I feel like I'm going mad. Understandably, I can't work. I have my first exam in like 4 weeks. Haven't revised, haven't devised any sort of plan. I can't coast this year. I'm on the borderline A grade for my two major subjects and I need to put the hours in. Its probably too late to try and get exam sympathy (I'm working on the nerve to talk to my cantankerous well-meaning tutor for the last time). Hmph. I feel like I'm falling.

Because I'm only on half strength of the Prozac I'll only be taking it every other day. I finish college this week. My 18th birthday is in exactly 2 weeks. My friends birthday party and my Granddad's 80th (my Grandparents Silver anniversary) are on this Saturday. I will never forget this week. I'm only able to write this all now because I was going quite crazy, and anxious, having near panic-attacks, scratching, seeing things - seeing voices, spiders, snakes, laughing bitches...

No, I'm not dead, but this isn't living either. I need help, and not the professional kind.

The Kinky Art of Convention

(Copyright of Betty B. Cite website address and name if you want to use my photos :)
"Vast vistas of dreams and possibility will seem as real as the chair you're sitting on."

This was my horoscope for today, my Dad's birthday. He doesn't know I'm writing a blog so there's no picture of him. He loved my present (Spanish learning pack), and we hugged and I was late for history again, but that doesn't matter so...

No, I was wondering about conventions, about what you're supposed and not supposed to do. Who told you that? Because it's almost always a "they", and who is "they"? The way I see it, sometimes I can't get up in the mornings or talk to people or enthuse myself into studying (or not). Yet I know I'm doing it all wrong. I just wouldn't mind understanding why. Where did these conventions come from? Who started it all? I can only wonder.

Today I returned from my gay youth club sabbatical to find old friends there. Woo-hoo. It made me burst with happiness that they just let me be. I needed that. Sometimes I swear I forget I'm a lesbian and I feel completely out of place all over again. I talk to some of my gay friends and they've done the whole rock n roll, sex, death and drugs thing, and are quite blase and jaded before they've reached 18. How am I supposed to be excited where all the excitement has all gone? Whenever I tell them I've been single like, forever they see it as a terrible, terrible thing. And yeah, it would nice to have somebody to kiss and sleep in with and covet, but right now I'm just not looking of that because I'm just not that bothered. Should I be because I'm a teenager?

And bloody uni. We're told to expect everything to be magical, and we know that we will be told to follow such abstracts objects such as our hearts and know what we want right now is what we may want for the rest of our life, despite such a very very difficult decision this is for us right. Oh! They know, all right. I mean, does everyone know what they're supposed to do? Do you know that when you say hi to someone you say hi back, or that you don't have hash brown and bacon sandwiches, or that if you dress different the other kids will always laugh at you (I've perfected my "fuck you" stare. Fuck 'em. I don't even look that different). When did I get told this? Why? I mean, I guess is what normal is and so nobody knows, really.

I mean I've made my university and I'm more scared than I've been for a while. Because when you leave your friends, even it is for a week, then you don't recognise them and they don't recognise you. And whats a born and bred London girl to do up North? (Manchester uni I've chosen, yep.) Even if I stalk my friends via MSN messenger, will they be completely different people when I come back? Can you ever really keep in touch with people you don't see for a while? It's happened to me before. I've had really good, budding friendships before I go on holiday for a week, and when I come back they've become friends with someone else and I never get a look-in ever afterwards. For the first time in years I've made some real friends who I want to know and share my life with for a good while, and I don't want to lose that because I need my best friend. So I'm equally scared and liberated, and truly, those are two most challenging states someone can encounter.