here is something i can express

I'm sitting in my room, typing and staring out of the window, trying to capture this moment before it's over. The scene is still blazing in front of me but it won't be for long.

The Limp Bizkit version of Behind Blue Eyes comes on Media Player while I'm sitting and writing in my diary about something or other, and as it does, it starts to snow.

From my window I can see the gutted structure of Cameron Halls, running parallel to Runymede and then branching away towards Medicine on the left. The wall facing away from me starts to glow as the sun appears from behind a snowcloud.

Here in my room, the curtains, my glass of water, my hands, lit up by this sudden sunlight.

It's not often you get to watch snowflakes fall like that, the way they spin and flit about like a shoal of fish. You expect them to fall straight, like raindrops, but they don't. Looking into falling snow is very much like looking into chaos.

The song starts to finish, the snow starts to slow. By the time the next track starts, the sun's sliding behind a cloud and the snow, which doesn't even settle, is finished.

Now the clouds are parting, a bird just landed on the corner of Cameron halls in the one remaining patch of sunshine, I can see blue skies and I'm listening to a happier song.

Here's the last line - these things are good for the soul.

for the sake of trev's co-workers...

This isn't writer's block, as such.

Or maybe it is. If writer's block is the complete inability to say what I want to say, then that's what this is.

Perhaps it's more that the enormity of the things I want to say, at least from where I'm sitting, is too much to write down.

I like to take feelings and beat them into words. I like to put them down, make them pretty and leave them there. For me, no thought or feeling ever really happens unless I take the time to write it down.

These thoughts and feelings are too big and too much for me to write down. I can't leave them behind, I can't stop feeling them, I just can't express them either.

This is where I usually put in a short sentence, cryptic or catchy, to round off what I've written, to sum it up. I get a lot out of my final sentences, they're like the cherries on top, the grated cheese on the New Yorker chicken.

Sum this up in one sentence?

There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery the time when we were happy.

- Dante

hmm...

I'm posting this on the off-chance that someone can still see my blog. Because I can't.

If you can see my blog, could you let me know? And not by leaving a comment because, as you might have guessed, I can't see my blog.

I should email someone about this...

Edit: For some reason, writing this post was exactly what my blog needed to reappear. That was odd.

o my soul

Is it perserverance or stupidity to keep praying and praising when you're not even sure that anyone's listening? I haven't decided myself.

The one redeeming feature I see about myself right now is that I'm stubborn. I'm far too fucking stubborn to be beaten. If I was gonna give up, I'd have done it last year and I'd have done it in the most permanent sense.

See, this way I'm alive, and I've got a reason to be that way. Any other way, perhaps I wouldn't. So perhaps it's stupidity that I'm sitting here with a gin in one hand and Psalm 42 in the other. Fine. Call it a value judgement; I'd rather do it this way.

i was expecting something... beautiful

Doesn't it say something when you Google Image search for 'beauty' and this is what comes up:



Bleh...

ouch

I feel a certain pressure. I put a pressure on myself to write well on here, because I know people read it.

I've been diary-writing more this year (just when you thought I couldn't stare up my own arse any more frequently), the book that I labelled '2006' is over half-full already. Where do I get the time to churn out all this shit? Look at my timetable. Problem solved.

It's 2:17 and I'm awake, listening to Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and rubbing my mascara into my eyes.

Went shopping today. Catherine's 1920s themed birthday party and the need to buy steel-toecapped boots sent Kate and I to Reading, where we sat in Pizza Hut, people watched for almost two hours and got a free meal because Kate found a bit of plastic in her food. Bonus.

This lovely dress. I was so excited about buying it that when I got in I put it on and skipped up and down the corridor, showing it to everyone who was in. Today, I was a real girl. I put on lipstick, tried to curl my hair and, when it didn't work, straightened it again, shaved my legs, high-heels and hair-clips, perfume, my black dress and the sexy scarf I got free with a magazine.

I walked with Rachel to the party, pyjama trousers on under my dress to keep my legs warm, trying hard not to be scared walking past St Judes cemetery. Charlie said I looked beautiful and, when you've really put the effort in, that's the loveliest thing to hear.

Not so lovely. I'm in the hallway changing back into my heels and there's these guys sitting on the stairs holding an empty bottle of vodka. They're staring at me. In that way, you know, that some guys have, when they're too drunk to care if you see but still think that you can't.

"Nah, I don't think so."
"I dunno, she's alright..."
"Nah, I really don't think so."

Then they both laugh, and ask me how to get a dead scorpion out of a vodka bottle.

What I like is that I don't give a shit what they think of my appearance. I could just laugh at how little I care because I know I'm worth more than that snap-judgement. It's amazing to me that I don't burst into tears at that because, seriously, that's happened before.

What I don't like is that feeling of so obviously being sized up and found wanting. Not even so much that they did it, because, to be honest, I do it, I was doing it in Pizza Hut today with Kate and it won't be the last time. But not like that. The lone girl in the hallway who obviously doesn't know anyone, the one in the dress and the heels who you've obviously figured out is a Fresher because I heard you say it when I walked in... You should know better than to pick on her, and so loudly, so blatantly.

I don't like the assumption that they're allowed to judge me, that I'm somehow up for their debate just by standing near them and putting my heels on. Makes me wonder if any guy's ever heard me sizing them up. God, I hope not. Makes me think, though. The assumption that I'm allowed to judge someone...

These bubbles burst so easily. I thought I was ok... No, I am ok. Comparatively speaking, in comparison to my normal state of mind, I'm bouncing off the walls right now. What's not ok is that I've been pretending not to hurt recently when I really, quite obviously, am.

Ouch. Y'know?

Perhaps it's no coincidence that my diary's getting fuller these days, now that there's stuff I don't wanna say.

Edit: Ssh... there really is stuff I don't want to say, so we'll pretend that last bit didn't happen.

"it's just that there's so much to do and i'm tired of sleeping"

No, I don't want to move.

I don't want to change out of my pyjamas, or brush my hair, or get out of bed and leave this room, this flat, this building. I'd like to stay here a while.

Perhaps I'll tidy up a bit, do some hoovering, maybe wipe my desk down, straighten my sheets, open a window, light some candles, spray some perfume, clean the shower. I'll put my clothes away and put on some inspirational music.

Maybe I'll curl up under the desk and spare into space a while, listen to Skunk Anansie and Sigur Ros until I'm bored with that, watch Pride and Prejudice until I'm bored of that.

Maybe I'm bored with this? Maybe I'm a bit tired of being tired.

Perhaps. But right now there's so many reasons to crawl somewhere warm and soft and just stop moving. There's an overwhelming need to stay.

for emily, whenever i may find her

I'm watching a girl on the train, maybe twenty, her kid a baby girl with a pierced ear, sat in a pushchair. I'm watching them because baby dropped her bottle while we were getting on at Egham and I picked up it up to hand it back and the woman gave me the strangest look.

I'm wondering, what would she say if I told her about Jesus? Would she laugh, be suspicious, bemused, get pissed off or just pretend she couldn't hear me? It's not her so much, I'm sure she wouldn't mind, but it's the woman behind her, with the briefcase and the cynicism, I'm thinking I bet she'd judge me.

I don't want to be one of those loons who yells about damnation on the train. I really, truly, don't want that to be me.

But that's not the point. The point of this, is that I tend to act on stupid whims, because I'm reckless like that. I'll say whatever it is you dare me to say to someone, I'll wave at strangers through windows and offer commuters Mini Eggs to cheer them up but this, the one thing I want to tell everyone, I can't tell anyone.

If she and I had been the only two in the carriage, three with her baby, I'd have done it. I really think I would have said what I wanted to say but there's all these listening ears and I'm scared, for the first time, of what they'll think of me when the word Jesus passes my lips.

Not even sure what I'd hope for it to achieve. These evangelism stories you hear at church always end with, and then he told this woman that God loved her and she burst into tears because she'd prayed that morning for the first time in twenty years... You like to think that if you ever did do it, that's what would happen, and it would be amazing, and affirming, and a drive-by conversion the like of which you've never seen before.

I think it's more likely to be a bit of an awkward glance and a mumbled 'thank you', if any response at all. That's not the point, to change someone's life for good, the point is to say it, because people don't know it. And it's kind of our thinking that if people knew it, they'd like it.

I'm 16, at college, doing this play, Cyrano de Bergerac. We're changing in PA1, the girl's room, and I'm full of neuroses about my body, everyone else's bodies, how awful I must look, how intimidated I feel in this room full of gorgeous drama girls and suddenly, this voice cuts through my thoughts: "Bye girls, it might not matter, but I'm praying for all of you!" This girl, I don't even know her except that she annoys me a bit, pauses by the door and in that second I want so badly to say something back, to mumble or shout my thank-you. I've been a Christian for two months and it really, really does matter that she said that. I'm tongue-tied though, so I say nothing at all.

The thing is, back in the day, if someone had sat me down on a train and told me God loved me, I would have cried. It would have meant so much to me to hear that said, just like it meant so much to hear that girl, so offhandedly telling us that she was praying for us. I really needed to know that stuff, I needed to hear it said.

And what I needed to say to that girl was, thank you, you don't know how much it helped me that night to hear you say that.

You have to say these things, you see, or when you find out that that girl from college is dead now, that she was dying the whole time you knew her and now she's gone, suddenly you wish you'd said something. You wish you'd gotten round to just saying it, even if it didn't matter to her, at least it would've been said.

I say nothing on the train today, but swing over the back of the seat to blow raspberries at her child instead. I tell her she's lovely, her baby's lovely, and she smiles the smile of the mum who knows.

You don't know. You can't ever tell what your words have done and where they've been taken by people. I guess you're not meant to know, not meant to reap, just meant to say.

i am chocolate mousse and a glass of wine

There aren't many sentences that strike genuine fear into the heart of this particular Fruitcake. Of the few that do, the two most recent are: "Right, we're going to do some trust exercises now...", and "Oh, I found your blog the other day..."

I heard both of them today.

It's February the 14th. What strikes fear into your heart? Questions like, "So, got any plans for the big night?", "You mean you're not doing anything?", "My boyfriend got me a Hummer, what did you get?"

Ssh. Valentine's day doesn't really mean anything at all. I'm caught between love and hate at it. Teddy bears and chocolates and Hallmark cards. Who hasn't had loathed them? I'd rather have tulips, but you see someone getting roses and it has to make you smile.

That said... Singlehood takes something of a beating this time of year, being alone in general. And I hate that. Really, I do. And you know there's more people alone tonight, getting hammered and copping off, watching videos with a lonely bottle of wine, trying to pretend it isn't slightly shit to be a lone wolf today.

Being single on Valentine's Day... I've only not been single on Valentine's day twice, which means I've been single on Valentine's a grand total of sixteen times. If being single was ok yesterday, it'll be ok tomorrow and I'm damned if today will feel any different.

Maybe it's the copy of Buddhism Without Belief sitting on my desk (courtesy of Tim, have I mentioned that I love Tim?), but what's the point in wanting something that isn't mine right now? I'm sure someday it will be but today it's not and that's the way it is. I don't... I'm more sad about the fact that I recently wasn't than the fact that I currently am.

Cat, despite the initial terror of realising I had one more reader than I thought I did, I'm glad you found my blog and I'm glad you liked it. I'm also glad that you agree swearwords can be a literary device. Amen to that.

Who says there's no love for the single on Valentine's? Last student-led workshop today, we're lying on the floor in the Boilerhouse, trying to count to thirty as a group, one number at a time. It takes us something like six tries, each time a little closer, lying in semi-darkness and it's nice to notice how we know each other's voices, how I've never been in a group that got past ten in this game.

I don't know what it is that helps us count like that, how you just know when you can speak and when you can't, how you can tell when it's someone else's turn to say a number. I don't know, but I like that you can.

Then, cell group, in my bedroom, praying and really being honest with each other. Good call there. I'm not great at praying with people, less so with people I don't know, less so with people who don't know me. After tonight, though, I can kind of understand why it's such a big deal. And I understand the only way to get to know people is to actually talk...

Yeah, there's been love today, my V Day has shaped up pretty well, regardless. The second chocolate mousse of the day went down very well, as did a glass of wine, some good music and some good conversation.

A bit disjointed, a bit nice.

sometimes...

...I think I actually don't communicate very well at all.

Sometimes, I'd just like to tell myself to shut the hell up.

Ever get that? About yourselves of course, not me. Heh...

Perhaps if I have nothing good to say, I just shouldn't say anything at all?

Perhaps.

i said i wouldn't blog for a few days. guess what? i lied.

Before I start: I think I say this kind of thing a lot, but it's still something I'm trying to put into words. I might have expressed a couple of things quite badly... but it's cool, I'm sure you'll tell me if I have. Oh, and this is far, far too long. Sorry.

******

I've decided that no, I don't want to be labelled after all. Part of me takes comfort in repeating the words to myself: I am Fiona Kennedy, I am a first year Drama and Theatre undergraduate at Royal Holloway, University of London. I am British, I am white, I am Christian, I eat meat, I am eighteen years old. I've had three blood tests in my life and the last two I've asked to be told my blood type and been informed that I don't need to know. Why not? I ask, why shouldn't I label myself further?

I never used to. I never wanted to call myself a Christian. I spent over a year going to church, chatting to Christians on forums and discussion boards and listening to worship music, wanting more than anything to get to know God without having to stick the "I am a Christian" sign on my forehead. Religion was for sheep, and I didn't want my search for God to be tainted by association to such a corrupt and backward thing. Also, I didn't want to have to follow the rules - being a Christian meant behaving like one and I wasn't gonna be a hypocrite myself...

For me, 'becoming' a Christian was the point in my life where I stopped giving a shit about the label and decided that it was an honour, rather than a taint, to have the word 'christ' as part of my identity. I still think that. The idea of Christ is sacrifice, humility, compassion, bravery, strength and love and love and love. It's when you put ian on the end of it that it starts to mean something else.

Sadly, it's always the negative connotations I'm more aware of. These days, people hear Christianity and they don't think charity, serving, integrity and passion, they don't think the things that I want them to think when I tell them what I am.

I want to justify myself. I'm not out to ally myself with Rome, with the pope, with the crusades, with gay-bashing and illegalised abortion and 'baptised capitalism' and hypocrisy. I don't want to shelter under the wings of an institution that's served itself and stuck a middle finger up at the humanity it's been sent to love. Nuhuh. I have never wanted that. I want more than anything to draw a distinction between me and them. I want to add a footnote to my label of Christian, I want a postscript that says but I'm not hot on the pope and I'm fine with contraception and some of my best friends are gay and I actually think that Noah's ark might have been a tad metaphorical and I think Bush is quite horrendous and I know the church has got a lot to answer for but...

But there is no postscript, right? The only footnote to calling yourself a Christian is the resultant conversation where you get to explain exactly what kind of Christian you are, and remove yourself from the less agreeable aspects of religion as you see it. Only, that explanatory conversation doesn't always come around, and, well, it's not as simple as kinds of Christian.

I've also been told that I'm a liberal. If 'liberal' means that my politics swing violently to the left and I happen to be a Christian, then, yeah, that's what I am. If by liberal you mean that I see Christ as a very nice man, the gospel as an inspirational story and the resurrection as a metaphor then no, definitely fucking not. If the fact that I believe in evangelism and speaking in tongues means that I'm charismatic and fundamentalist then yeah, fine. But if that means I'm into churches that are registered businesses, believe that George Bush is tantamount to the second coming and think pro-choice is a sign of the anti-Christ's imminent arrival then no, no, thank you.

Let's get this straight. Labels can be dangerous, they're misleading and they have a tendency to stop you from thinking. Labels can be wonderful and affirming and comforting but, yeah, when you whack them on your forehead too readily they can do nothing but divide this world into even smaller pockets of people.

Take it back to the blindingly obvious basics. What's the one thing that all these guys, the charismatics and the Catholics, the fundamentalists and baptists, the Churches of the Sacred Heart, the Immaculate Conception and the Rootin' Tootin' Church for Y'all Who Done Hate the Devil, what's the one defining feature? Oh yeah, of course. That. The bit we overlook so easily, you know, the guy who died under the label 'King of the Jews'. Ever found a church with that on its billboard?

Put like that, it seems like the only thing associating me with these churches is our most fundamental belief. There's really no reason why I should be held accountable for them... Wouldn't it be lovely to separate myself from them? To create my own denomination, the South Eastern Church of the Theologically Bewildered so that everyone would know, upon introduction, that I wasn't Catholic, or Quaker, or New Right? My own little bubble, full of my faith, that no one might associate me with those who I disagree with.

The thing is that those are my brothers and sisters, my family.

We've divided and divided like amoeba, each new 'version', Christianity 5.0, believing itself better than the last, refined and revised, the sins of the last stripped off until we're left with nothing but what we believe is central. We've travelled in different directions, stripping off the politics, the pomp and circumstance, the ugly bits, the pretty bits, the disputed bits, the traditional bits and the modern bits and what we've got now is several hundred 'pure' Christianities, each one getting straight to their own point without thought for the other couple of billion followers of Christ doing the same thing.

Why are we so ashamed to be attached to one another? Why are we, the religion that follows the man who dined with prostitutes, treating each other like lepers? Everytime we divorce ourselves, every schism and split, every distancing from the sins of each other is denying Christ three times, like Peter swore he never would. We deny each other, we deny ourselves. Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me also...

The label I choose is the vaguest one, the most accurate one. I am a Christian, pure and simple. As in I ally myself with no denomination, and with every single one. I go to the church that suits me best and where my friends are, but the style of the service and the details of the theology don't define me. The religion I've chosen is one that asks for imperfect people, and as such its history is far from glowing. I won't even try to distance myself from it, I'm a part of it and its faults and follies are mine. But its sins aren't on my shoulders, or on any of ours - bearing the wrongs of the Christian faith was someone else's task and he did it well, he did it willingly.

In return he asked this - that we would love him, that we would stop blaming, and fighting and shirking and dividing and trying to absolve ourselves and just love each other. These other Christians, the ones that have killed and maimed in the name of Christ, those who have made religion big-business, who've beaten up gays and bombed abortion clinics, who've told teenagers in slums that condoms won't prevent the spread of aids... They are mine and I am theirs, we're bound to each other like my hands are attached to my wrists - one body, one blood, one label.

all at sea

I'd find it weird if you had a blog and didn't mention what happened today on it. I want to mention it because it's all I can think about and it seems stupid to write about anything else.

But then everything I've tried to write has sounded so unbelievably crass that I'm giving up. This is where blogging falls short and conversation wins the game - there's nothing at all I can say on here about what happened today.

It all went tits up I guess. And I'm incredibly sad. But I reckon it's gonna be ok someday. I reckon, I really believe, that we're gonna be ok someday.

"trust the Lord with all your heart and don't depend on your own understanding" - Proverbs3:5

No blogging for a few days, there's nothing else to write that can be read by anyone but me and, for the first time, no comments either. I've said all I want to be said about it on here. That's all.

this picture

I feel like I only listen to myself after I've listened to everybody else. I know I only listen to God after I've listened to myself.

What's wrong with that picture?

The name of this blog comes from a Placebo song called This Picture. Farewell, the ashtray girl / angelic fruitcake / beware this troubled world / control your intake / goodbye to open sores / goodbye, and furthermore / you know we miss her / we miss her picture.

The lyrics aren't relevant, they're not even that great on Placebo standards, but due to a shared obsession with the band between me and a friend, angelic fruitcake became the shortest lived nickname I've ever had. It's also been the only one remotely interesting enough to name my blog after. So there.

Today I'm all about that song. The bit at the beginning, I think. What's wrong with this picture? / What's wrong with this picture?

What's wrong indeed. I'm trying to figure it out, to put my finger on what it is about life here, life in general, that I just can't rest easy with. Since last summer, I've laughed more than I think I have done in all previous eighteen years of my life. Since September I've met more people, memorised more names, drunk more alcohol, raved myself silly, felt more lonely than I ever have done before.

I've also read less books than I have in any academic term. I've prayed less, read less of my bible, been to church and cell less. But then, I've cried less, hated myself less, had less utterly pessimistic thoughts and considered what drowning would feel like less. I've hit several new highs, a couple of new lows, I'm happier and lazier and more frustrated, I have endless freedom and I feel completely constrained. I've never, ever, been less busy than I have been here. I've never felt so much like I'm wasting my time and money because I've never paid so much to do so little. I've never blamed myself to this extent.

I have changed, apparently too much, apparently a cheerful Fi who drinks isn't preferable to a stony-faced Fi who loathes herself in quiet sobriety. I'm utterly different, I think, but I know I've never been less myself than I am right now. I know this because I make lists of the things that I love and I'm aware that I'm doing none of them. I'm not performing, reading, walking, swimming, working, protesting, I'm not in any societies, I'm hardly doing anything at all but showing up to my lectures and God knows how frequently I don't even do that.

Here's a secret, and I hope, I really hope that today is one of the days that one of the people who knew me at 6th form decides to read this blog - I was fucking miserable for the entire second year of college. I have literally never been as low as I was then. I left the house at 8am each morning, got back at 5pm, worked in between, rehearsed and read and blogged and watched films, spent my Saturday in Tesco, my Sunday at church (if lucky) and the afternoon with my family. I had no time. I wanted time so much that I made myself ill to try and find it, I worked myself to a standstill just to get some time to myself.

Now I have time coming out my fucking eyeballs. I'm no longer miserable, but oh, you don't know how I miss being busy.

What's the moral of this self-pitying little story? What exactly is it that's wrong with this picture? Nothing, really, the picture is fine. In fact it's beautiful. The location, the structure, the people inside it, the things they're doing, the moments leading up to the picture are full of laughter, as are the moments that will follow it. The problem in this picture of mine is me, that is, you can't really see me. I'm hiding behind everything and everyone I possibly can, completely oblivious to the knowledge that this picture is actually perfect.

I'm sorry. I have to go and learn how to do the things that make me happy, I have to go live this life the way I've always wanted to. Making the most of the picture, if you like.

premonition

One of these days I'm gonna push open the door to my bedroom, touch my nose to the white balloon stuck to the number plate and it's gonna blow up, bang in my face.




And you can take that however you want. It means whatever you want it to mean. It'd be one less thing to worry about I guess, but it'd make me sad.

the edge of scary

Getting scared for the first time in a while.

Walking through Windsor Great Park in the afternoon and there's this dog, Alsatian type dog, the kind that looks enough like a wolf to put me quite nicely on edge. I don't like dogs. I really don't like this kind of dog.

Getting lost in Windsor Great Park, accepting a lift, the two of us, from a complete stranger. It's not the man driving that scares me, but the dog in the back of the car that I don't see until I'm sat down, strapped in and we're driving away. Same kind of dog. This man whose car I'm in could be any kind of psycho; the dog scares me.

Back on campus, Rachel calls to warn me that there was another attack last night, that the guy with the hammer got a girl on campus. On campus? As in, right here?

Talking to security guards, the rumour mill is spinning. A girl got grabbed on Wednesday, yeah, but she got away fine before anything could happen to her. Outside her halls, the bit of grass between Reid and the Geology department... We're thinking, here, these are our halls, this is our campus, and there's this geezer with a hammer... Now it's getting personal.

Getting back from the union, walked home by security, locking my door behind me with real intent. Now there's something to be afraid of, it's getting scary for the first time, there's some guy out there and there's these girls walking round, too drunk to speak, tits and arses hanging out, wandering on their own, waiting for a man to care for them.

Scary indeed, more ways than one.

yes and no

I don't know what to think of this.

I can't tell if he's got it right or not, but I know that any excuse to link to RealLivePreacher is a good one indeed. Go to the essay archive and pick a couple of essays at random.

I love the way this guy writes, completely and wholeheartedly.

Enjoy...

stories about running away

The most frequent feeling I get when signing into Blogger is one of mild panic. Something about that page and my impatience, I always start typing in my username before it's all fully loaded and, invariably, the last few letters of my password always show up when the cursor flicks back to the beginning of the username box. Today, if I was typing slower than normal or what, I glanced up to see that I'd typed my entire password into the username box.

It's an odd feeling, the one series of letters and numbers you don't ever expect to see staring back at you from the computer screen. Too weird, too exposed, I start looking over my shoulder.

This picture, from Postsecret, made me feel a bit like that. A bit like, oh, that's a point.

I started writing a story when I was 15, in an English mock exam. I was in classroom D16, if I remember right, sat in my usual spot by the window on the right, second row back, writing in my blue exercise book. I'd remembered the story about JRR Tolkien writing the first sentence of The Hobbit in the margin of an exam paper, and was trying to think of my own epic line. Says something about how cocky I was at 15 that that's how I spent my mock exams, but there we are.

I have changed my name to Barony and I am running away.

I don't exactly know where it came from, but I can guess. Barony is the name of a village in Orkney that I'd visited the summer before; running away was my obsession of the season. I never did it, never tried, never really wanted to. But I'd just read Junk by Melvin Burgess and my head was so full of junkies and anarchists, suddenly running away was the most glamorous start to a book that I could think of. And so it was born.

I wrote sporadically at first, wasting time through my GCSEs and the summer that followed, then obsessively when I reached 6th form. Free periods for me were up in the study centre, headphones in, scribbling away. I had all the inspiration I could ever want, and time to blow, but still... What I needed was to sit down with it and do it right, to start from the beginning and work it through, what I needed was to figure out where it was going.

That was the rub. I could never figure out what I wanted it to be. I wanted to write a big idea, to say something meaningful, but I could never put it into words. When I look back through it now it's just snippets, little escapist snippets of some idea I never really understood myself.

I called it 'stories about running away' because that's exactly what it was. People who left, changed their names, tried to figure out something about the world before they got eaten up by it. I'd say I got bored, or lost interest, or something, but it wouldn't be true.

The truth would be I see things differently now. When I was writing that, every place I saw was a scene in my head, every song was a soundtrack, every stranger on the train was someone I wanted to put down in fiction the minute I got home. I don't know how I see things now, but I know I don't see that. Places are just places, people are just people and songs... songs aren't soundtracks anymore.

I never finished my stories about running away, I started telling stories about myself instead. I miss it. Not so much writing stories about the world, you understand, more just seeing them there to be written.

24-hour constant companion

A new feeling now.

I have a new best friend. His name is nausea. He's the kind of friend you go through phases with; he'll disappear for months and then suddenly be round everyday. I never know when he's gonna show up, we're both busy people and, to be honest, if we waited for a time to suit us both we'd never get anything done.

He always comes at the worst time; he always comes unannounced.

He hears it when I lie down to sleep, creeps under my door and into my room like a criminal, crawls onto my bed and curls up gently on my chest while I sit in awkward silence. I can't move, I can't think, this is an awkward social interaction in which few words are exchanged and I never, ever offer him a drink.

Nausea will fall asleep right away, like a cat in its favourite lap, his breaths come shallow and irregular, now none at all, now so deep that it pushes down on my rib cage and I can't help but moan in discomfort. I can't roll over, I can't snuggle down, I can't even move for fear of waking up. God forbid I ever wake him. Nausea is an anxious sleeper, woken to early he tends to get violent.

Then, it's all I can do to stay still, trying to lull him back into slumber, wrestling silently with my demanding friend and my suddenly absent God for some kind of deal, some kind of peace arrangement just please don't let this end in fighting.

Fighting comes anyway, nausea scrambles inside my shirt, an arm round my neck and I carry him silently struggling to the sink and that's where the fun starts. It's all about the adrenaline then, my body shaking and my pulse racing - this could almost be sexy but it's really, really not.

Nausea shoves my fingers down my throat but nothing's doing. Not even tearing him out of my arms and flushing him down the toilet would help. He's too feisty for that, too stubborn to give in.

But so am I, and we lie in stalemate til morning, me with my book, him with his deep, stirring breathing. He leaves then, to cruise the town and let me get some sleep, only to return in the afternoon to try and break me down once more.

An odd but faithful companion is mine. He's always here, one way or another. Sometimes I almost imagine a cousin of his, sneaking in and taking slumber in my heart and mind, explaining the other way that I've grown accustomed to feeling. But that's just fancy, surely, such a creature couldn't exist and besides, I belong to only one at the moment - my new best friend.