break your heart and raise a glass of gin

Cat and I are perfect mirror images, each leaning out one side of the window, a Spanish cigarette in one hand, a pink plastic glass of cheap Cava in the other.

We're watching a French film, talking about God, various failed attempts to fight the slut within. Faith should be something constant, deeply understood. I tell her I'm taking a step back, trying to start again with the whole thing. It's odd, trying to explain it out loud for once, not to just anyone, but to Cat, my big sister and partner in crime.

She says, as your cell leader, I'd have to advise against taking hard drugs. She leans out the window, stubs her cigarette on the sill. "I wouldn't want to get into something that might be addictive."

She doesn't know it, but our plans to head up to Windsor Great Park and get even worse are the most encouraging thing that's happened to me in quite a while.

*****

Up to the point where she rescued me and took me to Budgens for junk food, yesterday was a bad day.

I sat down at my PC, face to face with all the work I've been ignoring for three weeks and suddenly realised how lazy I'd been. Which made me feel bad.

And there's a turning point, I've realised. It comes somewhere between the initial 'huh, I've cocked up' and the resultant trauma of 'I'm such a horrible person'. In that point, maybe that half hour, I should have cracked on with an essay, or gone for a walk to get some air, or done something.

Should should should.

I haven't thought about the turning point for ages, because I haven't thought about the Bad Place for so long. The Bad Place bit me in the ass yesterday.

They reckon pride comes before a fall. They can fuck right off. Whoever needed a proverb to tell them that?

*****

And after yesterday's antics, my own ones, rather than the ones undertaken with Cat (which I happen to believe were both necessary and productive), I don't know qualified I am to talk about pride. About self-respect, really.

Pride's a sin, yeah? One of those awful things that we fallen humans do for kicks. Not Good. I like to think I'm pretty self-deprecating (even if I'm not very good at it), but we lions are proud things.

I don't like to be patronised, or patronise. I like to look people in the eye when they're talking, to shake their hand when I meet them, to respect their opinion, their personal space and I expect people to do the same for me.

The only man I get down on my knees for is God. As far as I'm concerned, his is the only ass I've found in the world worth kissing.

What if you stop believing? Whose ass are you kissing then? Whose rules are you following then?

As a Christian, my self-respect comes from being right with God, from trying to be good with him. Looking at myself in the mirror without flinching is from that and only that.

I might be a mess sometimes, spectacularly so, but a girl has to look in the mirror to see to do her eyeliner, and if I'm pretending to be something I'm not then I just can't do that.

As someone who isn't a Christian, my self-respect comes from kissing ass for no one, and getting my eyes done properly. And you can take that however you like.