i guess i'm slightly relieved

90 minutes in a claustrophobic MRI machine has its upside - ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you - the Fruitcake Thought Process. This, I guess, is where all the shit really comes from.

thoughts from founder's: the beercans and balconies; walkways and statues; the cigarettes and above all the sense of poetry to this

I’m not ‘cooked’ yet. to become myself. not for your sake, for god’s sake, but for my sake, because I must do something, to be immersed in something. I must be involved in something above and beyond myself and to find myself, this time, is to lose myself in something about life. something to do with life and truth.

not a binary truth, or a singular one, but the truth that acknowledges all truth, the necessity of trying and the futility of hoping. the importance of writing and walking and reading and knowing and singing and being better than what you thought you were. could be.

I want to open eyes and start fires, to burn down council houses and dreary weekdays. I want supermarkets to fall apart in this deepness, for people to know and be known, to fall apart in their existence of stupidity. perhaps this feels superior. mm, perhaps. I want.

psst, if we all gave freely and sweetly of ourselves, we would all end up with more.

the problem with my trusting in god is firstly the absolution of a sense of my own responsibility and secondly the purity of the fact that I don’t. I just don’t. like I don’t trust you to catch me, like I don’t trust doors not to hold dead bodies. would I trust myself? to save myself, no. to make myself, yes.

I said maybe, you’d be the one to save me.

No.

I’ll sit on your bed four minutes more, to put the song on repeat, to make this moment loop and last forever. let’s not finish this conversation, let’s not go and bake, let’s not be cooked and whole, let’s stay imperfect and make each other sick. jesus, I’d make you sick. let’s not leave. let’s not rise.

wish I could stay sick with you.

superiority then. a sense of responsibility. in the end, and only in the end, only you can open your eyes. making and waking yourself is your own task. that alone is what we are here for. make me a propagandist, let me scream at you from street corners.

not for evangelism, but for the love and the hate and the sickness of it all, let’s talk about beauty and pain, let’s find some truth in the myriad, the fucking blur of it all. a sense of urgency.
my Christ, what have I lost?

I will not be binary. nobody is singular. bakhtin and the collective entity. we are each other and if I am damned then so are you.

I will not believe in your two, your consequence of two, your heaven and hell. there is more than one path, or we would surely trip over each other.

no and no and no. and no.

there’s not a lot noble about this, except I will not quiet myself any longer. I will not pretend to pray, I will not attempt to kneel, I will not rationalise away the pain of millennia, I will not subvert and conform and dilute in the way you want me to.

I have lost myself, and I have gained no life from you.

I have lost myself to you. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where we end and where we begin. I will be singular about that, at least.

when it comes to You, my ‘self’ will stretch forever. all I am will reach to the edge of space to cover up and comprehend the fact that you are there. you are everything and I am talking to myself. I am everything and I will define myself.

I will find spine again.

your hot water grew cold on my tongue and I, I am lukewarm. I am tepid. I am near death with searching for some kind of change. I will change myself now. I will miss you. but not enough.

it’s a social release, like crime or smiling.

it’s uncanny, the way we are, we’re just uncanny.

demolition

Jesus, when do I finish?

Since Friday I've started drinking again, had several heart to hearts, discovered two beautiful new songs, realised what I want to do with my life, had two adventures in Founders, found intellectual motivation for the first time in months, slept, not slept, sat an exam, completely and utterly lost my faith and then found it again.

I'll work through it.

Giving up Lent and giving up Christianity happened pretty much simultaneously. Friday was not a great day, I was pissed off about the insignificant things so did what I usually do and folded myself into bed with some sad music on. Somehow or other, my WMP playlists were irrevocably fucked up when I downloaded Napster and so I'm never entirely sure what's gonna come on.

In bed, on comes Obsession by Delirious. This is one of my favourite songs, hands down. Aside from being a simply awesome song, it's been the soundtrack to many a defining spiritual moment for me. Including this one. The lights are off, it's nice and dark. I'm in a shit place. Delirious are playing. Perhaps I'll pray?

Jesus. There's no one listening.

What?

I give up, and it's a poetic moment. I take the cross down from above my bed, and pour myself a gin because I'm a drama girl at heart and I love that kind of symbolism.

Talk about formative statements, 'I bequeath you', 'I bet you', 'I name this ship'... Things that don't just say, they do. I say, I'm not gonna do this anymore, and suddenly the whole thing is over. What to do but run off to Founders with the marra and drink some gin under the stairs? What else can you do?

One day I'll explain it properly, exactly why I thought I'd jack it in, exactly why I decided not to. I had to leave church on Sunday, singing worship songs was like the first time you hear 'your song' on the radio after a breakup. I walked out, then ran, and kept going til I didn't know where I was. I stopped for a while, then turned around and walked back the way I came, down the footpaths and back into church.

I'm starting to realise that God is like heroin. There will never be a last hit for me, and sometimes it pisses me off. Actually a lot of the time it pisses me off. I'm strong enough to walk out of church, to say fuck it and run away, but I'm not stupid enough to forget that that's giving up the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm not strong enough to stay away. I don't care.


*****

Heart to hearts then, under the statue of Victoria on the North quad, at opposite ends of my kitchen table, over the phone and on the floor of church. A high-five, an understanding that left my palms sore, a JD and Coke to melt your eyeballs.

Beautiful new songs then: a cover of Wonderwall by Ryan Adams and First Day of my Life by Bright Eyes. Mmm.

The rest of my life then, investigative journalism and filmmaking. I want to write, will always write, I want a camera, I want to shout louder. Someone says, why don't you take time to report the good things in the world instead of the bad? Because the bad things we think we know aren't really the worst. Should I devote myself to making the West feel better?

Adventures in Founders, discovering some of its secrets, namely: the beercan mountain, the secret library ghostmaker, monument to Fat Barry, mysterious windows into the dining hall and the quickest way to get to the Nice Green Carpet.

Intellectual motivation. Reading books and liking them, wanting to immerse myself in something, wanting to find something. Wanting a PhD and to know what I'm chatting about. Wanting to chat about stuff that matters.

And an exam, in what's apparently one of the finest drama departments in the country, in which we don't have desks and I end up writing on a piece of plastic balanced on my knee and I see someone else with her paper flattened on her lap.

Sigh.

They also demolished the majority of Cameron hall this weekend, and cut off the internet to our block this weekend, meaning that finally, finally the view from my window is something other than deserted halls and I haven't been able to blog about any of this.

The most reassuring thing about a demolition site in a university campus, even when the rubble's hitting the floor so loudly that your bed's shaking, is to know that someone, somewhere is writing a poem or acrostic about destruction.

Down goes Cameron
Erudite and
Strong...

I won't pretend I haven't noticed the poetry in Cameron falling and me being able to see the sky from my bedroom again. I just haven't gotten around to writing a haiku or limeric about it yet.

Pictures of the fun as soon as I can get them. Something that makes sense as soon as I can write it.

not only do i understand freud, i think i like him a bit too

In Medicine with marra, talking about drugs, saying how stuff just feels better at the moment, you know, my emotions make a bit more sense, it all just feels more genuine in that respect. Better to feel genuinely ok, surely, on drugs, than to pretend to be happy and be genuinely miserable?

Mental Thursday. Is today just too good?

Didn't get enough sleep. I suddenly find myself playing the insomnia game again, I just can't sleep in my own flat. Can't imagine why. Woke up and had an argument with myself.

Marra, you need to have a shower. Fuck off, I don't wanna. Tough, you have to, it's called hygiene, c'mon. No. Yes. Shan't. Shall! I hate you. Good, now get in the bloody shower you skank.

Whatever. In the end though, I arrive at my lecture ten minutes late and my shower pays off when the most beautiful man in the yearifnotworld clears a seat for me. Bonus.

I think, today shall be a good day, for I am showered and the world is sweet. Ah. Sweet like my newly showered self.

In the break between my lecture and seminar, I eat some more lemon bar cake and rewatch the last episode of Sugar Rush. Ah...

In critical theory, I finally grasp what Freud was banging on about, have a much-needed rant about feminism and decide to write relevant article for the student magazine. The guy sitting beside me starts chewing tobacco halfway through the seminar and I feel good on the inside.

Then, to Medicine with my marra, where I eat the most BEAUTIFUL baguette known to man (freshly baked, melting butter, brie and warm bacon, peppers) in the windowsill, with pints of coke and sunshine and Jack Johnson and Scissor Sisters playing on in the background.

Lounging on leather sofas, talking about everything in the way that only marras can, about babies crying and people being happy and how there's so much emotion to be spread over so many things and women and men and Sugar Rush and how sometimes blokes seem to want to do the exact thing you never thought they'd want to do and that's fine if they wanna do that but they do know that, well, you know, like, it's not mutual?

(It's ok, only Est is supposed to care about that last bit.)

A couple of hours later I'm in the psychology department, pulling my bra out from under my t-shirt and handing my belt, jewellery and hoodie over to Aimee, who then lays me down on a sort of bench type thing and rolls me up into the MRI machine.

It's noisy in there, and small. Very small. There's a mirror above my face so I can see what's being projected onto the back wall. The voice in my ear reads out numbers which I add and repeat and get wrong and it's noisy, very noisy in there. I'd like to pretend I'm not scared. It's actually quite fun, and looking into the mirror makes it feel like there's more space than there actually is.

Occasionally I look down at my feet to remind myself and my claustrophobia that I'm not actually in a coffin. There's not much that scares me more than that.

In between reading numbers and speaking the answers into the mic on my chest, I take a moment to consider how good today is. Not much of a moment, mind you, because the sums I have to do really are quite hard and, well, it's sort of tough to think much when there's that much noise going on in your skull.

I can feel my pulse thundering in the headphones but this is actually fun. I'm only slightly terrified by being effectively trapped in such a small space, so I wiggle my toes a lot out in the open air. I like that today I'm getting my brain scanned for PhD research, I like that I get to see a picture of the inside of my skull, I like that I have to walk back to Crusters with no bra because if I'd worn it in the MRI my boobs would have stuck to the ceiling.

I like that I like today. It seems like today likes me. I like that I don't have to pretend to be happy today.

stream

I rather like these entries, where I start typing with no real idea of what I'm going to say. It's a nice change when I've been trying so hard with writing recently to just let some thoughts flow.

Hmm.

What am I thinking?

Actually what I'm doing right now is eating. A slice of lemon bar cake that my mum bought me and a handul of frozen pineapple, peas and sweetcorn. And before you ask, yes, of course they're still frozen. What kind of girl do you think I am?

That whole joke about the student diet. It's really not so funny when you're dipping ever deeper into your overdraft, paid double your house deposit out of your own money and your primary joy in your flatmate getting a job at Medicine is that now you can get free food. Hoho, the grown-ups say, they're off to uni to eat beans on toast all year...

To which I say, who the hell can afford toast?

How's it going?

We talked a bit about healing at the Alpha course tonight. The course has been wicked so far, such an opportunity to just chat to people and have some really challenging debates. Tonight was something of a tough one.

Does anyone have any experience of God's healing? You're looking at me?

The first story on my lips is about a couple whose son was declared braindead and, by some miracle, is now married with children.

The second story is about Kit, lovely Kit, who will not be married with children. Kit, who God didn't heal.

Should I tell you about myself? I'll tell you about last Sunday, when I had stomach cramps so bad that I was shaking, and all the praying in the world wouldn't take them away.

Perhaps I'll tell you one day about the shit I got up to when I was thirteen, pain that drove me crazy til I went to church and I asked for it to be taken away and it was.

Maybe I'll tell you about how I slept with the light on until I was sixteen, became a Christian, asked to feel safe and now always feel safe.

Maybe I'll tell you about the first time someone actually prayed for me to be healed, last summer. How I cried uncontrollably and everyone said it was the Spirit in me and I didn't have the balls to say that actually, no, I just needed to cry.

I asked that it would end. And a voice in my ear said, not yet.

My mate tells me the drugs don't work. I ask if they'll just make me worse, but he means it, says they don't work. I tell him to shut up, to tell that to the people whose lives have been saved by anti-depressants.

Maybe I'll tell him how much better I feel. Maybe I'll tell him I secretly think he's right.

It's scary. Everyday at about six, I pour a glass of water and wonder what would happen if I were to stop taking them.

Days before you came / freezing cold and empty.

I've cried twice, I think, since starting the drugs. Once in that horrible dark week after Kit's funeral, when all the life was sucked out of me, I thought I'd fail my course and felt, if possible, even worse than I had done before.

The second time was on Sunday, when some very well-meaning people asked God to heal me of my depression.

Not yet.

I've learnt not to go for quick fixes. Let me get this straight - I believe that God heals people, fully and completely. I've heard too many testimonies and seen too many things, I've had far too much amazing change in my own life to doubt that.

I also know from bitter experience that God doesn't always heal people. Sometimes the lame stay lame, the blind stay blind, the miserable stay miserable and the living die. This is life in the real world, the fallen world, and it's shit sometimes.

In all things God works for the good of those who love him. Is that the toughest verse the New Testament asks us to get our heads around? I believe it's true. But I believe the world has a pretty crap view of what good is.

What you want isn't always what's good for you. I want my parents to win the lottery so they never have to worry. God knows better. I want a biscuit, I want ice cream, but my Dad knows that it'll rot my teeth.

I want God to take the pain away. But what I want more is to trust him. I don't like praying for healing because I think this is a process. I think there's a reason I've been so unhappy, some cause of these feelings, and I know that, eventually, I can figure it out and that, somehow, things will work out.

Sometimes all you have to do is ask. Other times all you have to do is trust.

I don't like it. I don't like the implied thought that perhaps I could be healed if only I'd focus a bit more, if only I'd pray a bit harder, if only I'd step out a bit further. I don't know how to put myself on the line any further than I already have. I'm all out, and I've gotta be honest, the only thing making me unhappy at the moment is standing there with my arms outstretched with people speaking tongues over me, somehow feeling like I've failed when the cramps don't ease, when the pain doesn't go.

Christ gave us authority over all illness. I'm still trying to figure out what that means. I know that it doesn't give us authority over life and death, or over God. It's not a matter of just getting up the guts to pray because if that was fucking true then I'd be fine and Kit would be alive. Stop saying that all it takes is guts. Please. Stop.

Funny how this goes. You sit down and start typing and pretty soon you get right to the heart of what's actually bothering you. I'm not gonna edit this, change it, or even re-read it until I've published it. This is as raw as you get it from me.

How to finish. A positive thought? I'm not worried as such, just a bit frustrated. I'm at peace with the fact that I'm in a bit of a spot and I have some issues to work through. I feel immeasurably better now that I'm getting help, some counselling and some useful medication. I don't want to become dependent on drugs, I don't believe they can 'fix' me, but as plasters go, they're pretty good at stopping the bleeding.

I don't believe that depression is just my lot in life. That's not the way it goes. Someone once spoke over me to say that they see incredible joy in my future. Which is fine. If nothing else, I get such hope from that. I believe that I will be ok, better than ok, I do believe in God's healing. Perhaps this is just the way my body is, the way my brain is, that's fine. People live with sickness and disease their entire lives. God doesn't always heal our bodies, but he can always heal our hearts.

And if that makes you want to vomit, that's fine too. This is about me learning to trust, in God and all kinds of other nice things like friends and family and (brace yourself) myself. It's more than a bit nauseating, but it's true. It's just gotta be done, hasn't it?

somewhere between talking shit and saying something real

They're demolishing Athlone halls from the inside out. Suddenly, this vast patch of sky where there were windows and concrete. You can see right up the corridors, to the walls that were someone's world once. Where pleasure moments hung before...

It's like a bomb's gone off where the halls once were. It's a warzone, fuck, it looks like Sarajevo or somewhere else.

I think, it doesn't look like here. It looks like Bosnia, Iraq, endless 'other' countries where shit happens.

What if shit happened here? What if someone, some country we've never heard of and can't pronounce decided that we, the citizens of the UK and America were living under dangerous regimes? That our decision to re-elect Bush and Blair is proof of some kind of mass brainwashing?

What if the Pentagon's refusal to allow UN personnel to interview Guantanamo detainees without supervision was seen for what it is, a fundamental breach of human rights? What if it was suspected that we were holding weapons of mass destruction (which we are) that could kill thousands of innocents in the East (which we could), or that we might suddenly turn on the world and start using napalm on civilian targets (which we have) and that our media is more full of propaganda and ideology than anything else(which it is)?

What if they came in the name of freedom? In the name of democracy, liberty, truth, what if they bombed us in the name of peace? In the name of God?

Not by suicide but by 'acceptable' war, planes soaring overhead, there's napalm on the Strand, there's troops landing in the seaports and stopping the motorways, there's rumours of torture of civilians in Hertfordshire and Cornwall, there's soldiers in green fatigues on our moors and walkways, there's rubble in our cities.

What if our houses looked like that?

*****

Is it globalisation or things just being shit that brings this man into my kitchen? He's Asian, he's from Sri Lanka. His name is Singrut, I think, he left because of the fighting. It's too cold here, he wants to go back but he can't because, he makes guns with his hands, not neat pistols with two fingers, but rifles that take his whole body to show and hold.

He ran a business in Sri Lanka, textile design. Now he holds out a carrier bag for me to tip Jay's fish heads into, now he asks permission to clean our kitchen and says thank you when we let him. We get pissed off at the interruption, he gets pissed off that his girlfriend is long gone, far away, and he won't say where..

I wish there were no guns in Sri Lanka too, though not as much as you.

He's a Hindu but he goes to church in Egham, lots of Hindus do. They marry Christians, go to church because it's 'the thing' to do.

Really?

Yeah, he says, as if to differentiate, we're not Muslims. He smiles apologetically. He's not Muslim.

Jesus, I whisper, that perpetual dance between blasphemy and prayer. Jesus.

*****

We talk about Sri Lanka in today's seminar, how rebellion and war can be performative. We spoke in the lecture about how 9/11 was so much like a disaster movie that the Pentagon turned to Hollywood for advice on how to anticipate further attacks, how terrorists behead their captives not in private but streamed on the internet, the medium of the global village. That fucking global village.

Helen tells us about Sri Lanka, about a university where the students captured the student committee, the equivalent of our sabbatical officers, in the middle of the night and beheaded them.

When the students pulled open their curtains in the halls of residence the next morning, the heads of the sabbs were staring at them from the fountain.

Rebellion as a kind of performance. Some things are done just for the drama, huh?

*****

This is a global village for me. There's a man in my kitchen cleaning up the shit me and my parents left on the table last night. I could do it myself, but he didn't want to get shot, so he's here now and never accepts cup of tea. So, so eager not to be confused with Muslims, so desperate just to be accepted and safe.

Round the corner, the half demolished halls look like Sarajevo, it's a warzone in the middle of campus.

*****

If I woke up one morning and found our sabbs dead outside, if Ana, Greg, Tristan and Nikki, the smiling faces from my SU wall planner were suddenly beheaded in the middle of campus. I wouldn't believe it. I would have to find some way to rationalise it, this elaborate hoax.

In the seminar, someone points out "well yeah, but if we were in a warzone, it wouldn't seem so strange. Horrible, yeah, but it wouldn't be the first corpse you'd seen, you'd believe it alright."

*****

What if I had to ditch my degree and claim asylum in some foreign place? What if I went and became a cleaner, worked shit money and had to learn a foreign language to say please and thank you to the country that dropped fire on my university and killed a cousin of mine? What if I stayed, and woke up one morning to see the heads of the sabbs lying outside Founders? What if I didn't have to think twice to believe it, what if that's just how life was for us, what if it was us?

There's a little bit of war on campus these days, it's cleaning my kitchen and lurking in demolished halls. Except it's not war at all. It's just what I see of war, because I've never had to believe that it's true.

If it was actually true.

mid-sweet talk

Where are we? What the hell is going on?
The dust has only just begun to fall,
Crop circles in the carpet, sinking, feeling.
Spin me round again and rub my eyes.
This can't be happening.
When busy streets a mess with people
would stop to hold their heads heavy.

Hide and seek.
Trains and sewing machines.
All those years they were here first.

Oily marks appear on walls
Where pleasure moments hung before.
The takeover, the sweeping insensitivity of this
still life.

Hide and seek.
Trains and sewing machines.
(Oh, you won't catch me around here)
Blood and tears,
They were here first.

Mmm, what you say?
Mm, that you only meant well? Well, of course you did.
Mmm, what you say?
Mm, that it's all for the best? Ah off course it is.
Mmm, what you say?
Mm, that it’s just what we need? And you decided this.
Mmm what you say?
What did she say?

Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth.
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut-outs.
Speak no feeling, no I dont believe you.
You don't care a bit. You don't care a bit.

Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth.
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut-outs.
Speak no feeling, no I don't believe you.
You don't care a bit. You don't care a bit.

You don't care a bit.
You don't care a bit.
You don't care a bit.
You don't care a bit.
You don't care a bit.

- Imogen Heap, Hide and Seek.

editing

I like to think of life as being like a film. Partially because I think life's just like that. Partially because I really wish it was.

I'm in my room, listening to Lying in the Sun by Stereophonics. The sun is far from shining. Cameron's the same old hunk of concrete it always is; the sky's as grey as it always is. I'm sat in here pretending I'm in the sunshine. It'll be California Dreamin' next.

I'm spinning on the desk chair, kicking backwards and forwards with my feet. I'm still in my pyjamas and my rooms an utter mess.

If this was a film, the scene would change now, with my bare feet pushing me round between the desk drawer and the bed. The music would carry on, become the soundtrack to the next event.

Somehow that song would take me to the next chapter. Why doesn't it work like that? Where's the fade-out? God, I need a fade-out.

hanging on so tight my knuckle's going white

So this is how things are going.

Getting up in the morning isn't the horrendous issue it was a week ago, and by that I mean that now I can, which is nice. I've been constantly fighting the urge to get back into bed during waking hours but a couple of days ago I made the executive decision to embrace the bed. I know, I know that this will make it harder for me to get to sleep at night, but 9 times out of 10, I only have to stay in bed for about ten minutes before I feel fine and my day can just carry on.

Did I just never notice before how tiring life is?

It doesn't help that Royal Holloway isn't so much a campus as a monument to eccentric landsaping. To get to the drama department, it's down two flights of stairs, up a big hill that gets progressively bigger the sleepier you are, through the main campus and across a footbridge (with steps. many steps.). The only on-campus halls that are further away than mine are Gowar and Wedderburn but, tired or not, if I had a double bed I wouldn't give a shit how far I was from the department.

In short, Royal Holloway is actually a giant hill. And my halls are at the bottom of it. The only thing lower down than Runymede Hall is the gym, and I'm damned if I've got the energy to hit that anytime soon.

Aside from that, I think that things are better. I've done more work in the last two days than I have in weeks. Hopefully there's gonna be a doctor's note to smooth things over with the department (and by things I mean my 60% attendance and that essay which, um, just didn't happen).

The Easter break is so soon I can smell the ridiculous amounts of chocolate. Once I get to Easter, everything will be ok. You gotta keep telling yourself that stuff'll be ok or what's the point?

This is what we call hanging in there.

that i would be good / even when i'm not myself

I mean, I'm still tired. Don't get me wrong. Today I had to blow off one of my oldest and loveliest friends because I was just too shattered and ill to see her. That did not feel good. At all. For either of us I reckon. Making time for people gets complicated, and when you finally manage it and have to cancel last minute, you feel like shit.

I felt like shit today.

Thing is, after yesterday's exertions (add a thrilling adventure through Founders that included sitting in a bath and talking about the devil to my recipe for a good Friday) I was exhausted.

I spent today playing computer games. This one and this one were the best ones the internet had to offer. Then there was Simon the Sorceror, who bears such a resemblance to my brother's housemate that I actually checked the credits for his name, and The Sims, in which a replica of my flat and its inhabitants was created. (Est, you replaced Jay. And Tom, yes, I made Endrit white).

But I feel better still than I did a couple of days ago, like on Dark Tuesday or Even Darker Thursday.

I feel positive. Not in the normal, it can't possibly get any shitter so it must get better sense, because that's really not all that positive, when you think about it. I feel positive in a yeah, I'm starting to feel ok and I can only get more ok. In fact, I might even be good someday.

how to have a better friday

Note: The shitter your Thursday, the better your Friday will feel. The threat of failing a course and spending two thirds of your waking hours in bed will help give your Thursday the quality it needs to ensure that Friday is sweet. Also, try yawning a lot, like a lion or tiger.

*****

Try your hardest not to wake up in the morning. Consider taking more herbal sleep aids in order to avoid having to live through this day. Spend a few valuable moments hating everything before eventually getting out of bed to answer a call of nature and realise that, huh, getting out of bed doesn't physically hurt today. Your joints aren't hurting today and, huh, you've been conscious for about an hour and you haven't yawned yet.

Huh.

Get showered, put on clothes that make you feel good and tidy your room. Have Tom over for lunch and realise how much better you feel today. Play a hasty and dangerous game of Monopoly in the corridor and realise with great hilarity that Kosovo is in fact in Eastern Europe, not the Gulf like you always thought.

Go to your seminar and really enjoy it. Discover that your presentation will be on the kind of theatre that you like the most, the kind of theatre that got you into this sort of thing in the first place, and remember why it is that you picked this degree over Sociology and Film Studies.

Walk home and don't feel tired. Sing a song about how wonderful it is not to be tired, put on your pyjamas and dance to Black Eyed Peas while you eat the sandwich that Tom bought you.

Knock on Est's door with a beat that could start a rave in a nunnery. Scream "AIYA NAPA" and then head off to pay your library fines, totalling a queenly £25 between the two of you. Get back to Crusters and make a vow to one day relieve yourself in the bushes outside.

Eat some frozen sweetcorn and wash the drugs down with Coca Cola, not because you should, but because you can.

Hands and knees, pray for tomorrow to be as good. Sleep til morning. Repeat.

the halt

This morning I woke up, got up, showered and collapsed back into bed. Literally. I didn't go back to sleep as such, just fell back into bed and stayed there for a few hours, unable to get back up again.

This is what it means for your body to tell you to fuck off. The spirit, the mind, is willing, but the flesh is so so weak.

I'm not sure if I can hack this.

I've officially dropped beneath the level of minimum attendance for one of my courses which, according the to the handbook, means that I automatically fail it. It's gonna take a couple of well placed letters from the health centre to save my ass now.

I'm still terrified that someone's gonna grass me up. "This girl isn't depressed, she's just a big fat lazy baby!" Get her out of bed and send her to work. Tell her to get on with it. Grow up and get on with it.

I've been growing up and getting on with it for a while now. I've played the 'I will not be beaten!' card too many times and now something inside me is rebelling. I can't get up and get on with it. I don't have anything left.

I've ground to an absolute halt.

Unfortunately, the world doesn't give up when I do, stop moving when I do, break down when I do.

Put the whole world on pills.

Tonight is the first Thursday since November that I haven't gone out on the prayer walk with Alan and co. The prayer walk is the only example of perfect attendance I've had at this uni, or ever in fact. I've been fiercely proud of it, hauling my ass up that hill no matter how I felt, no matter what the weather.

Tonight is a time to be humble. I'm too tired to be anything else.

side-effects

I can't stop yawning. It comes in bursts, I won't yawn for a couple of hours and then suddenly I'll be yawning once every couple of minutes, until my jaw actually starts aching.

When I yawn, this is what I look like. The hair and everything. This is what pills do to you.

and this is the second time i've had this dream

Dinner in London with everyone whose blog I read, regardless of whether or not I've met them.

At the coolest table, the Blogspot contingent, including but not limited to myself, Phil, Becci, Sarah, Chris, Rachel and Stacey.

The rowdiest table is the LiveJournal crew, Tim, Gaz, Sam, Mefiant, Robby, Philippa and Emilie.

The table by the window consists of those who blog on their MSN spaces, namely Martin and the other Chris.

The smallest table is that of the Xanga bloggers, seating Esther and an unspeakable amount of gin and Nutella coated treats. Such as my hand.

The table getting through the most alcohol is reserved for those who have their own websites, that is, those who actually put some technical clout behind their blogging efforts. On this table, interestingly enough, we have Dooce, Reallivepreacher and Rich D. Dooce is getting Rich to shoot tequila, while RLP eats obscene amounts of chilli peppers.

Eventually, the MSN table get bored and join forces with Xanga, whereupon Est corrupts them both in unimaginable ways.

The Livejournal table is home to some genuinely thrilling debate. And by that, I mean Tim's causing trouble. The rest of the Geology crew have snuck in under the table and are looking jealously over to where Est and the MSN boys are starting some kind of rave in the corner.

Over at the Blogspot table, Stacey and Chris have fired up a couple of joints and are blazing away like old friends, I'm getting girly about Sarah's wedding, and Rachel and Becci are having an intense conversation behind their menus.

Meanwhile, Phil's attempting to rescue his brother from the clutches of these irresponsible American blog-fiends, the Livejournal table has erupted into some kind of political riot in which Emilie is biting people's ankles and the entire Geology crew have been arrested with Est for offences unknown.

This is what I think it would be like.

And it's so much more fun than just updating my links section.

cloudy-head

What would I like?

For things to be gentle and quiet, to have time to think and breathe, to feel a bit better. I'd like for things to make sense, for things to feel right, to get what I want out of life, to find the beautiful nostalgia I've been looking for.

Wouldn't everybody?

*****

I'd like to feel ok in this life. I finally get round to reading the copy of Ecologist that I bought before Christmas, and find that the leading article is called 'Medication Nation...being a pill away from perfection'. It's funny how these things work out, that I should find this article now, and not at any other time.

It talks about how we're obsessed with pills now, how our dedication to 'eradicating suffering' in humanity is driving us, basically, to fuck with ourselves.

"...it's the price you pay for living in a society based not round happiness per se, but by its pursuit."

"If someone's life is making them sick then you can make them well by either changing how they live their life or by making them fit in with what made them sick in the first place."

*****

Ever wondered why you look round a room of people you don't respect and feel ill inside for not being like them? Ever wondered how that works, how society can make you feel bad for not being something you don't want to be?

My a-level Sociology teacher used to rant, at length, about everything. I always wondered how he could sit and drink Diet Coke whilst telling us that Coca Cola were shitheads. I wondered, still wonder, how people's lives and their beliefs can be so out of joint, how principle and action are so far removed.

So often, it comes down to feeling out of place. Why, oh why, should I feel bad for not behaving, looking and living like the people whose behaviour, looks and lives I have no respect for? I can bang on about my principles as long as I like, there's still that feeling of just wanting to fit in. That persistent feeling of not quite measuring up to anyone's standards. No matter which group I'm in, no matter who I'm with. I don't quite cut it.

"here no elsewhere underwrites my existence"

Pretend then, that somewhere else you are the centre of attention. Keep yourself aloof, always with somewhere else to be, some other group to grace your presence with, a lady always leaves them wanting more, a lady always keeps a part of herself reserved.

*****

Another word of wisdom from my Sociology teacher was "If God had wanted you to have eyelashes like a fucking camel, he'd have given you them".

I'm pretty sure from conversations we had afterward that he was in no way a man of religion. He used the term 'God' to illustrate a point, the comment meant nothing to him in that sense. Of course, it meant rather a lot to me in that sense.

This was back in the day when I never wore make up. Back in the day when I'd just started 6th form and was furious at the way I was completely invisible, feeling that no one would ever notice me in this enormous crowd.

I took his point to heart, and stayed fresh-faced for another year. I also stayed horribly insecure about it for another year.

The day my gran died was the day I'd given in and gone out and bought make up from the Body Shop. Her death should've put the whole thing from my mind, but it didn't, and putting on eyeliner to go to her funeral felt deeply symbolic.

Now, just like I always feared, I hate to go out without it.

"don't go and sell your soul for self-esteem"

*****

Perhaps it's better this way. If eyeliner, like nice clothes, makes me feel good then I don't believe there's anything wrong with that. But then I see some girl walk past, some skinny skinny girl with perfect face and hair and perfect clothes and I don't feel good. I don't feel good at all.

I don't wanna be her. I'm not her, never will be her, wouldn't want to be her.

And those people in the article, with pills to bring them up and send them down and curb their addictions and give them the love they never got at home, pills to stop them shopping and gambling and all the stupid things that society has taught us to do, pills to make them fit in without fitting in too well, to make them happy but not too happy, to make us ok, or at least almost ok, at least believing that once we buy one more thing we'll be ok.

I don't want to always be a pill away from happiness. And I don't want to always be a new t-shirt or a haircut away from happiness. If I could just lose weight, if I could just look nice, if I could just be pretty and popular...

This is fucking adolescence all over again.

This is where principle and action go astray. I know why that teacher still drank Coke, I know why I still go to McDonalds and I know, finally, what the problem is.

So much freedom to do exactly what we're allowed to do. Society makes people sad.

it's been a while since i've done this... it feels good

Things that are pissing me off right now:

1) That the random shuffle feature on Windows Media Player isn't actually random at all. It's currently bouncing between Kelly Clarkson and Manic Street Preachers, intent on playing through both their albums. I just played some Yeah Yeah Yeahs to try and throw it off course and, as if it was raising some kind of technological finger at me, it shuffled itself back to the first Kelly Clarkson song it played. How can something I've spent so much time with be so beligerent with me?

2) That people who speak English, that is, people who aren't even bilingual, still insist on putting completely unbidden bits of foreign language into their songs. Why? It doesn't make me look cool when I try and speak Spanish to Kate's Argentinian boyfriend therefore it does not make you look cool to sing the chorus of your pop song in French in an attempt to make your white American self exotic. Piss off. And shut up.

3) This also applies to Christina Aguilera putting Hispanic beats in her music and pronouncing her name 'Christinaguileraa" to make herself look 'hood'. Sorry love, I saw the big white ranch where you actually grew up on MTV and I am not impressed by your attempts to play ghetto.

4) That, on Thursday, I spent a few gnarly minutes with my hand, literally, up a duck's arse attempting to remove its giblets, only to find when they were eventually birthed back into the outside world, that they were shrinkwrapped. Now, forgive me, but the who the fuck came up with that one? Let's employ someone to remove the bird's innards and then, once we've wrapped them in plastic, let's employ someone else to shove them back in for safekeeping. Would it have been so hard, so immensely costly to just put them in the box BESIDE the duck?

5) Garden centres where you have to walk through the entire building to get to the exit, meaning that when I nip back in the entrance to put my nan's wheelchair back, I'm then stuck and have to wait, nose pressed against the doors, until some kind customers wander in and let me out. Also, the member of staff who came to give me a filthy look when the wheelchair set off the security alarms, saw that I was returning it to its rightful place, gave me a smile instead and then didn't tell me how to get out of the one way automatic doors. Plum.

6) Whoever it is that keeps pressing the buzzer on the front door of our block... I wouldn't mind, you know I wouldn't mind if it was someone actually trying to get into our flat. If it was the entire of North Korea come to eat sushi in our flat then at least I could lie safe in the knowledge that, at 2am, someone else would get up and answer the door. But why, why in the name of all that is good and pure is it that OUR buzzer is the one that everyone chooses to press, regardless of who they're actually looking for?

Me: "Hello?"
Intercom: "Hi, um, can you let me in?"
Me: "Well, who are you?"
Kate (in background): "Ask if he's got a hammer!"
Intercom: "Um, I'm here to see Janey *names changed to protect the irritating*"
Me: "Right... Which flat does she live in?"
Intercom: "Err... not sure, it's on the top floor."
Me: "Then why are you ringing our buzzer? This isn't the top floor."
Intercom: "Uh, they're not answering."
Me: *stunned silence *
Intercom: "Can you let me in?"
Me: "Fuck off can I. If Janey wants to let you in she'll let you in herself."
Intercom: "But she's asleep!"
Me: "Then why are you here?!"
Intercom: "I wanna see her!"
Me: "Well call her and wake her up!"
Intercom: "I don't have her mobile number!"
Me: "If you don't know her well enough to have her number you certainly don't know her well enough to show up at her door at 2am and expect her to let you in and you CERTAINLY DON'T KNOW ME WELL ENOUGH TO WAKE ME UP. PISS OFF."
*brief pause, followed by the sound of next door's buzzer*

The best one are the ones who show up, ring our buzzer, ask to be let in, come up the stairs, wonder why it takes so long for someone next door to let them in, go in, spend an evening there, go home, come back the next day and repeat the exercise without once realising that they're not actually ringing the right buzzer. I'd let them know, but it's actually quite fun pretending to be one of their friends.

Intercom: "Hi, is that Billy?"
Me: *deep voice* "Sure thing sugar, come on up!"

*deep breath*

It's New Years, the one before last, and I've just told someone that I'm desperately unhappy and I have been for almost a year, and they've patted me on the head and told me not to be silly.

I've opened my eyes wide, stunned. I've been trying for a year to say those words, and I don't know where they went, but they weren't heard.

*****

It's sometime in 2005, I'm at a party and I've just told this guy that I hate myself.

I didn't mean to, in my defence, we were talking about things in general and, following some deep and searching questions, I was trying to articulate exactly why I was unhappy. He asked me. Him. He started it.

Eventually I blurted it out, after month upon month of thinking it and never quite finding the right words to say it, I told him, and it hung in the air in a little cloud of angst like a dragonfly.

He gives me a Look. "That's just... you just want me to go 'oh no, Fi, that's terrible, how awful'..." So dismissive. He has no idea. I want to scream at him.

"It IS terrible, you arsehole, it IS awful, it IS awful that I feel this way!"

I didn't say anything. I seethed though, and I never forgot it.

*****

It's September 2005 and I've just told the doctor that I've been unhappy for almost two years and I've been thinking about staging some kind of elaborate suicide attempt in order to get someone to listen to me.

He tells me to get out more, enjoy life.

I stare at him in much the same way that dogs who have just been kicked stare at their owners. I'm pathetic now, and I've run out of places to hide from things I don't want to think about.

*****

It's my first term at university and I'm no longer unhappy. I still cry at night a lot and I wouldn't exactly say that I'm happy, but I'm not unhappy and I'm so relieved that I start to believe that perhaps it's all over.

It's like I left all my issues in Yateley. I wonder if they'll still be there when I go back.

*****

I go back and they're still there. They bite me in the ass like a rottweiler and this time they draw blood. I stand in the kitchen and scream silently into my hands while my nan sits and breathes smoke out of her nebuliser. I finally understand what complete and utter despair means, and I worry that everytime I see rock bottom it seems to have gotten lower.

I learn the first lesson in depending on God and, stupidly, think that this means I'm capable of carrying on.

*****

This new year will be a new one in every way. This year I will be healed, I promise myself in January that this will be the last year in which I let the Bad Place take over my life. I'm so empowered by my new year's resolutions that I don't even bother to go to the doctor about the recurring nausea and sleeplessness.

*****

February means tough decisions. Hard decisions, but I think they'll be the right decisions. Life in complete dependence on God is difficult, I decide, but so, so worth it.

I become aware that the Bad Place hits me harder at sometimes than others. I start to differentiate it as a separate entity to me. It pays no attention to what's going on in my life, just comes, goes and affects me as and when it will.

Nausea comes and stays with me for a whole three days without making me sick. I can't get to sleep at night for feeling sick. I can't get out of bed in the morning. I don't want to. Throughout all of this, I feel closer to God than I have in a long time.

*****

February draws to a close and Kit Ward dies in hospital following a brain haemorrhage. His sister, Sidonie, is one of my favourite people in this entire universe and I'm furious that there is nothing I can do to save her and her family from this.

I have a lot of conversations about death, life, heaven, hell, God, his plan, our flaws, and what it all really means, after all the bullshit fades, why does none of this make sense?

I realise that my course means nothing to me. I know instinctively that Royal Holloway is the place where I am supposed to be right now but my BA Drama and Theatre matters less and less with each person I know who hears of Kit's death and grieves for him.

I realise that I don't care about theatre anymore, when people are dying. The rights and wrongs of it are beyond me, but that's the way I feel.

Suddenly, I look back at the last few months and realise that I haven't really been living my life at all. I walk back from the pub on Monday night and think, why doesn't this matter to me? Why is it that I'm with friends who I adore, drinking drinks that I like, conversation that makes me laugh, experiences that I should enjoy, and I can feel nothing?

Why do beautiful things make me sad? Why do good times make me anxious? Because I know that I'm not really experiencing any of them. I'm watching myself go through them and feeling nothing at all for myself. I'm sad because I know I've had a good time at uni but I only know it, I haven't felt it at all.

*****

In the nurse's office, I confess, I'm the first one to mention the word 'depression'. She asks me what's wrong and for the first time, it's not enough to tell her that I'm sad and hope that she comes to a conclusion that might help me. I've realised in the past week how fucking fragile life is and I point blank refuse to continue the half-life that I've been living for about two years now.

I tell her I think I'm depressed. I tell her why I think it, how long I've felt this way for and the way that it's affecting my life and generally making me despair, and she agrees that yeah, it sounds like I'm suffering from depression.

How dramatic, how terribly presumptious of me, to have spent two years in a dark pit, reading every possible resource, going to every talk, absorbing every account and analysing every last symptom before daring to suggest that perhaps, there's something wrong with me.

Eventually, a girl has to take responsibility for herself and say, yeah, I reckon there's something wrong with me and I want help for it. I want someone to give me some advice on how I can start doing life again, on how to get up in the morning, on how to cry less.

I want life back.

*****

Please, please, please. Don't tell me I did the wrong thing. I've spent many many months debating whether or not to get help and now I've made the decision I don't want to go back on it. Third time lucky. If you think I'm a hypo, or a drama queen, or should just get over it, I don't want to know. I'm sorry. Bottom line is, I've started to scare myself. This is the only way I can see of being happy again.

Doesn't everyone have the right to try and be happy?