fix up look sharp

Angelic Fruitcake
335 posts
Last published 14th March 2007.

About 30 of those posts are drafts, unfinished, unpublished. Topics like - smoking, hating the world, loving the world, drinking, studying, current events. The things that matter.

I'm getting thicker, I swear. Too much time working, too many pints pulled, too many clothes labelled, too much practical woman-in-the-rice-field style callus earning labour. I exaggerate. I just haven't been studying. Because I've basically already failed this year and now I'm not even trying to save it.

Because I said if they make me repeat I'll leave and all I want to do is leave. Not for the place, not for the people (God, not for the people), but for the general bad feeling one gets knowing one is wasting one's time on a degree one does not like. One gets pissed with that pretty quick.

One wants to start again, to do well in a degree that is useful (if slightly easier to get into) rather than spending four years scraping a pass in a degree one simply cares so little for.

In short - I want out.

Thinking: Brighton, London, Middlesex, Greenwich, Scotland, anywhere, anywhere where I can find out what I want to know. I want to learn again, I want to love learning again.

Learnt: I will not work unless I want to, there is no discipline here whatsoever, which is entirely my problem and I need to get the hell down and fix it - to an extent I have been. I've stopped spending days at Help the Aged trying to skive and started getting shit done whether I want to or not. I've stopped putting the issues I need to solve in a box in order to forget them and started actually solving them. I've taken on a full time job, I've started the process of moving back home, I've vowed never to skimp on my rent again.

There have been positive changes.

But ask me to stay here another year and watch me flinch, because the one thing I cannot bring myself to do is all this theatre shit.

Isn't it sad that I say that now? When I used to love it so much, the watching it, the doing it, the reading it and learning it and understanding it. I used to think that theatre would change the world but I never really knew why. And I guess that's the point.

Realising: that the ego boost of being the best in my class has diminished year by year, stage by stage, until I'm firmly at the bottom and have no inclination to strive any higher.

Realising: that I only loved this subject when I was the best at it. And I was, once. I couldn't tell you when it went wrong but-

we're in class, in the 'space', trying to interpret the stage directions for a physical theatre piece and try as I might I can't get beyond them. I can't see the point anymore and even knowing that sometimes the fact that there is no point is the point doesn't soothe me. I can't do this, can't throw my arms and body around and push my voice out in the strangest of ways for a reason I can't see anymore. I don't trust in the fact that this is art, because it seems to me that somewhere along the process someone should at least understand why we're doing it, but no one does.

Me least of all. I suck it up and do what the group tell me and meanwhile, in my other course, the one about environment, I go crazy and get sucked in and talk for hours about politics and ethics and philosophy and, shit as our final presentation is, I feel like crying because I really believe in this. I really understand why.

*****

If it was just that my course was lame, or seemed wanky, I could hack it. But look at me. I barely write anymore, listen to music anymore, paint anymore. I'm paralysed by the fear of the pretentious, I can't even breathe in case the irony isn't immediately apparent. I'm subtle and subtle and subtle til there's nothing left to me but skiving and getting fucked to forget about it.

Perhaps God's plan still has a chapter with my name on it, but I'm done looking over his shoulder to see the pages. I'm waiting to write another book, all about me, with the preface devoted to apologising to Him for my arrogance, but the next thousand pages screaming with defiance.

Someone needs to be in charge of my life; I don't like where I am and what it's doing to me so I'll go somewhere else. And it's terrifying, but no more so than the thought of dying tomorrow with nothing I'm proud of to my name.

I gave up worrying about disappointing people when I walked out of church for the last time, but I know I have. I know my parents are waiting, my friends are waiting for me to pull off the mask, shout 'kidding!' and get the fuck on with my work. I know so many of my family are waiting for me to open the door and let Him back in. I feel guilty that I won't be able to give anyone what they want, but the whole point of becoming a heathen (sic) was to take control of my life, on my terms.

I can't believe I'm writing something this unforgivably corny but here it is - I'm a lot more worried about disappointing myself and right now, I do. I disappoint myself every day I fail here.

It's time to make myself proud.