If we sleep together will you like me better?

Last night hit me with barrage of thoughts, too many, too real. I thought I was past this, I thought I was strong. I put the book down. I'll have to read it later when the sun burns too bright and exams loom. I can deal with the looming. Exams are dust, like this is dust and my thoughts are dust. We strive so hard for permanence. Scratching every word, breaking layers of skin to leave the scar we can look at fondly with a dash of embarrassment later. Sometimes I write something, a story or a paragraph, maybe just a sentence and I love it so much I want to write it again and again and again.

My third chapter is a mess. I like it and I know what needs to be done but I will almost certainly have to rewrite the whole thing upon completion. But this week I have an essay to do and books to read and films to see and people who need me. I used to love being needed. It gave me a purpose. Burned me with an identity. I was the one who solved problems. Who wasn't afraid to tell people when they needed to shut up and look at things logically. And I cared, I cared so hard I took on their problems. I was smug with it. I still have a pile of letters passed to me in classes that I read through in free periods. Analysed and prescribed. Ignored the fact I was a goddamn hypocrite and a liar.

I couldn't tell you the exact moment I switched off. It was probably around the time I called my best friend a daft cow and countered her pathetic attempts to get a rise out of me by thwarting her plans to fuck in the transport museum and telling others to think twice before borrowing her phone as she was too cheap to buy a real vibrator. I've watched people make stupid mistakes and bury themselves deeper into the sand and I've decided to let them.

I have an obsessive personality. Compulsive and addictive and all those other ives. You can almost track what was wrong with me through my life by what I was consumed by at the time. Only very recently did I realise I didn't need to throw myself into anything, I didn't need to fill every thought with a single idea or person. I like to think I've grown up but I think I just grew more selfish. In a good way. I don't want to be needed. I need to be wanted.

It's been such a long time since I could wake up with the sun on my face and smile in the mirror. I had the morning to myself and I took full advantage of this. I love Mondays. They're intrinsically mine.

It's been a long time, which agrees with this watch of mine

Unfairly what with losing an hour, last night I slept dreamless and much like the proverbial log. Although I never quite understood that one as logs don't sleep so I guess really I'm just as motionless as a log but when you think about it, it's a pretty shit cliché.

Early early morning I'm faced with half a poke of chips that didn't quite make it to someone's stomach and I think of anything else as I throw bucket after bucket down the steps. If they had just turned their drunken head the other way the council would be doing this instead of me.

I made a decision about something I've been flirting with a little while. A few minutes and some poor arithmetic tell me I need at least six months before I can afford to go all the way and preferably another job to embellish the event. Until then I've got to hold his interest with endless foreplay but it'll be all the better in the end for the wait. I might even invite someone else along, I haven't decided if our relationship will sustain a third party. Candidate lists must be drawn. Test tastes and how well our bodies fit together.

But for now I've committed myself, invested enough interest to make it work with a bit of luck. Just have to see how long I can sustain the excitement.

In other less cryptic news according to Kirsty's calendar today is Balderdash day. Balderdash! Great word.

Now I'm gonna curl up and watch Humphrey Bogart do that cool thing he does.

Coveting all you know see and hear

I rest my head on fat fluffy sheep in a grey grey world and I wonder if everyone thinks this city is grey or if it's just the restless. The ones who want to leave, want something substantial, meaningful and new. I slept in a bed that was not my own, which is unusual for more reasons than not making it home last night. I so rarely actually sleep anywhere else. Sometimes I think I'll wake up and everything will be wrong. Everything I think I know will have gone because I dared shut my eyes and relax a little. It's the same if I'm sleeping alone or if I'm sleeping next to someone I love or hate. It's for this reason I remember the places I can sleep in vividly.

When I was young my cousins lived in Fintry, back of beyond with a sprawling garden the likes I'd never seen before. There was a tyre swing and a wood and a friend on a farm with blind man's buff and a pony that was far, far too big. They still had the cat then, the puppies would come later, and the big sister taught us to make paper fortunetellers while we fed the old dog pringles and watched Hook. I had the big sister's bed, she slept on a camp bed. Worn out by running from a bull that never really acknowledged our presence and through adventure courses that wound through fields the younger cousin was pretty sure were hers I wrapped myself in pink blankets surrounded by shelves of junk that wasn't mine but could have been. I awoke every morning to the big sister's legs peeking over the end of my bed as she twisted her feet around and watched the muscles change shape.

There was a hotel room in Vermont. Pine trees and mountains dominating the windows. Expanses of white cloud duvets and pillows. A moment of clarity in a terrible year.

A futon in the spare room of a friend was more like an entire blanketed floor. I curled up between the computer and a prom dress with a notebook and a pen. Drunken scrawls trailed off the page onto my hands as my eyelids dropped suddenly.

A single bed before he upgraded to a double. He slept on a mattress on the floor under his cat and we both woke up early and built a fort, shutting ourselves in against time and practicalities and all common sense. Honey loops and flicks of the cat's tail against our cheeks. In the double I was always wide awake.

So tired this afternoon, but not really tired just muggy. I lean my head back against the back of the seat and shut my eyes against the glass on the sheep, hearing her voice though I didn't want to as she always announced the presence of the wooly animals back when we were inseparable and always awake. There's really not much to say today, I'm always quiet after a night full of too many words. Lying upside down against my wall, typing on my stomach there's nothing much to say and I like that.

I want to sing to you, my love

my only love and happiness
don't be so blue, so blue my love
this too shall pass

My dad's old typewriter in the box with the stickers, like my laptop with its stickers. It's the same and different, like we're the same but different and we're all the same but different. Objective I watch myself be a fool, always a fool. So critical, playing games and smiling, smiling, smiling. Go so abstract maybe nobody will understand. Hope they will but hide my secrets between words that mean nothing.

but tell me, what have I done to deserve you?
must have done something cause that's how it works
must have been kind to kittens and birds,
in a previous life must have thought happy thoughts

Bubbles flew out of a fountain as I drank coffee with a hangover, make believe I am grown. Spent so long pretending, grasping at things to identify what makes me. Tick the boxes of personality. Take the quiz, what kind of a friend are you? If you were a colour what would it be?

cause there, you were there right beside me
then somehow inside me while inside myself
books on the shelf thoughts on the shelf
hands to myself, I should definitely keep my hands to myself

Politics, I did not understand the words but I knew the tone and it swept everything away in a passion of action. I want to run away, always run away. Take my hand and we'll fly away. What are you so afraid of when I'm around? In a mess of high school tactics I made a den of indifference. Pull up a seat you're safe here.

But love is a dangerous pastime
caught between madness and gladness of flight
nothing is wrong and nothing is right
falling asleep in your arms every night

I have a mask for every occasion. Pretty painted little face. But I am not a complex being, I'm no more special than you. My secret is I am in love. I have been in love for never and ever.

don't be so blue my love
this too shall pass

Believe in neither but fear 'em as well

Cherry jelly may be the best thing ever. I mean, seriously, AWESOME.

Went shopping today with the vague lesbian. I haven't 'been shopping' for goddamn ages. Such a girly thing to go do. I mean I shop in that I buy things or try things on when I get bored between classes. We didn't buy anything today just wandered round laughing at extremely shiny bras and bondage kits talking drunken exploits and dwindling relationships. Until she got a craving for doughnuts and we walked down Buchanan street with the box in one hand and jam and sugar everywhere. By the time we were on Argyle Street we'd eaten 2 apiece and felt a little sick. She desperately wanted to meet someone we knew so we could pass on the unwanted baked treat but we met not a soul and her boyfriend merely suggested we hold on to it until he turned up for work at 5. Pfft to that says I and start looking through my list of people who would gladly take the food off our hands (considered just handing it to someone but doubted anyone would trust us) and was fairly successful much to her amusement.

"I love coming out with you. You're as insane as I am but you don't hide it."

The best compliments are the ones that are kinda insulting.

My sister tells the best stories

My sister's history teacher taught me in second year and once a week in sixth year. He's an old man, very jewish (he got very angry when we tried to make him sing because our other history teacher had sung the German national anthem to us) and really quite lovely despite the fact that we learnt nothing in his class and generally took the piss. He liked me though because I was pretty much the only one doing any work and that was really only because History was pretty much the only subject I was taking in sixth year. Utter waste of time and all that. Anyway in the midst of a conversation about how dumb her friends can be she said this:

The Snail Tamer™ ~GFCH~ You say you're sorry then you do it again says:
also btw mr gillis was all 'hooray for catherine or whatever her name was, she's great' today
...
I think I made you up inside my head says:
but tell me why mr gillis said these things
The Snail Tamer™ ~GFCH~ You say you're sorry then you do it again says:
and mr gillis was like 'o julie, you will go far, how is your sister marie or whatever'
The Snail Tamer™ ~GFCH~ You say you're sorry then you do it again says:
i said 'lol she b chillin'
I think I made you up inside my head says:
he called me marie?
The Snail Tamer™ ~GFCH~ You say you're sorry then you do it again says:
yes
The Snail Tamer™ ~GFCH~ You say you're sorry then you do it again says:
then he muttered old man things
The Snail Tamer™ ~GFCH~ You say you're sorry then you do it again says:
like 'oh dearie me, i've taught too many smiths in my many years of being an old man'

Somedays aren't yours at all

All of the books I need to write my essay are not in the library. Do you hear that? That is the sound of me giving up. Instead of pondering prehistory and the meaning of, I am considering having hot dogs for lunch and how long I'd have to save up for to go to Paris. It may take a while mostly because I am awful at the whole finance thing. But I'll make it there at some point. I mean I have been there twice already but never for any length of time and always with the family and I want to see it myself. Plus it is the most fantastic city though it has the way of making you feel woefully uncool.

On a more immediate idea I could spend a week in Edinburgh for the film festival if I tried hard enough, got a change of scenery. Especially if my dad wangles whatever it is that he is wangling from his friend, who's involved in the organisation somehow. Sadly, still money involved and I haven't spoken to the girl who lives in our capital for far too long to suggest I crash at hers. And it is in June this year which is creeping up on me. I've got the two essays still to do, one more pointless practical in which I will do nothing you could call 'practical' and one day trip I'm sure I have to do something for.

Ack deadlines. I do so hate them.

Somewhere in between I'll have to get my hair cut before it explodes into some sort of fluffball, hilarious as that would be. But I'm still on holiday, nowhere near on top of things like I intended but I'm feeling relatively cheerful so let's not bother with anything boring.