stay in bed day.

I am at home off work today. My voice has dropped an octave (I have the sexy Barry White thing going on) and my throat glands are swollen; I need to be 100% tomorrow as work is full of appointments, so I am hoping today will do the trick. I have bought Warrior off iTunes and it is currently downloading, so Tom Hardy can soothe me this afternoon!

I said in my previous entry that I have lately been on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. I’ve gone from being irritable to being insecure and I think that I have been suffering from hypersensitivity again, but it just feels like I can’t seem to do anything right. At work I still keep making minor mistakes that people seem to delight in pointing out; I am trying my best and I feel that I have learned a lot and that I do a good job, but apparently it just isn’t enough. I don’t know if my contract will get renewed in September at this rate… I really hope so, but I am just having a crisis of confidence. I guess that in March, I have my 6-month review and I can ask my boss frankly whether she already knows anything about the future of my role, and when I will find out whether I am staying on. I should be reassured by the fact that my boss seems keen for me to go to curriculum training events and for me to learn things that will serve me well in the future of the job; but I also seem to be living in the shadow of the person that I have replaced, and it’s been a hard job to get people to be genuinely nice to me. Some are just determined not to be; others have slowly begun to smile at me and get to know me a little. But it’s just so wearing, and I wonder what is wrong with me that I can’t be poised and charismatic as I usually am. I’ve never really had trouble making friends in the workplace. But my nerves are getting to me – we had a party on Friday night in Camden and I was trying to be friendly and introduce myself to some people I didn’t recognise, but because I felt like a deer caught in headlights, my opening salvo ended up being “Um, do you know who I am?” Now as soon as the words tumbled out of my mouth, I knew that it sounded conceited – and I laughed and followed it with “Oh, that sounds awful!” – but it was too late because it is likely that every single thing that I say and do is monitored, recorded and gossiped about. If I sound paranoid, it’s only because I know that it happens with other people there… These people were staring at me like I was an alien, and it made me uncharacteristically nervous and clumsy.

And then, at Toby’s flat I managed to put the washing machine on a really long cycle by accident, and I inconvenienced other people in the flat. Now, the atmosphere there is already fraught with tension, but I didn’t want to be responsible for adding to that – especially as I don’t live there. I pay to do my laundry there, but I don’t want to cause any problems or become a burden to anyone. Again, making such basic mistakes is not like me. I apologised and explained it was a mistake, and I think everything ended up fine; but I know once again that this mistake can be stored up and can be used as ammunition later on. I just don’t understand why I’m feeling so awkward lately, and my awkwardness is compounded by my awareness that other people are constantly searching for a weakness, for something to use against me, and for something to boost their own egos. Now normally I wouldn’t care, but I need to keep this job and I need to be able to go and visit Toby’s flat to spend time with him.

This sense of malaise even made me misjudge the most basic of social situations; I was introduced to a couple of Toby’s family’s neighbours on Saturday evening. I went to shake hands, and it didn’t happen – a point was made and eventually my gesture was reciprocated, but it was kind of embarrassing by that point. My timing is off and my judgement is off, and however much Toby reassures me that I am fixating on miniscule details and that I shouldn’t worry, I just want to get away from everything, rest and recharge. I am not surprised that I have come down with a chest cold and sore throat, as it seems to be a physical manifestation of all the stress I have been under at the moment (although I was also admittedly ill-prepared for the cold Peterborough wind this weekend). Hopefully staying in bed today and taking it easy, my trip to Paris with Toby on Friday, and my week at home in Bristol next week will give me the relaxation I so desperately need (a big issue for me is learning exactly how to relax) and the positivity I need to snap out of this funk.

responsibility / Tube update: Hyde Park Corner and Green Park.

So after living in London for 5 months (to the day today!), I finally got around to registering with a GP this week. It was my second choice of doctor, after the top choice recommended by the NHS website turned out not to take new patients from my area (when I said that the website recommended me, they apologetically informed me “Ah yes. The website is wrong”). I think the website was wrong again, because my first appointment with the treatment nurse on Friday evening was nothing short of horrific.

I was informed that my blood pressure was that of a “much more mature person”, and that I need to go back in a month and keep monitoring it in the meantime. Ok. Furthermore, I need to lose “15-20 kilos”. Now, in my own opinion, over the last few months, I have put on a few pounds. But at 6 foot, I am not delusional enough to believe someone when they say that my ideal weight is 11 and a half stone. I would be skeletal if I lost that much weight – I am not fat as it is. I am my own harshest critic, but at the most I could do with losing half a stone or so. No more. I promise you all I am not kidding myself – I wear small or medium sizes in clothing. Yet I apparently have a 40″ waist (again, despite the fact that I wear 32″ and 33″ trousers). I also had to do a urine test, and when I said “um, right now?!” she said “is that a problem?” I ended up being able to perform, so to speak, and I told the nurse upon my return that “I drink a lot of water”. She eventually confirmed “yes, your urine is clear.” No shit, lady. In addition, how dare you tell me to lose so much weight – not only is this essentially promoting anorexia (because obviously she says this to everyone; I am not a special case), but it’s hypocrisy from someone who is definitely more overweight than I am! I am outraged that people in a position of authority and whose responsibility it is to promote healthy living, is telling people to become dangerously underweight.

I apparently have to go for a yearly check-up, “because things can develop without you knowing”; ok, but if there is nothing wrong with me, why would I waste a doctor or nurse’s time? I never had to go before, except for when I felt that there was something wrong with me. After checking my blood pressure, the nurse kept insisting “are you sure you don’t feel dizzy? Or ever have headaches?” Lady, no means no. I am perfectly happy and healthy. No matter how much you want to make me feel like something is wrong, you won’t convince me that you know my body better than I do. I spent most of my childhood and adolescence hating the way I looked and the way I felt. I finally got myself right a couple of years ago or so, and I will not let some irresponsible woman set me back. I will keep y’all updated on my future adventures with this doctor’s surgery. The last thing on my mind is that she mentioned the possibility of taking tablets for my blood pressure if it doesn’t go down. I am confident I have white coat syndrome – I am nervous when it comes to having my blood pressure checked, and I have done it on my mum’s machine at home and it has come out a little high, but far closer to normal. What’s more, I have seen my grandparents existing on cocktails of pills, and it was one of the things that contributed to my grandfather’s ultimate deterioration in health and multiple health problems that culminated in his death in 2008. I know that doctors and nurses have a job to do, but they do not know everything, and I refuse to be bullied into a dependency on medication that I neither want nor need. I am 26 years old; I do not need to be on tablets for my blood pressure when I have no other health problems or symptoms. I was telling Mike and Caroline this today, and they both said that this woman sounds insane and that I should never go back there. But even though this visit was horrific, it did ultimately mean that I accomplished my goal of registering with a GP.

You’ll notice that I mentioned Mike and Caroline just now. Well, Toby and I saw them today! They came down to London for their wedding anniversary, and are staying in the hotel just around the corner from my flat, in West Kensington! They went to the Science Museum today with Billy – we met them there (I had never been to the Science Museum before! A lot of it went over my head, tbh) after Toby and I spent a very long time walking! I suppose that a good thing about my visit to the surgery last night (I was seriously searching for a silver lining to that cloud!) was that is has further kick-started my desire to lose those few pounds and keep walking and exercising. So from Toby’s flat in Fulham, we walked to my place to pick up my sunglasses, walked to Brompton Library where Toby and I both joined and were rewarded with festive-looking membership cards (I will also be able to take out some books in Italian and develop my skills in that language!), went to the V&A, made my first purchase from Harrods, then walked to my favourite Starbucks in Belgravia (although they went down in my estimation somewhat today after messing up my drink – twice!), and then walked to Hyde Park Corner:

Now I realise that you can’t see which station it is from this picture. Hence:

And then we went to Green Park, before going back to South Kensington to the Science Museum and having a lovely afternoon with Mike, Caroline and Billy:

And from there, a lovely afternoon and evening with Toby, re-organising my flat and watching Desperate Housewives tonight. Tomorrow I am going to sort out my Valentine’s gift to him and have a quiet but productive day before another week of work!

dream – infidelity and paulina rubio.

I was saying to one of my friends that it’s been a while since I blogged one of my dreams! I guess that sometimes if you speak something, it has a funny way of coming into existence.  I also must give some credit to the kebab I bought with Mike on the way back from our last course night out watching the England match (which was dull, although cheering along with the mindless supporters was amusing; I don’t think they realised Penny and I were taking the piss out of them) – the stomach ache I bear as a result, coupled with the disrupted night’s sleep I had, worked together to produce this crazy dream as well as my decision that, like crisps and popcorn, I will never eat another kebab again.  Anyway, here goes:

—

I found myself at university, staying in a dorm building which had several of my friends living on the same corridor as me. The hall was brightly lit, with a peach coloured carpet, and Toby lived a couple of doors down from me.  A few doors in the opposite direction, towards the end of our corridor, lived this random guy whom I don’t know in real life, and whom I didn’t know much about in the dream, except he was gay and had quite a youthful face and a happy-go-lucky, slightly crazy manner.  I remember on this particular day, Toby was getting ready to present a presentation he had worked on with his friend on a song they had written for a team they’d been given in a World Cup sweepstake.  He hadn’t let me hear the song, and he was quite nervous about it but pretending as if everything were fine.  To give him some space, I decided to get a bus and go to a string of shops which looked similar to the top of Gloucester Road, except with less shops and shops which looked even more run down than what’s there in reality.  The trip seemed fruitless, and I remember returning back to my corridor pretty promptly.

On my return, I bumped into the guy who lived near the end of the corridor.  He was burbling about something, and invited me to go back to his room. I was reluctant to go as I wanted to wish Toby luck before he started his presentation / performance, but at the same time I wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea to disturb him, so I decided to follow the guy to his room.  We chatted for a while, and then ended up having (anatomically incorrect – orifices do NOT look / contort like that!) sex.  Immediately afterwards I felt guilty, and made small talk while hurriedly getting out of there.  I ran down the corridor to find Toby, who was due to start his presentation.  I located the classroom (oddly enough further down the same corridor as where all our bedrooms were) and burst in through the open door, where Toby and his classmates were gathered in front of a lecturer standing at a lectern in front of a giant screen filled with the flags of the World Cup in some kaleidoscopic Powerpoint presentation.  Toby was stood on a chair, ostensibly about to sing his song, but everyone turned to look at me and Toby’s mouth gaped as I ran towards him, hugged his legs and nuzzled my face into his crotch.  He asked me what was wrong, but I decided to keep my infidelity to myself and said that nothing was wrong and I just wanted to wish him luck and let him know I was there for him.  At that moment, he smiled (which made me feel a combination of guilt and immense love), and the whole class sighed as if they wanted to get on with the presentation of the songs.

At this point, my stomach ache woke me up again as it had done periodically throughout the night.  I remember getting up to open the window; it was light outside and I hoped that some fresh air would do me good (as it happened, it made no difference) before getting back into bed and falling back to sleep.

I found myself going into a giant record store which reminded me of a huge Virgin Megastore from back in the day.  When I walked in, the front of store display advertised hordes of Paulina Rubio CDs, books, DVDs and other memorabilia at knock-down prices.  I was about to start browsing – there were items that certainly caught my eye even at first glance, when I bumped into my tutor from university, Mary.  She was sat reading a book on a cube seat, and she smiled at me and started asking how I was.  We had a conversation about the book she was reading, and about what some of my favourite books were.  I then saw two women approaching her wearing skirt suits, and Mary explained that she was interviewing for the course intake for next year, so she would have to say goodbye for now.  I smiled and left the seating area as one woman sat down and began to talk to Mary, who had closed her book; the other sat on an adjacent cube and began to read a book of her own.  I was about to start browsing the Paulina Rubio merchandise, which including products which both do and don’t exist in real life, when I bumped into Simon from the careers guidance course.  He asked me if I had seen Mary; I responded by indicating the cubed seating area, but then explaining that she was doing interviews so he might have to wait for a while before he was able to speak to her.  With nothing much else to say to him, I left Simon and began to browse the shelves.

However, during my conversations with Mary and Simon, a lot of the CDs had been snapped up, and I could barely find half of the products which had been on offer when I’d first entered the shop.  I spent quite a long time rummaging and amassing quite a collection of items, when I bumped into my mother, Deena and Davina.  They said that they had come shopping looking for a birthday present for me, and immediately handed me a big box of some kind of board game, and a smaller box on top.  They said that they were going to look for some other gifts for me.  My mother immediately disappeared, and Davina and Deena went off in different directions.  I followed Deena and asked her if there was anything I could buy for Davina, but I don’t think she had any suggestions.  Eventually, I found myself left alone by them and I had to go to the till and pay for my Paulina Rubio stuff, and also for my own birthday presents!

Afterwards, I returned home with all my purchases only to find that my mother had already arrived at home.  She looked at the amount of carrier bags I had, and then she engaged me in some meaningless, forgettable conversation.  I don’t remember what was said, but I remember taking a yellow sleeping bag with me and leaving the house. I wandered the streets and before long, found a wide grey pavement outside a run-down block of flats.  For some reason, in my head I had decided that this was an orphanage, and the area of town did not look very Bristolian nor very friendly; it was all quite dilapidated, and I felt quite tired so I decided to lay down on the pavement and curled up in my sleeping bag.  However, the sleeping bag was double-sized, so I still only took up half of the bag; the other half covered the rest of the pavement.  After a few moments, Mike came strolling by as if by chance, looked down and noticed me laying on the floor (I wasn’t asleep).  He spoke to me briefly, and we chatted before he told me to budge up, got down on the pavement and slid into the sleeping bag next to me.  This time, nothing sexual happened but we just chatted for a while and I remember feeling happy and lucky that I had a friend to spend time with.

—

That is about it!  As always, any thoughts or light that you can shed on this is more than welcome. A few connections that I can make: I watched the World Cup match last night, so perhaps the football was in my head; I’d seen Deena earlier in the week and I remember we were walking around HMV and she was considering looking for a present for her friend’s girlfriend.  During the night out last night, I was speaking to Mike about how much his friendship meant to me and how lucky I was to have him in my life.  I also spent a lot of the evening texting Toby, who is currently sunning it up in Florida (lucky man); I miss him.  Finally, Simon was the only person who hadn’t managed to get into the bar last night where we were watching the football; although Mary wasn’t invited to watch the football with us, it is interesting that Simon is the one who was asking me about her whereabouts, as if he were looking for someone from our course just as he was last night.  But the rest of it is beyond me!!!

speechless.

So I’m sat in Starbucks in Cabot Circus having finally gained access to the internet (BT Openzone has a lot to answer for… hijacking my browser and not letting me get to the Starbucks page however hard I try – I do have better things to do than sit here and refresh the page!… probably.) and I have felt determined to blog since I got here.  I’m consuming far too much coffee lately and I generally need to cut down on food – not that it’s showing; I appreciate my new metabolism every day and I pray it never leaves! – so I thought I would take the time to write something to you all and write about things that are on my mind.  Usually this isn’t a problem for me, but now I’m at my keyboard and I don’t really know what to say.  I have my book (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – I’m only 100 pages through so far but I’m enjoying it, more than I expected to in fact!) and Sade’s fantastic new album Soldier Of Love is playing on my iPod, so I’m feeling chilled.  My fingertips are typing away but is any of this of substance?  I don’t think so.  So let me try and write something of value.

Yesterday I got a bit irritated with a couple of bossy people in uni, but it wasn’t really a big deal.  However, my mood lingered and wouldn’t quite lift. I went to WHSmiths (after a tour of central Bristol shops) and bought Mike and Caroline the first season of True Blood on DVD as a thankyou gift for everything they mean to me, and all that they’ve done for me in the past six months.  And then I went to Starbucks, sat and read my book, and decided to continue on my strategy of letting people know how much I appreciate them.  I spoke to Hannah and we conversed about love, life and self-esteem, and then I met up with Toby and decided to tell my boyfriend that although sometimes I’m a bit emotionally wary or quiet, I appreciate him so much and the reason I get nervous is because nobody ever really treated me, as a boyfriend, the way that he does.  He’s a good man and I’m going to hold onto him, and although I don’t always say it, I appreciate what he’s done for me and what he means to me too.  It was nothing to do with why I was a bit grumpy before, but it made me feel better, because generally we don’t tell people close to us enough how much we appreciate them.  So I’m going to try and do that a little bit more, rather than everyone just taking their friendships and relationships for granted.  I am good at speaking confidently, so while I’m doing that I might as well say things that are worth saying!

Today I finished my essay at uni with Mike, tried and failed to find Ness in the café, and now I’m here in Starbucks again.  Although I mainly come here because I don’t really want to go home before I have to (my parents have the week off this week and although we are getting on ok at the moment, I don’t want to prolong my contact with them.  Small doses!  I like my independence, as you know), I do enjoy having time to myself in a relaxing environment, and I can just turn my iPod on and type or read without any disruptions.  I do pay for the privilege, and I should be a little more careful with what I spend at the moment, but part of my philosophy is that as long as it’s not massively negligent of the bigger picture, we should treat others and ourselves the best we can, because tomorrow you could be dead.  It’s a bit blunt, but not wrong.  What have we got to lose?  I tell and show people how much they mean to me today (or at least I’m going to resolve to do that a bit more); I reward myself today (well, sorta quite often but hey!); I try and live in the moment, while being aware of my past and my future.  If I died tomorrow, I’m sure I would have some regrets, but I can’t think of anything major that I really see as a huge mistake in my life.  There are things that I would have done differently, but now that I’m in a pretty good space in my life I don’t really care because the mistakes I’ve made and avenues I’ve taken have led me to this point, and probably contributed to my character and the person that I am in some way.  Watching Keeping Up With The Kardashians at Toby’s last night, Kim Kardashian has money, looks, family and a decent career.  But listening to her speaking, there’s a tiny something missing… some sort of spark or soul.  I’m not saying that because she’s a celebrity heiress – I find Paris Hilton terrifically fun and I will always (well, almost always) stick up for her in a conversation – but with Kim there seemed to be little appreciation or conception of battling hard for the things she wants.  As much as I would love to have things fall easily into my lap, I’ve fought and struggled more than some people realise, and now that things are going my way I appreciate it every day.  I hope that it continues and I’m going to do my best to ensure that it does (although life is such that sometimes no matter how much you do, things go against you).  If I won the lottery tomorrow, if my heart felt like a glittering diamond and everything in my life were suddenly fulfilled, that would be nice, but I hope that through the course my life I can get to a state where I’m fulfilled by the things that I have, even if I’m not 100% satisfied and always striving for more (which I almost hope to be).  Appreciating what I have is something I try to do as much as I can, but I could still do it much more.

So I guess I found something to talk about.  It wasn’t anything momentous, it wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but I reread what I’ve just typed over the past 20 minutes and I stand by it.  Too often we are speechless, or afraid to speak for fear of the value judgments others place on what we say.  And sometimes what goes unsaid is the most valuable thing of all.  So to this end, I want to thank you all once again for reading, for following this little blog of mine, and I hope that you all stay wonderful and wish you all the best.  Until next time kids x

secrecy.

For the moment, I’ve taken off the link to this blog from my twitter, and I’m going to be deleting the twitterfeeds as well.  I don’t anticipate doing this for long and they’ll be back up in a few days or so, for a couple of reasons which I will explain, but firstly I’ll explain why I’ve done it.  I’ve started seeing a wonderful guy called T, and he’s so nice.  He cooked me dinner last night, we talk on msn all the time, and we have great coffee sessions.  I’ve also stayed over at his place a couple of times and everything seems good so far.  I appreciate that all the time that I’ve been whining about being single and various foibles with guys, unrequited attractions etc., I’ve wanted someone solid, stable, interesting and nice, and now I appear to be finding that.  So why am I so fucking scared?

I know that part of it is that I don’t want to end up hurting T the way that I hurt Lukas in the past.  Although Lukas was way too clingy, and turned out to be a bit of a nutcase, he didn’t deserve to be hurt the way he was – even though it was an honest accident, being dumped by text is not the way that I operate (I think it’s a pretty shitty thing to do) and I will always regret that that was how things went down.  T, although we’ve only known each other for a few weeks, appears to be better in every way.  So the thought of accidentally hurting T and really upsetting him (I’m confident he likes me a lot) really scares me.  I’ve always been the kind of person who feels nervous but manages to override his fear, but I won’t lie and I’ll say that being single is so much easier – you’re not responsible for anyone else’s feelings and you don’t have to worry about what makes them happy or what makes them sad.  If I, in some way, hurt T through no fault of his own, I think it would make me feel really awful. So that’s part of my fear.

Thus getting to the reason why I’ve temporarily hidden the link to this blog.  If you’ve read some of my entries over the past 4 months, you’ll know that I’ve developed pretty serious feelings for someone.  Someone whom I can never have, but who has redefined what it is to be a man, and has shown me what I want to aim for as a man myself.  He’s one of my best friends, he’s really important to me, and I’m a total masochist for allowing my feelings to grow to this point.  But I know (whether I like it or not) that I can never have him as anything more than a best friend (!!!) and that is enough to treasure.  I don’t die inside very often, and when I am dying, I just grin and bear it until I come out the other side.  I’m very lucky to have such a friend who’s been more of a role model for me than my father ever was, than any male figure has ever been.  If you’ve been reading, you know all of this and more, and I don’t need to recap.  But because I’ve been so honest and open about this on here, I don’t want to risk any of T’s feelings being hurt if he reads it – surely he couldn’t help but wonder?  Nothing inappropriate’s ever happened, but the fact that the desire is there, and it’s stronger than I care to admit most of the time, makes me feel like it would be something that could hurt his feelings, or at least question my sincerity towards him.  And I do like him.  Things have gone quite fast, and I think I want to slow down a little bit and just enjoy the moment and be easy with having someone there for me – because I’m scared of rushing myself, I’m scared of rushing our emotions and burning out too quickly, I’m scared of accidentally hurting him but I also want to give myself time to get a grip on my heart.  That makes sense, right?  I don’t want to mess anything up so early on, but I also don’t want to push things too fast without really knowing what we’re getting into.  I deserve a good, stable relationship with a good, stable man, and I’m not going to run away from T – that would be totally counter-productive and I’d be back at square one.  But I’m going to take my time – I have to do this for the sanity of my head and the security of my heart.

I guess that’s the crux of the matter.  I don’t really know how to just be in a relationship with someone.  I definitely overthink things (as Mike has said and as I’m well aware), and I can’t stop my mind and heart running away with me.  How do you do that?  How do you turn your brain off, dial your emotions down?  The longest relationship I’ve had has barely touched two months, and even then I felt somewhat claustrophobic, like I somehow couldn’t let a person get too close to me for fear of getting hurt, for fear of too much responsibility over their emotions and heart, and for fear of showing them all of me only for them to be disgusted, find a host of imperfections, or plain run away.  I don’t know why I feel this as it’s totally irrational, and all my close friends know me for who I am and seem to be perfectly happy with it.  There’s nothing wrong with me.  And yet I’m not confident in believing myself when I say that there’s nothing wrong with me.

And if there’s nothing wrong with me, why am I hiding this blog from him?  Over the last 6 months (has it been that long?!??!) of writing, I’ve really enjoyed it, I’ve made a handful of new friends whom I’ve really appreciated, and I have relished the ability to be so honest and frank.  Unwittingly, by adding T to my twitter (but how could I refuse? And why should I refuse?) I’ve compromised my ability to be candid, to be frank with him, and with all of you.  Shouldn’t he be able to like me for who I am?  My heart is who I am, writing this blog has become a part of who I am, and as well as the main concern of not being able to be totally honest with him, it’s gonna affect my hits 😛 (although ironically, since I took this off twitter on Monday, my views have gone up?!?!? where’s the logic?) But I’m not going to delete my posts about Mike, I’m not willing to censor myself and write differently, so I’m not going to change the way I express myself on this blog because I know that some readers appreciate my candour and can relate.  Plus it’s cathartic for me.  But I really, really don’t want to raise questions in T’s mind about my affection for Mike nor about my sincerity towards him.  I want to see where this relationship leads, I deserve a nice boyfriend (and so does he!) and I want to enjoy spending time with him (albeit relaxing a little bit now after our quite intense, fast beginnings).  I just hope that eventually, he will understand that Mike will always be in my heart, but nothing can ever happen and if things go right in the future, I could hold him in my heart too.  And that’s the best way I can express myself and it still doesn’t quite express my feelings how I want to – but hopefully you understand what I mean, because it’s the best I can do.  Thankyou for reading, and I hope you understand.