Norfolk and Sons...

Since Autumn in Southampton feels more like mid-winter in Norfolk (damn coastal icy nights), I've been listening to my wintery music collection. As of last year, I added Mumford and Sons to this list. Now, many of my friends have discovered and learned to love Mumford for one reason or another, but everything about this band reminds me of home. My sister was pals with lead singer Marcus at university, and I remember her telling me about him back when I was 16. And she bought the album for our mother's Christmas/birthday present, and my brother loved it, and wouldn't go on a car journey without it. Our Christmas day walk on Walberswick Beach was sound-tracked by Mumford. And the video to The Cave looks weirdly similar to the drive up to Walberswick. And there's something country, dark and kind of deeply disturbing about the album that belongs to the country-side of my brain. The city-side likes Motion City Soundtrack blaring out at 7.15 as I waited for the morning bus, wishing to be anywhere but Norfolk during my puberty. City-side now says listen to Breaking Benjamin and Fightstar first thing (11am) to wake up the cute Asian baby next door. City-side says don't walk on your own at night, but country-side says lonely walks are best took at night. Parks are dangerous in cities, but parks are the safest part of the country.

I've been thinking about London a lot recently. I want to be there, but I don't want 'there' to be London. I don't want to live somewhere where I have to catch a train just to get to school. I don't want to live in a bedroom not big enough for all my stuff. I like my stuff. I've always been crap at getting rid of things, whether its clothes, doodles or boyfriends. Recently I've been giving my whole life a spring clean, and I don't know when to stop... Hopefully I've now stopped. Hopefully I have found my little snigger of happiness in what used to be a pretty simple week. And I want to keep that happiness. I'm terrified that I will, as per usual, fuck everything up. But that's not who I am. This is a new me, who makes good choices and doesn't get drunk or pass out or wake up next to people I don't remember falling asleep with.

This is new. This is now. This is... well, get ready to be fucking surprised.

I wish I had a pensieve...

I've been thinking too much. It hurts my head. Not to sound incredibly blonde, but when your brain is constantly mulling over the same problem, there aren't many ways to get some peace and quiet. One is sleeping, but my dreams are so bizarre that it often doesn't help. One is watching something, a story that sucks you in long enough to forget your own. Problem is, watching something distracting isn't distracting when you watch it with the person you want to be distracted from. Oh God why won't my brain shut up.
I can't do this. Not again. I hate that every second of being with him reminds me of last time, and of how guilty I'd feel for the tiniest thing, but I still don't have that control. More frighteningly, I don't want that control. Its worse this time. Its like a fire that if I put it out, I won't be able to light it again. Shit me this is terrifying. Its like I'm on the edge of a cliff which is about to collapse, but the only way off is a burning bridge. Which plunge do I take? Its not going to be a happy ending for at least one person. And so far, I'm thinking it should be me. I'm the one that has gotten myself into trouble. And I'm the one that keeps wanting people when I know I shouldn't. I think I need to chop my heart off, or something. Stop looking at people. I heard something on the radio about how your more likely to fall in love with your best friend than you are likely to have a successful blind date. And I can see why.

FUUUUUUUCK. Sometimes, staying up until 2am is a great thing to do with a friend. Most of the time, with me, it leads to very difficult situations.

Don't kill a boy on the first date.

So far, a pretty gloomy representation of my life has been portrayed by these here blogs. And I hope to alter that somehow, for the better or worse I don't know, by this entry. And so, I come to Buffy. A little piece of joy in my life that I constantly look back to. See, I used to watch it when it first came out, I was pretty young and a bit terrified, but my two big sisters loved it, so I watched it to be with them, and talk to them, and not feel totally alone. And for a few years, Buffy taught me some pretty important things about growing up - like not to kill boys on first dates (unless they are vampires), or not to fall in love with vampires (unless it's Angel with his soul) etc etc. Vital things 10year old's should know. And then my sisters paid less attention to Buffy, and for a few years she wasn't a constant fixture in my life. But then the bizarre stuff started happening when Emma came to live with us. I was 13, she was 22. I was just hitting puberty, and she was a lesbian but the parents couldn't know. I was young and impressionable, and she was probably drunk 80% of the time, including being at work. But despite how dangerous this all sounds, she really helped me grow up. She made me recognise the good deed my parents did by employing me. She helped me come to terms with being the youngest and the one everyone ignored. She even used to make me do her crazy-ass fitness routine with her, which was pretty brutal as she needed to re-stretch her legs for being a trapeze artist, and she'd do my legs too. Kinda wish I'd kept going with that... But anyway. As much as my family is completely fucked up, because she was more insane than any of us, she sort of brought order into the house. And since Helen was already at Uni, James was home only at weekends and charlie went off on her gap year, at 16 I was the only one there during the week, and Emma's presence in the winter months kept me grounded. Literally, grounded, she encouraged a lot of the drinking and hooligan-things we did. But then she left. The circus finally put money in her pocket, and Dad didn't really want her in the house anymore. So she left, and the garage was empty, and summer came around and James' squadron got moved so he didn't come home all the time. And it was just me left. And those last two years of school broke me. I didn't want to be at home, with two parents wanting to rant and rave all day long because they work themselves and each other, and their staff including me into the ground. I was torn between helping the business and running away. And in a way, I still am today - if they retire, I don't know what will happen to their marriage, so being at home will become yet more painful. And I love our house, I love our family and I love seeing my friends. I love Norfolk, because despite the things that get said about it, I come from one of the most beautiful places in England, beaten down by Edinburgh, Cornwall and Devon's coast, Hampshire (yay) and maybe a handful of pretty cities and landmarks. But considering how freaking huge Norfolk is (second biggest county, I do believe), most of it is stunning. Like, Narnia could be filmed there, if we had a lion. I know this blog makes very little sense, but what I'm trying to say is, sometimes home doesn't mean home anymore. I spent the last two years swinging between Southampton and Norwich too much, because I was working and seeing people and studying and living in two places etc etc. But my home, the place I live and the place I will sorely miss next year is Southampton. My life, however, and everything that made me who I am, is in Norfolk. So no matter how distant I am from my siblings, and no matter how fucked up my parents are, I will always return to my tiny little bedroom that is never the right temperature, because otherwise I'll forget who I am. Hey, maybe that's why I'm like a furnace.

Anger leads to hate, which leads to... something

I can't honestly say I'm the happiest person in the world. And I know that more so than the normal person, I feel anger. I get angry when I'm playing crash bandicoot; I get angry just by looking at myself sometimes; I'm very quick to snap and I am easily provoked, hence one of my boyfriend's favourite games is to wind me up. And the people around me know this too. Some say I got so angry at a club that I stood up, pushed over a table, flipped off my friends and stormed off. Truth be told, I stood up too quickly, the table was in my way so got a bit of a nudge from the thighs, and when someone asked where I was going I mimed the action for 'drink'. They don't believe me, but its the truth whether they like it or not. Digression aside, people know how angry and frustrated and royally pissed off I can get, yet they still believe the right thing to do is poke the sleeping bear. And laugh when it swipes out. And poke the bear, and laugh some more, and poke some more, and pokey pokey oh the freaking hokey cokey, the bear lashes out to smack them back. And whatever angry come back is used, said poker recoils, horrified, hurt, bruised and accusing, and calls the bear mean, rude, unjustified and a bitch. Now I know, there's two sides to every story. But God damn it, I am always aware of how hurtful little things can be. I am super-sensitive to anything a little bit prejudiced, and I have been on the receiving side of all the taunts and jeers since I was like 4. Not to say I was bullied, I wouldn't count it as that, I just have three siblings slightly older than myself. But to those of you who claim to have been bullied, yet are totally happy to be the bullier when something is a little bit funny, and you can join in the laughter too - fuck you. Fuck fucking you, because it's a waste of time. I love my friends, I really do, but hypocrisy is not something I enjoy being near or part of. So take your awesomely witty jokes elsewhere, because you poke this bear one more time and you'll feel the lightning strikes.

My brain and head are different things

Sometimes I think things, like 'maybe I should just stay up all night instead of going to bed at 4 and risk sleeping through my 8am alarm' although my brain holds the knowledge that tells me that a) that fails 90% of the time, and b) sleep is good for you. Therefore I doubt their co-existence in my skull sometimes... but again, my brain tells me that of course all these thoughts comes from the same gray matter. duh. Yet I feel strangely drawn to one of my friends at the moment, and maybe because the others are a bit hard to be around at the moment, but it genuinely feels like a gravity pulling me towards them. I want to be with them all the freaking time, yet when I am with them, I wonder why I craved their company so much. Its like an addiction that doesn't have a kick. And all my thoughts at the moment scare me a little anyway; my writing is seriously jeopardized by my lack of focus, motivation, originality and above all, ideas. Since calling Dali off, I've found every idea falls into a little rut that's too deep to salvage, but shallow enough not to lose it completely, so about 4 ideas just sit there, looking hopeful but I know in my heart that they just don't do anything for me at the moment. That and all I seem to want to write about is sex. That's never good, as it means something in my brain/hormone make-up/pants is trying to filter through subconsciously. PANIC. Hopefully my next entry won't be 'I did something silly...'

Regrets, I've had a few...

Everyone fucks up from time to time. That's granted. Its like your toast landing butter-side up; it's inevitable, you can't stop it, control or it hope to know when it'll happen, it just does. So some say butter your toast less. Others say butter both sides. Metaphor or not, mistakes happen one way or another, but what's up to us is if we regret them or not. I remember an episode of Dawson's Creek, from way back when I was a whipper snapper, the one with Pacey and Joey on the boat, I think. They're in a storm, and really worried, and relying on Dawson to save them even though he hates them both because his ex-girlfriend and best friend are bumping uglies. Understandable. Needless to say, Joey asks Pacey if he has any regrets, to which he replies something along the lines of 'No, life's too short to regret things'. I've always hoped I'd have the same outlook, but it turns out I don't. I have made some pretty embarrassing mistakes that I wish I could erase. The three prominent ones that pop to mind are: the fateful night I half-lost my virginity; the guy I dated in first year and it took me 2 months to break up with him; and my general being during winter last year. I do regret these things, because I believe everything happens for a reason, and it's all helping mould us into the people we will be, and the things we will do, and I feel that those three things may have altered my life for the worse. But little things, like doing something stupid, or wearing that racy dress, or being friends with someone you know is bad for you; they don't count as regrets. At least not yet. So I'm not going to regret what I did yesterday, because as upsetting as some people find it, I honestly don't know how this could spiral into some uncontrollable problematic life-altering scenario. So get over it, get over yourself and get over him because I'm pretty sure he has, and we all have, because what's done is done.    Rant over.

Do we start as we mean to go on?

First week done. I don't think I've ever felt so aware of my own failings. Sometimes life poses little problems, little quizzes that singularly are simple, but when there are 5 at once, you feel a bit stumped. This is my problem at the moment. And I want to be good, I want to be able to do 10 things at once and feel great at the end of the day but just thinking about it tires me out. I need to go to work. I need to enjoy work. If I don't, I need to quit. But I can't bring myself to do either. ARGH.