I have this thing I do when I meet people: I unconsciously suss them out. I figure out how confident they are, how calm, how content, how together they appear, and wherever I see a crack, I poke around to see what might be back there, like some bitch who broke their heart, or some controlling siblings, or a messy divorce which their mother ran from. I see these things, and I figure out a persons reasons and I come to a controlled judgement of how good-hearted and likeable this person is, and therefore, whether I want to know them. Usually, I just sort of have a 'they seem nice' attitude and never think about it again. Sometimes, people make me want to dig deeper. A handful of people in my life have done that, and the further I dug, the more heart-breaking, the more twisted their life seemed, and the more I respected and loved them for it.
Well today, I'm turning my own tables. I want to dig into my own psyche, because I have some problems that I need to address. I considered going to counseling about it, but I think I'll write it on here first. If I need more help, obviously I'll look further, but today, I take the first step. I need to admit it.
I have an addiction, and I need to get clean.
When I was 12 I got the first kick. I had this seriously long first proper kiss. It was awkward as hell, and weird to think back to, considering our friendship since, but either way, the addiction began. It didn't resurface until I was 15, and experienced the first drunk kiss I didn't mean to do. But I couldn't help it. Those could have been almost anyone's lips, because I was never going to pull away. Not that night, that drunk, and that devastated by being laughed at by the guy I fancied. Hook, line, sinker.
I was 15 when Thompson happened, then Smithy. And Shane then started, but never got anywhere, he bottled out, and broke my heart with a text. Then I went from guy to guy in a weird succession: first Drew, then Ross, then Gatenby, then Barnaby, then Jack, then Barnaby again, with a bit of Rowan in there, then Ed, then briefly Arthur, then Shane, with Michael thrown in there, then nothing for a while, a bit of Ingham, a bit of Ed again, then nothing for a while. And I didn't have a particularly reflective moment, I felt so angry after everything with Ed that I was alright being single, so when the good guy came along, it worked, and I was swept away. So Ben began. Then half-ended, and Mark happened, and Spence happened, then we properly ended, and after Mark, Matt happened, and after I threw that in the fire, Ben happened again. All the way through until Rich happened, and then it carried on, and then it was over in a blaze of fury, and Martin happened. And then I came home, and Henry happened, and Ify happened, and now I'm the most single I've ever felt in my life. Not because of loneliness, or being alone, or anything like that. More because I've been in love, and lost them all. And the problem is, I know that I should just be single and have a tolerance, a will power, and an appearance of not needing a man to make me happy, but I have this addiction. I'm addicted to affection.
This addiction boils down to very early-set psychological problems, I'll get into them later. But needless to say, the affection I require is not just physical. I couldn't be a whore, a fuck-buddy or a S&M junkie, because I get attached to things, and feelings always get involved. And those feelings are the things that I actually long for, but the only way I know of achieving them, or finding them in the first place, is through physical affection. This isn't me trying to say 'therefore I'm a cheating whore because I have problems', but I do believe that there is a connection between when it is I've cheated on guys, directly linked with when our relationship has floundered, and affection has been lacking.
A few weeks ago I slept with a guy I don't know or particularly like. Yet I felt better in the morning. Its like this drug, and I hate it. I hate that I can't fix myself, I need to rely on another person to relieve me of my crave. Its not like I walk down the street thinking 'I need to fuck something', I'm not like a dog on heat or anything, but there is something in my hormones, in my psyche even, that finds a way of taking over so it can gets its fix. And it's ruined entire relationships, my whole emotional support ripped out from under me, because my hormones don't understand the need to have patience and will power, they just smell testosterone and go for it.
Horribly, I don't think my crave will ever be fulfilled, because the root of my problem is the place I need to be looking for the answers. I need to get affection from those who didn't give it to me in the first place. But I don't have that, and I don't have three siblings that I could call best friends, so at the end of the day, sex may be the only place I can go to cure the itch.
When I was a kid my parents worked a lot. My dad was always busy, and my mum was too busy to look after her fourth child as well as the other three, so she had a nanny for a little while. When I was about 5 or 6, I can remember being bored at home, because Charlie wouldn't play with me. She had already grown up too fast, because she was at the girls school; playmobil was just not cool enough for her. I spent most of my summers at the Howarth's house in Alburgh. Simon and Sue were my second-parents, and me, Alex, Ben and Louise would find stuff to do all day. I had so much fun, got so much done, had something different to do with each of them, and I was entertained. They're still my second family now, and I sometimes just go there because this house feels so cold and empty. They make that feeling go away, temporarily.
When I started at the high school, I hoped things would change. Mum used to forget to pick me up from primary school, and sometimes some one else would come, sometimes I'd have to wait because she was late finishing work, and sometimes she just forgot completely, got home and thought 'shit I forgot Laura'. I never cried or anything, I'd just stand there and wait. One time, I could have walked home with Jack and his mum, as they live up the road from us, but I didn't, because I knew that if she couldn't pick me up yet, there certainly wasn't anyone at home to let me in.
So I started high school, and I got the bus every day with all three siblings. They had their bus crew, and they didn't want me in it. Helen would tell me to sit further away from them, she'd give me her walkman so I didn't eavesdrop, or she'd introduce me to the other girl my age on the bus and say 'go sit with Charlotte, she likes Buffy the Vampire Slayer too, you can be friends!'. I mean, we were / still are friends, but still... I was very much rejected by them every day on the bus.
Helen only shared one year in high school with me. If I saw her walking around, I'd go and say hi, follow her where she was going and stuff, and she'd just shun me off, because she was far too busy, and didn't care that I wasn't fitting in to this big new school that she was so comfortable in. Helen's friends were always nice to me, and that made me feel a tiny bit better. Charlie's friends were not, but they were all 14, and in that rude stage of puberty. It was in the next few years that they would accept my constant presence. Phil was always good, she'd involve me in conversations on the bus, tell me all her weird stories, and Charlie didn't seem to mind. But Charlie wouldn't discuss her own things in front of me. She'd wait until I was engrossed in my mini-disc player to talk seriously. Luckily, I had about 14 mini-discs of my favourite albums, the only ones coming to mind are Avril Lavigne, Eminem, and Savage Garden.
Then Fame Academy happened. Charlie and I had something in common again. We'd watch it for hours, we had loads of home-recorded videos of footage, live shows, interviews when they'd come out of the house, and the official fame academy video, and we'd watch them all the time. Emma was in the house at the time, and she'd laugh at us a lot, but we didn't care. Sinead and Ainslie, and their friendship, helped me get close to Charlie, which led to many other great things. We went to the live show at Birmingham NEC with Charlie's two best friends (very cool), and when I was 16 I visited her in Edinburgh and we went to see Ainslie at a little gig.
High school was quickly over run by dramatic moments with friends from about age 13, but I'd still come home to Emma, Dad and Mum discussing work, which I was not yet very much to do with, and James discussing his latest hobby (BMXing, fishing, Warhammer, there were so many...), and Charlie doing homework, calling friends, writing out all her texts. She used to ask me to clean her room for her, then tell her a story, and she'd always fall asleep. But I still did it every time she asked. I wanted to, because it was quality time with my sister, and I was not going to pass that up just because I had my own shitty homework to do. Evidently, I probably should have found time to do that. Oh well.
I was never very close to James. For a few years, when the garage was in its prime, he'd sit at his computer, and I'd sit at mine, next to each other, and we'd play games from about 8.30 until 12, sometimes 1am, depending how many times Mum came in and told us to get to bed. We'd discuss very little, he'd show me parts of his game that were cool, I'd carry on playing either one of his old games (in a hope we could bond and chat about it, no doubt - but they were all really cool games) or just on msn and shit like that for hours. Emma sometimes would be there, drinking and chatting, music would be on. Charlie sometimes joined the three of us.
During the weekends and holidays, we'd often have a full house. Katie might stay round, Phil had popped over for dinner, Martie was coming for lunch, Helen was home and Julia and Sophie were both hanging out with her in the kitchen. James even had his friends, and Corbett and Ruan would be in the garage, playing computer games, being given beers jovially by Dad.
Then they all left. Emma's circus picked up a bit, she'd come home for less time, and dad would be more angry with her. James went to the RAF in the January of 05, Charlie went on her gap year in the September of 05, and I was at home with mum and dad, very alone, and they were still working all the time, forgetting to pick up their child, too busy for school plays and things. I was 15. That's when my above list of boys begins.
I've never told my siblings about what happened between myself and Thompson. Mainly because I don't think they'd care. But its now been seven years, and its still this worry in the back of my mind - why did I let him? I've never been able to answer it, but it's because of something I'm scared of admitting. Its hard to talk to girls your age about how sex makes you feel when your 15, because people either laugh, cringe, have no way of relating at all, or have had 'so much' already that they just HAVE to tell you ALL their stories first. And yours never seems to come out. The thing with Thompson is, I liked him, before it happened. I even liked him the first few days after it happened. I liked the feeling of him liking me. And I didn't enjoy what happened in a sexual sense, but I was being given attention by this guy that I liked, and I could put up with weird settings for doing weird things because I had that warmth of affection.
I don't need a guy to make me happy. And if all I needed was pleasure from sex, I'd own a dildo. But I don't, because its also about intimacy and emotional connections. One of my old blogs was about how sex with someone you're not in a relationship with is not as good. Being in love with someone, making love, and having this warmth take over your body, is the closest thing to being cured that I've ever been. Having one-night-stands does very little good, and considering the varying people who have been involved, they usually do more damage than good, anyway.
Right now, I have a handful of friends in this county. Filling my daily quota of affection takes a whole day of being with friends, and I get no work done. So when I work five days in a week, get little sleep, feel like a zombie most days and just think 'do it for the money' most of the day, my quota is very low. I get cheap thrills from farmers telling me they like my hair, or the tea I made was 'just perfect'. It's not even real affection, but I've noticed how much happier I am when someone drops a little compliment like that. I used to either ignore them or just laugh them off / dismiss my tea as being 'bog standard'.
I don't know if Norfolk is going to break me. Being in this house is easier now than it was from when I was 15 til 18, but that was for three years. This is just over one. And I'm determined to leave before it reaches two years. Even if just for a month of traveling or something. I don't want Norfolk to break me, but I know how broken I already am. And the people that broke me are the people I live with, work with, see every day and rely upon for food and housing. And I don't know if I can convince my head that I am loved by my family. I think it's been too long, too shoved down my throat, too many times have I walked away from an argument brimming with tears. How do I turn all of that over?
I want to be happy again. I want to fall in love and feel like my life has reason, because I have a person to live it with. I don't want to feel like this empty shell any more.