...so I'm back at home for the holidays. Not when I should be, a week early in fact, as on Thursday I finally threw the towel in, admitted I wasn't happy in spectacular fashion.

I was just fed up of being ignored, I hate the last few weeks of the final term. It's when I have the fact I'm not a part of anything shoved in my face. That only one person wants to reluctantly spend some time with me. That everyone else asks everyone else what they are doing and nobody bothered to ask me. Everyone's off at the beach and shopping in fucking Bristol and going to the cinema, etc. It seemed the two weeks I had at home everyone forgot about me and was a little too reluctant to admit I was back again.

Maybe it's just my paranoia that makes me feel like this, but everyone's support, to me, feels like it came a little too late and will be a little too sporadic. If everyone had been there in the first place, maybe I wouldn't have wandered round the town centre in a hysterical sobbing mess, screaming down the phone at my parents before collapsing in defeat at a walk-in doctors. Maybe if someone had asked me, when they were all sitting on my bed, what I was doing tomorrow.
People say it's my horrid time at high school, which has left me unable to trust anybody, to sit on the sidelines where I think it's safe, that's stopped me loving university like everyone else does. Don't get me wrong, at times it's been great fun, but I think it's truly fucked me up.

So I've missed out on the end of year ball, the last week of fun. And half of me is sad about that, but half of me is relieved I no longer have to sit biding time in my room alone, or wandering around the town centre, spending money and hoping it all goes away.


Now I'm home my parents have spoken to doctors who think I may have had a mild nervous breakdown. I don't know how to deal with that, or what would be the reason for it. Am I being left out or am I just paranoid?

Melissa P...

...your book moved me, because I feel I have been where you have been. Except I haven't reached the ending you have yet, but I anxiously anticipate it.
I too only saw myself as a sexual object, my main goal in terms of sex to excite male desire with my sensuality. An object of pleasure, not an equal partner in love. And sex has often been the quick fix to a bout of extreme loneliness, just needing to be with someone no matter how. And how that really doesn't work, and I've never learned that. That we need to exlore ourselves in whole, not just respond to the carnal top coat.
Every time it happens, and that horrible feeling of cheapness and regret and stupidity, and once again being alone. As he pulls on his clothes, embarassed too, and I watch him from the crumpled mess of my bed, we don't speak, I just stare, hoping for "So what are you doing later?" in the nicest sense. And then the door slams, and I'm left with the harsh grey light poking through the curtains. Left to clear away the grimy reminders, a dusty half-drunk glass of water, the shreds of the Durex wrapper, get rid of that awful smell of a stranger, filled with the whole context of what just happened. That stench of alcohol and hoarding cologne, and a smoky nightclub.
Never since Madame Bovary have I felt such empathy with a book, like, really felt I know exactly what they are describing and discussing, and able to measure how well they describe ideas I too have felt. It's moments like that which make you realise how rich reading can be.

Sudoku

I too have become a shameless addict.

I've been at home from university for the last week or so due to a sudden family bereavement, and in between late-night TV (the joys! Nip/Tuck returns, as do nightly reruns of SATC across the Channel Four platforms), daydreaming, and wandering the town centre, this has been keeping me occupied.
My curiosity was aroused last week in the SU pub, having a few after handing in our essays and therefore completing my second year studies, much to the envy of our exam-burdened friends. On the notoriously sticky and littered tables there was a copy of our campus newspaper with a page devoted to the number grids that are Sudoku. My friend pointed it out but I didn't hold out much hope of ever being initiated into the craze, what with being an English student and Mathematics being the total opposite to how my brain works. I simply peeled it away from the T2 supplement it was glued to by means of our spilled nacho sauce and did the word puzzles instead, before another friend scribbled the itinery of a pub crawl overt the top of my hard work, which then came to no fruition. And so my interest temporarily died; I'd always meant to Google it up one boring moment in my now lecture-free hours, but there were boat-cruises and the discovery of a potential soul-mate (more about that in another post...) to distract me.
So, arriving home on Saturday to discover that due to the family bereavement I was staying until the middle of next week, I decided to finally Google up Sudoku, and perhaps teach myself how to play, in order to occupy what were even emptier hours. The rules surprised me, there was no need for A Level mathematical knowledge and logic, merely the abilty to fill in all the numbers in accordance with the only rule-that each little box on the grid contain the numbers one to nine. With that I was on an online quest for puzzles, finding the Telegraph, Times and Guardian back-catalogues of puzzles and printing nine to the dozen. Within ten minutes I had completed my very first puzzle, which was 100% correct. Encouragement like that is only bad news for me, this being no exception. My house is now littered with scraps of number filled paper, I'm refusing to discard the trophies of my new found talent, albeit one that only allows me to do the easiest puzzles at the moment. This week I've spent many an evening with late-night TV and my nightly grid to ponder away at. It really is bliss. And now I've done all the easy puzzles the back-catalogues of the papers can throw at me, I've gone and bought every sudoku book on the market (ok, that isn't as bad as it sounds, there's only three out at the moment. And they are reasonably priced.). I've yet to mark the fragrant pages with my pencilled scribblings; I love admiring past sudoku puzzles of mine, with their artful scrawlings and the reek of biro. Perhaps I should frame them.
It's not long into my addiciton and I'm already trafficking, distributing puzzles amongst my family slumped in front of the TV, who couldn't seem to figure them out, or took longer than me doign so. Which is also a bad sort of encouragement for me, I can now bathe in the glory of family Sudoku Genius. Seriously though, go try it, it's so easy to get hooked on, and in the words of the critics "a cerebral workout". I'm ammending my BlogRoll to accommodate the joys of Sudoku as we speak...

Sex Toy Update

It arrived swiftly and I was very good in convincing the housemates it was nothing more than ink cartridges for my printer. So excited I ripped open the parcel, drew the curtains and got to work...

Yes, it lives up to expectations. Doesn't take very long to bring me off at all! The only problem is the noise. The vibration isn't so bad, it's just the rotating pearls, which I was a bit worried about trying at first but they realyl make all the difference. Have to get right under the duvet before I feel safe no-one will get suspicious about the strange buzzing from my curtained room.

Can't wait to start buying a few more toys for my collection!