Perfected :: Her Body :: Greek Necessity :: Deep Throats :: Scrolls

Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me Last week I wrote, "I don't know if it's the caffeine making my heart pound, the remnants of my hacking cough trying to expel my lungs or a very slow panic attack that makes my chest hurt like this." Essay deadlines turn me stark staring mad - it transpires that my boss was really quite worried about me and didn't even expect me to come back from my leave of absence. I explained that reports of my resignation had been greatly exaggerated and behaved like Miss Psycho Pep Squad all day in order to convince him that I was thoroughly sane. In retrospect that may not have been the best course of action, but it seemed to de the trick. But it got me thinking. Most of my friends, to one degree or another, are not entirely compos mentis, as it were. Why expect myself to be any different? Like calls to like... Laura is, as she so frequently reminds me, certifiably mad. H thinks she doesn't need anyone, curled up in her ground floor, one bedroom, bleached white flat as though it were an ivory tower. And I...I dally around on the net, pouring out my heart to strangers. Third year came as a shock to us all, I think. The sheer volume of work we're all expected to do, the books to read, the shifts we have to work in order to pay this months rent. I hadn't seen H in weeks until I met her at the station for a quick farewell as she and Laura travelled down to Leeds to see a friend who left Edinburgh after less than a year. A crowd of them - H's ex-girlfriend included - spent a weekend there, drinking, socialising, smoking 'the largest spliff known to humankind'. I've stated time and time again here that I don't want a relationship. But...H has her pretty Greek girl, and though I don't envy the tempestuous nature of their relationship I want someone to be all mine. Laura has a darling boy who brings me vodka and gin, calls her every five minutes and is generally a sweetheart. Even The Other Flatmate has his vapid sophisticate to dally with. The crux of the matter being, all four of us started seeing people at roughly the same time. I wouldn't go back to that. Je ne regrette rien, but all the same I don't *miss* it. Occasionally I wonder if I was really meant to deal with people. I deal so much better when it's just text. I have my own ivory tower. The books arranged in precise order on floor-length, flat-pack bookcases, read and re-read. Presents, purchases, things ostensibly bought for my course. I worried my parents by talking to them (the bookshelves were a present) the last time I saw them. And really, that's all my life amounts to these days - reading. The sole attraction of the internet is the sheer volume of *words*, available at the click of a button. The Kazaa addiction amounts to the same thing - I chew over witty lyrics and friend's journal entries as though they were Booker Prize novels when my attention span prevents me from actually reading said Booker Prize novels. On this note, I have a confession to make - I have never read 'The Wide Sargasso Sea'. I've been meaning to read it since I was ten. That's nigh on eleven years of intending to read a relatively short novel, and failing to do so. Over a *decade*. And yet somehow I have found the time to read such godawful SHITE that I've wanted to tear out my own eys a la Mr O Rex, just so I can't make the same mistake again. Does that make me a bad person? ______________________________ we have come so far :: it is over

Accomplishment :: The Moon :: Toga :: Night Flower