So here we are...

Well it finally happened. It's finally over. It is done. He is upset, angry, annoyed, confused. I am...numb. It is the right thing to have happened. I was expecting it to take longer than this. I am sad for him, I still care for him, but I am also glad of being able to shake him off now. His life is....his. Not ours, anymore. Several things have happened to him this week, none of which I know the actual details - but I don't want to know. I don't want to care. I want to be me, to be selfish, to worry and care about myself. That is it. I am sorry it didn't work out. But I am not sorry for myself. It is the right thing to do.
I am scared though. I am truly alone now. I know I always was...at least the past few months. But now I'm really doing this thing, living this life, on my own. It is partly exciting, partly scary. It is the right time. I am strong enough now.

A warning sign...

I've had this image in my head for a while now, of who I want to end up with. He's tall and lean, dark and maybe hairy. He's called Joe and I love him deeply and with certainty.
I want to find my Joe. I don't think I ever will. Maybe D and versions of him are all I shall ever find, maybe the way I am with D is the way I am to be with every lover. Maybe all my loves will end like this - with pain and guilt and uncertainties. Maybe all my loves will start with joy and excitement and will all too soon peter out into antipathy and regret. Maybe I'll never truly 'know' that someone is right for me. Maybe I'll always fuck it up, always be disappointed, always run away. I care for D massively, I want him to be okay, I feel so responsible for him.
I read something a few weeks ago about someone with massively disabling impairments. There was no prospect of any 'normal' life, of finding a career and a partner and doing all the things we take for granted. It made me think immediately that perhaps I am being selfish, perhaps I should shut up and be grateful for what I have. I have found a boy that loves me - really loves me. He would do anything for me. Yet I don't want him - I don't love him. What is wrong with me?
Can I be grateful for having had that, for having had the wondrous moments, but still leave him? Will I have a right to feel lonely then? Will I have a right to complain? I don't think so. But then I am a harsh judge I think, and a harsh critic. I don't know why I am like that to myself - I am incredibly supportive of other people's decisions. The women in my life can see clearly and have told me that they know D's wrong for me. So why do I feel so bound to him? I feel I should keep him for our future, but that future feels so far away, it's like I'm forgoing all the things I am doing and could be doing now, in the present, for an idea of a relationship ten years down the line
All this is so boring, I'm just saying the same things over and again, every entry.

It's time to throw away your doubt...

Beginning to flirt with the incredibly bad and stupid idea of going on a date. Whilst I have a boyfriend. One whom I never see, love but am not in love with, and whom I am with mostly out of guilt. But it is still a terribly dangerous idea.
S. has just surprised me by telling me she would do it, to chase any chance of fun and happiness. I expected judgement from her, so it's a pleasing response - pleasing because it makes me feel less guilty, not because I think she's right.
I feel a large amount of responsibility for D's heart. I have broken it once before. I am starting to know I shall again, but it is scary to contemplate doing that any time soon.
I have been lax in all things this week. I shall use this weekend to get back on track with university. And try to think sensibly about D. I am not the kind of girl to have an affair, but I need to start making some decisions (although having just typed that, I can hear my mother's voice echoing in my mind - "you don't have to make any decision! Do what you like! It's your life! Sod D, he's lucky to have had you even this long!". And there is a part of me that hopes she's right, that thinks she could be.
It's about taking that gamble again. That gamble of 'will anyone ever truly like me?'. With my snoring and my arse and my loudness and my insecurities and my craziness.
Am I going to take that gamble?

This love making is...damn heartbreaking

I have been crying a lot lately. At nothing at all, at the smallest things. It comes upon me suddenly and if I'm with people I have to remove myself, I can't swallow it down and save it for later. Sadness consumes me, it swirls in a hurricane of tears around me, lasting for moments or hours. I can listen to the opening bars of a song, or think fleetingly of something in the past, or hear vulnerability in my voice and woooosh, it's there and I can't escape it. I am not usually this raw.
On Friday it happened twice. First as I voiced a little of my frustrations at university, I felt the fizziness in the nose, my speech faltering, my eyes stinging. I had to stop talking and let E rage against somethingorother so that nobody would notice. Then as I walked home I was listening to happy-in-love songs and suddenly I was sobbing, I felt my heart was breaking, and it was all I could do to keep walking. Thankfully my scarf protected any anticipated judgement from passers by. Yesterday it happened whilst watching a tragic, beautiful love story, I cried and cried. Not for the story, but for myself. Today it was as I was sleepily horny, luxuriating in the quietness, before I got any further than fantasising I was in tears, waves of anxiety hit me one after the other.

I am in a strange sort of love. I don't understand it and I wish I didn't have it. I shouldn't have asked D to come back to me. I should have been wise, I should have accepted my loneliness. The simplest way I have come to think of things is...I am not happy in my relationship. But I cannot leave him, because I cannot bear to hurt him so much all over again. But what does that mean? Am I to be a martyr to myself, am I to live a lifetime of unhappiness just so I don't break his heart again? I am terrified of being alone - truly alone. But I have realised that I already feel that way. Being in this relationship is the loneliest of all, because the one person I should be able to speak to about anything - I can't.
I am beginning to wonder if I shall ever be happy in a long-term relationship. Whether I have the capacity to live a life with someone else and to enjoy that life. I am not so sure now. I have inherited the best and worst of my mother. I have inherited strong feminism, but also a type of feminism-led madness or hashness, I think. I don't want to end up in the kind of place she is with my dad. They're happy but utterly miserable. I don't want that, and I can see that happening with D - in some respects we're already there. I have never been one to idolise men, I have never put them on pedestals, I have always been the supporter of women. I find men endlessly disappointing. But despite all this, the whole reason I am staying with D and am so terrified of leaving him, is because I'm scared to be alone. I want to find the right one. I want to just know someone is right, rather than this constant doubting. I do want somebody. And I have D, totally and absolutely. But he is not the right one. So what do I do? Sacrifice what I know deep inside for the sake of not hurting him and for not dying alone?
Something else that is involved in this decision is of course self-doubt. Am I really beautiful? Am I really worth falling for? Me, with my craziness and tactlessness and laziness and clumsiness and complete lack of sophistication? Can I bear to leave him, to risk the fact that he may be the only one that will ever love me?

Back to school

I am ill today. I have a pretty impressive cold, and have not stepped out of my bed since getting into it 18 hours ago. It is now almost 3pm and my stomach is starting to make its presence felt but I'm putting off venturing downstairs. I was supposed to go to uni today to pick up an emergency loan (as my student loan hasn't come through, because the student loans company are predictably but astoundingly useless). I would have perhaps managed it if I had the bus fare, but I don't, and it's a four mile, hour-long walk which is not feasible when my head is so heavy and puffy I shouldn't be seen for fear of scaring children.
Monday was the start of my second year at university. My first lecture was interesting but did not fill me with excitement. The module is The Global Citizen in Education and shall pick up, I am sure. There are some interesting ideas floating around. Tuesday was Values and/in Education and I finally got excited to be back. It is taught by a lecturer I hadn't encountered before but who is captivating, amusing and got us to think. It was a basic introduction into the definition of what we mean by Values, and what we mean by Education. It was also an overview of how our societal changes affect Education, from the dark ages to the age of reason, from theism to post modernism. Fascinating stuff, and a module I am very glad to be doing.
Yesterday was my first Disability Studies seminar, we are going to be doing a lot of work for our Effective Practice module this year. I am slightly intimidated, but I am also sure I shall muddle through.
I desperately, desperately want to do well with my degree. I want a First, though don't really believe I shall get it. No matter how hard I work, I tend to be a B grade student. I always feel I am missing something, that I am simply not getting a key point in the whole academic process. I feel that way socially as well, to be honest. That everyone likes and knows each other a little more than they like and know me. That I am somehow intrinsically dumb about the whole friendship process. I cannot relax, when I meet people. I like meeting people, but I cannot relax when I interact with them. I can feel them judging me, I can feel my regret in 5 minutes time having said something stupid. I just generally feel I am not getting it, whatever 'it' may be, in all parts of my life.

Should I talk about D now? Do I want to depress myself further today? I shall perhaps come back later.

An honest synopsis...

So, I am to be honest in this blog. Warts and all. To confront the crappy me and to rant against the crappy others. I am not going to hope or pretend this blog will be interesting, it is simply the insecurities of a lone girl. A big girl. Elephanat girl.
I am thoroughly miserable with many things at the moment. I feel my inner self is crumbling a little, because of isolation and general laziness. I am beginning to utterly loathe my appearance again, after building confidence slowly over the past few years. I convinced myself I was the ugliest troll alive when I was entering puberty and could not be disabused of this notion for several years. I became a self destructive time bomb, but got the required therapy before things went too far. And I was okay for a nice few years.
But now I find myself falling back, not as blindly, not as wrecklessly, but still falling back into the melancholy little soul I was before. Not all the time, it's not as all-consuming as it has been. But it's at the back of my mind a lot now. I do not like it but I have to admit - it is comfortable being depressed. I know that world well, I know my place in it.
I am not hideously fat, I am not grotesquely ugly. D finds me beautiful and that is perhaps all that counts. I can be naked and feel pretty around him - though he cannot around me, his self-loathing far surpasses mine (and I don't seem very good at making him feel attractive). My (beautiful, charming and superficially sophisticated) flatmates tut at my disparaging remarks, my friend E said today she had noticed I was not happy and "you know you have nothing to worry about, don't you?", I was shocked to find tears sting my eyes. I am very tall, for a girl. But unfortunately I am not a waif - I am not an Erin O'Connor, more a Kiki de Montparnasse. I feel like an elephant in a dress, I feel cumbersome in pretty clothes. I am not straightforwardly good looking - I would say I have an 'interesting' face. I am surprised when I find myself attractive in photographs, though I do.
I am a terrible girlfriend. D and I are long distance as I took myself away to university last autumn, belatedly, and only really because of a broken heart. As good a reason as any, I think. He was the one that broke my heart, but he ended up fixing it too, and now we find ourselves seperated for weeks by 200 miles. I am not very nice to him, I'm sure there are many reasons why, but they are not a good enough excuse. I panic a lot, about whether the love is real, whether I only allowed myself to be with him again because no-one will love me like he does, or because I was lonely, or horny, or all of the above. Most of the time I know we will be together for a very, very long time. But if I think about it too much I panic again so I have to stop myself. I am still rather young, and I hope it is my youth that makes me want to either run to the hills at the thought of our future, or run straight into his arms. It can change from one minute to the next.
I live with an older friend from home and her young sister. Two sisters who are messy and fun, careless and overbearing, creative and beautiful, feckless and rich. Mostly messy and fun. I make my own room an oasis, a haven, to escape the detritus. I am learning I can be a doormat, and am turning that education into learning how to stand up for myself. They drive me crazy and depress me, but they also make me laugh and are generous with their wine and tobacco.
Enough for now.

Start...

Well, I've started this as a place to write away from the people I know. I have another blog, which my friends and boyfriend read - this one's for me to write my crap so I can only embarass myself to myself.
The name is how I see myself at the moment, in a way not too cryptic to understand but that my boy wouldn't think to go hunting around the internet for. The title of the blog is my phrase in dark moments, the one that reminds me things are not necessarily as final or awful as they may seem.
This blog might be a little more ranty and depressing than my other one - I feel I must be private in my anger and my low points, for the benefit of myself as well as others. Noone wants to read page after page of self-obsessed misery, including me. I can come to this when I need to, and leave it when I want.